If you’ve played space sims, you’ve probably played something in the X-series. It’s a trading/combat/exploration type game, very similar to Wing Commander: Privateer if you played that. For the record, I played Privateer myself. I own a couple of the X-games, and can’t play them at all. I tried, but have no idea what I’m doing and basically can’t even get to the point of mission 1, step 1. Despite that, the games do sound interesting.
On that note, X-Rebirth is a game coming soon in the series, and looks to get over the lack of color often seen in Space Sim games. The palette on display is extremely impressive.
I’m keeping my eye on it, because I LOVE space sims. I remember spending countless hours on Freelancer moving cargo from planet to planet.
But the last X game I tried to play was so over the top difficult to get into that I quit pretty soon after starting. The last space sim game that I was into at all was dark star one a while back, and I got bored pretty quick. I need something with more depth, but something that is accessible. IT should provide you with all the information you need to get things done.
So far X-rebirth sounds amazing, though. It might just be what I’m looking for.
I’ve played the previous games - X2, X3, Reunion and Albion Prelude. There’s one thing that might be a deal breaker for me, and that’s the new restriction on which ships you can fly. In the past, you could buy or steal pretty much anything and make it your flagship. For a while in Albion Prelude I was flying a Kyoto - the Super Star Destroyer equivalent that could obliterate a lesser capital ship in three volleys. At others I flew a Springblossom, a fast corvette with a pair of guns in the side turrets great at sniping M5s.
Unless things have changed, you can’t do that in Rebirth.
I’ve played most the series and enjoyed them a lot. But I’ve learned from long experience that any X game will be a half-finished, bugged beyond a joke, out the door-ready-or-not thing for the first 6 months of its release.
I loved the first Privateer, and the things I liked seem to have disappeared from space sims. I loved that as you took damage, there was the possibility of your ship being crippled until you repair it at a space station – I remember missions where I’d run trade goods through pirate attacks, and by the end I couldn’t steer left, only right, had no more functioning lasers, and was down to my last missile. And then barely limping back to base where I could repair and earn a ton of credits.
Anyhow, I don’t know if this game will recapture any of that, but thanks for pointing this game out to me, I’ve saved it to my Steam wishlist, where it’s in very good company…
The word of mouth I’m getting is that it’s really buggy, which is apparently pretty standard for the company. They apparently release buggy games and patch them extensively after release.
I bought X3: Terran Conflict when it was on sale a year or so back, but never actually played much because they just throw you right in, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. I could probably have figured it out eventually, but I just don’t have the time for that kind of shit.
This one is different that the others, and I haven’t played it, so my info may or may not apply.
In theory the x games are sandbox open world games. There is usually a nominal plot which may block certain sectors, or make some ships or techs inaccessible. the plot somewhat serves as a tutorial, guiding you through ship tech and usage, but you can entirely ignore it.
In reality you start as such a peon you only have a couple realistic options at the start.
1.Be a trader making tiny bits of money carrying tiny amounts of cargo from system to system in the space equivalent of a Mini, eventually building your way up to bigger, trading purposed ships.
Run missions( Fed Ex, Bounty hunter, escort) to get money
Figure out which mission starts the plot, and run through it’s missions, usually the best for unfamiliar players.
Be a pirate, try to capture ships and cargo for sale, very hard at the game start, short of experts.
Cheat and find the derelict ship list online Then skip directly to the midgame by collecting them, and selling some and keeping some, outfitting them perfectly for your chosen lifestyle
Unless you are roleplaying, you will realistically do a bit of each 1-3 to get to midgame. Once there you start plotting you empire, building space stations, defenses and great fleets to rule the galaxy.
I’ve played X3 quite a lot and enjoyed it, after the stupidly steep learning curve, anyways. I bought Rebirth and have given up on it, at least for the moment, after a couple hours. The user interface is every bit as opaque as in previous versions, but different. I stumbled around for 20 minutes and eventually checked the forums simply trying to dock my ship with a freighter. I’m finding the informational displays to be absolutely horrible, though that might be because I don’t have any idea how to manipulate them. And then I hit a bug where the entire interface outside of the save/exit menu froze while trying to buy some energy cells - apparently an extremely common situation.
I’ll check back in a couple months, and in the meantime kick myself for paying full price for a game I should have known wouldn’t be playable out of the box.
4a. Find out where unfriendly empires meet, and go looking for salvage. Missiles offer good price-to-weight ratios and can be picked up for free in the aftermath of major battles.
I’ve sunk many hours into Terran Conflict, and have definitely gotten my money’s worth. I couldn’t get into Albion Prelude mainly because I didn’t want to start over from scratch. Rebirth is definitely on my radar, but I’ll probably wait until the Steam summer sale next year (assuming it isn’t on sale this Christmas).
Glad I’m not the only one then. I bought X3 when it came on sale on Steam, then tried it out and could never figure out what to do, lost interest and it joined a host of other Steam games I own but never played.
I’m really into Kerbal Space Program, however, and through that I discovered Scott Manley on YouTube…and he’s got a series of videos on X-Rebirth as well, so I’m considering buying this game now and giving it a shot (either this one or another game called something like Space Engineers).
Do you like spreadsheets? Do you really love supply chain logistics and commodity price lists? Do you like gratuitous scifi eye candy punctuated by the occasional This is the game for you!
I played X3 and had fun with it, but I found the empire building pretty tedious in the end game. Unfortunately, the accessible and obvious things to do are pretty shallow. Most of the early gameplay boils down to shooting some predictable bad guys, some fetch quests, and playing space trader. The plot is weak. On the other hand, the universe is massive and IMO fascinating to explore, which makes it worth playing.
There are several points in the main plot where they force you to get into the economic side of the game. E.g. you must deliver 10x as much of item X than exist in the entire universe. Which basically means you have to figure out how to build a factory to produce enough of X yourself. In small doses, I found this to be an entertaining challenge, though it can get tedious.
Once I had a small empire, I had no interest in making my empire bigger. IOW, once you can buy (and equip! I hope you like logistics!) the baddest battleship around, there’s not much left to do. At that point I stopped playing after a few obligatory rampages with my shiny new strike fleet.
In case anyone is thinking of buying this - don’t. It’s alpha code shoved out into the Xmas market to catch suckers. It’s so bad even Steam have been giving refunds. Basically they’ve taken all the good bits out of previous games, broken the bits that remain, added new crap bits and broke those also.
And I’m saying this as a big fan of the series. It’s not a PC game, it’s a failed console port belatedly dressed up as a PC game to recoup some funds.
I’ve seen 18 reviews so far - all of them unremittingly damning.
That sucks. I don’t know if it really was a futile experiment into the console space, or the developers biting off more than they could chew, but it’s sad.
It is. I loved the series and put hundreds of hours in to each. With this series you expect bugs. Bugs can be fixed but this is broken at the very basic level.
Then skip directly to the midgame by collecting them, and selling some and keeping some, outfitting them perfectly for your chosen lifestyle
I bought X3 when it came on sale on Steam, then tried it out and could never figure out what to do, lost interest and it joined a host of other Steam games I own but never played.