YMMV / Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Hobbes a Sleeper Agent or a willful deserter (Both times)? Or maybe a little of both?
• Complete Monster: Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka is the crown prince and the most vicious of all the Kilrathi commanders. Ruthless from his youth, Thrakhath demanded the execution of a minister who showed slight hesitation at the Terran invasion and distinguished himself with titanic bloodshed across the galaxy. As the Kilrathi commander-in-chief and the Emperor's heir, Thrakhath assumes more responsibility with his grandfather's infirmity, masterminding attacks across numerous systems with the intent to exterminate humanity if they will not be enslaved. After capturing a squad of Terran fighters, Thrakhath summarily has them executed on the spot save for the lover of the heroic Colonel Christopher "Maverick" Blair, Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux, whom Thrakhath personally murders with his own claws and saves the video to later taunt Blair with.
• Demonic Spiders: The Jalthis in Wing Commander may be slow, but their six-gun attacks are deadly, making escort missions very difficult.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The reason for Hobbes' Face–Heel Turn, that he was a Sleeper Agent who was awakened by Thrakhath's use of "The Heart of the Tiger" in reference to Blair.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of people like to pretend the Face–Heel Turn by Hobbes due to his being a Sleeper Agent either never happened or else had a different justification.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Averted in that fans generally preferred Rachel to Flint in Wing Commander 3 (perhaps due to the fact loading their own missiles was tedious). The novelizations had Blair marry Rachel after the events of Wing Commander 3 but their relationship didn't last.
• Good Bad Bugs: Asteroids and mines in the first two games only spawn within the area in front of your ship. Therefore, a good way of avoiding them while going at high speed is to constantly make wide turns back and forth, which keeps you from running right into the hazards that just came into existence in front of you.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: The game's graphics. The page today contains some caveats about the graphics being a bit dated, but both Wing 1 and Wing 3 were famous for being absurdly cutting-edge when they released - as in, "you probably need to upgrade your computer to even consider running this game" cutting-edge. Wing 1 set a graphical standard at the start of the 90s that everyone had to match or exceed. Of course, the entire point is that people eventually did, especially as computers became ever more powerful, and today the games tend to show their age rather badly (although some do think the 2D cutscenes from the earlier games have aged a bit better, simply due to the skill of the artists).
• Retroactive Recognition: The third game features François Chau and Josh Lucas in early roles. It also served as one of the first "legitimate" acting roles for adult film star Ginger Lynn Allen.
• That One Level:
  • Anything dealing with flying through a mine cluster in a Wing Commander game. You have to maneuver painfully slowly through these if you want to make it through. At least you can shoot Asteroids out of your way. Try the same with a space mine and...BOOM! Twenty-one gun salute city for you.
  • There's also the mission with cloaking torpedoes in Wing Commander III. Don't stray from that capital ship, or you'll miss the torpedo, and the mission becomes a failure.
  • The infamous Kurasawa-2 mission in Wing Commander. Yes, the one with Ralari defense (you have about ten seconds to destroy 4 heavy cat fighters, or else the craft you're supposed to be protecting goes boom). If you do manage to protect the captured enemy cruiser, you are sent straight to the victorious ending mission sequence. Ramming the enemy fighters works wonders, it turns out.