I personally loved the Freespace games, and have taken advantage of the awesome work by the FreeSpace Source Code Project to replay them over the years. That said, FreeSpace is Descent in name only, and totally understand how folks who had very fond memories of playing Descent feeling a bait in switch when getting FreeSpace and having it not be very Descent-like. I mean, heck, aside from the Glide mechanic, there's no real Six-Axis style movement, you know, the hallmark of Descent.

They're just different games. I love them both for what they are. It's a shame that Interplay tried to use the Descent name to sell more copies, because even if there was some minor inspirations in development, Freespace definitely stands solidly on its own two feet without the tie.