X3: The Reunion

[Parkre]

I did a search and didn't see a previous thread.

I would like to get it. But the people on the X3 boards are awfully picky and whiney about some issues. The game does look really good.

...and no, I have not played the prior Xs...

...and no, this is not about X-men.....

 

[Elcs]

X: Beyond The Frontier was good. X-Tension carried that on and X2: The Threat is the first and only dual monitor game Ive played.

I cant afford the system upgrade to play X3 but I wish I could.

Video forum here didnt discuss my X3 Trailer thread months ago, blasphemously discussing how good FPSes look. TBH, theres nothing that compares to the screenshots of X3. It gave me the same awe as Homeworld 1 did.

From what Ive read on the boards just at GameFAQs (poor source I know but..) theres been loads of problems with the game, sticking problems in missions, performance issues.. one in particular forcing the player to reduce settings to get the turret to be able to hit things. Patches seem to be coming out rather quickly and Egosoft are providing good support for the game.

The first 3 games were fun, they lacked decent combat but I get the feeling that X3 has improved on that from what Ive been reading. If you enjoy graphical goodness mixed with a rich economy (unlike Freelancer) and space combat, its probably worth picking up.

And on a side note, people who mistake this for X-Men... shame on you. The X series is probably better

 

[skace]

Well, I bought it and havn't had any issues with starforce so far. But I did have an issue with my CD2 not being complete, 2 of the soundtrack mp3s wouldn't copy. Luckily, the forums had a workaround for this (just stick in cd3, hit retry and then ignore) so I was still able to get it working, I then just grabbed a couple mp3s from my machine and renamed them to the troublesome ones.

The graphics are really beautiful, but I had some issues with performance and apparently the majority of people do. I ended up turning all the settings down to low and this made the game much more enjoyable while not really affecting how good things look in the game. If you get the game, I'd suggest turning it to low also if anything feels out of place.

The learning curve is probably the weirdest thing for me. I play tons of games so I'm very used to just picking up a game and figuring it out. Unfortunately, with X3 everything seems anti-intuitive and the game doesn't really introduce or explain any features to you. It sort of as if you start off on mission 15 instead of mission 1. I ended up reading several FAQs on the game's website before I had a good grasp on a lot of concepts.

This brings me to gameplay, I was expecting this game to have a lot more combat than I've run into at this point. I started out in normal, which apparently is a big mistake, from reading the boards nearly everyone starts out in easy. The problem with normal, is the game doesn't give you enough money to buy a freighter, so you cannot get money very quickly outside of capturing ships, the problem there is I can barely find a single enemy ship to capture and when I finally do find them, it is usually in groups of 4 and the ships have weapons that I can't even comprehend yet, blowing me to pieces in seconds.

Ok, so yea, you have to start on easy, and then I guess the first half of the game is simply trading and building up an empire of factory ships to make you money. I wasn't really expecting this much of the game to rely on trading and I don't really enjoy trading at all, so this has been a major bummer for me. It kind of makes me want to replay freespace or something similar.

Overall, I will probably keep coming back to the game and trying to enjoy it because it captivates me to a certain degree, but it deffinitely isn't everything I could have hoped for in a space flight game.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

It sounds like it still needs a few patches to be really playable.

 

[Elcs]

Random bump.... looks like too many Anandtechers are just interested in FPSes to look elsewhere

 

[HexiumVII]

what type of game is this? Is it an RTS? It looks nice.

 

[lozina]

X3 is NOT an RTS, it's classified as either a Space Sim or a Space RPG. Though you can't really develop your character so I'd lean more on Space Sim.

If you played Independence War it is very similar...

I'm just learnign X3 now as well, and agree with much of what skace is saying. It has a very difficult learning curve but after 3 days of grappling I'm now really getting the hang of it and enjoying it more and more. I did start on Easy, and I Highly recommend you do too...

Even though I started on Easy I tried trading to make money and it was just too slow and boring so I went on to ship capping and having alot more fun. The combat is very difficult because there's little you can do to upgrade your ship so you're gonna end up with the same firepower and capability as the enemies you face in the same rank of ship. But I found that using a joystick and relying on a spinning barrel roll (roll on edirection while activating thruster in same direction so you just corkscrew towards oncoming ships all the time) is the best tactic to avoid nearly all enemy fire.

So again, I'm reeally enjoying this game so far but I don't quite like it as much as Independence War 2 mainly because I can't cusotmize my ship as much as I'd like. I'd rather have a ship fitting with more flexibility- it's very strict what you can do with the ship you have. And also there doesn't seem to be ships much better than what you start with! Sure you can get carriers and Destroyers but I mean the ships within the classes aren't THAT much different from eachother. It's not like I can get a much better M4 than the one I started with. So that kind of bums me out.