Well, im purely an FS2 Faithfull... Coming over from The Descent series to Freespace, FS2 seemed to loon alot more attractive with its explosions, flak batteries, and beam cannons.. but aside from that, there are more subtle reasons i prefer FS2
I dont know if anyone else realised this, but, throught the FS1 Storyline, all the new weapons seemed to be getting developed /right/ then and there as you were playing (based on command briefings) Even the Medusa and the Herc were apparently developed and released to the player. Wheras, in FS2, Everything was developed allready (aside from... one, maybe two weapons) and were /authorised/ to the player by command as the game progressed. That made a big difference to me, made the game more believable.
Another reason, I felt like i could actually beat the shivans in Freespace two. That we actually stood a chance the entire game.. Untill all those sathanas' showed up and we lost all hope. Then the impending doom feeling set in. I think that sudden turn for Hopelessness is what grabbed me the most during FS2. In the end, we found a way to kill the Lucifer. We lived through it. But the Sathanas attacks? We had to /run/. And it left me thinking... 'What /can/ we do the next time they show up?'