X3 Reunion - PC

This game HAD its problems or so i've heard, because i only got it about three weeks ago. 99% of them have been fixed by patches. Played it for hours, it didn't crash once. The latest patch version is 1.4.03. Somewhat steep learning curve. However, this is casued not as much by lack of comprehensive in-game tutorial but by sheer amount of things/activities that you can do in this game. Each of those activities is designed with level of detail that sometimes has to be seen to believe! You can now dl X3 from Steam if Starforce scares you. [edit: forget Steam, buy the DVD version of X3, the latest as of 12/2007] *The bad: Interface - menus in particular (and there is lots of them) look like a wierd version of windows, but i don't mind it and when to think of it that's probably the best approach if you have to deal with the amount of information that this game throws at you. Only gripe is that those `windows' are unmovable and unresizable and you can't open more than 1 menu at once. There may very well already be scripts or mods out there that improve that. With those things in mind, is the game good? Is it fun? That would be Yes, and Yes. *The good: Top of the line graphics (you're gonna need a decent PC to fully enjoy it `tho. i play on 6800GT, 1.5GB, P4 3.0GHz) Economy. an actual economy run by the game's AI. Not a simplified facade of economy (ex. Space Rangers, Oblivion). Over a hundred sectors, about 6 different races. Maybe about 50 different kinds of factories/stations/etc operated by NPCs but also which you can personally build/set up/and micromanage if needed. Hundreds of NPC ships going about their own business at any moment, sometimes almost a hundred ships in one sector only! Traders - that are gonna buy from yours or any other factory - slowly piloting their heavy freighters, you see capital ships patroling sectors, you see couriers, bounty hunters, and an occasional marooned pirate... or pirates, or an actual invasion of a hostile race, battles involving capital ships and many fighters. huzzah!... ummm. All of it in amazing detail. Hint: If you wanna start earning decent money by doing Trading you better learn what goods cost how much, what's the range of price on them... what races need what goods, what kind of resources do different factories need, what factories/stations/mines are where, etc, etc. Combat - graphically comparable with what you can get in top-of-the-line regular space combat sims (Freelancer, etc.). Many different kinds of combat ships with amazing level of detail... fighters, scouts, heavy fighters, light fighters, light capital ships, destroyers, carriers, >many< different kinds of shields, beam weapons, missiles. You can own >many< ships. There are many different commands that you can give to your ships if they have appropriate modifications installed. Practically, with how many ships you can control in combat this game approaches the feel of an RTS game. You can play it like an RPG game no problem if you wish so. There are different kinds of small missions available for `pick up' at every station. And you'll get the real taste of this game when you go your own way and do what you wanna do - start and learn by trading, or capturing ships, or doing BBS missions, or just a bit of each. Even knowing how buggy at initial release it was i can't give it less than 5 stars, simply because i was looking for this kind of game for a very long time.

Can you go wrong for less than a buck to try the game? Worth that price just to test it and if being immersed in a slow pace space game is your thing.. Was Fun, given enough time it can be addictive Took a lot of time to play and get the controls down for me. I suppose researching the game is part of it as well if you want to speed up the game play some. There is plenty of tips and cheats available online if that is your preference. I believe the slow pace is an attempt in the design to be more realistic as well. Space fights, capture ships and dominate space in various ways (Fighting, economy, other) If your still not sure about the buck to purchase. Check out some other reviews if you want more insight. Also do some Google research.. 4 Start for fun and overall Though this game might be a specific taste and must be given some time to work you over It is overall a fun game, though slow at times I believe it was also well put together though perhaps a little dated now Hope this helps

I have played alot of awful games. However, I have only very rarely paid $40 for them. This is one of the worst games I have ever played, hands down. I played the previous game in this series "X2: The Threat" and I can tell you this game is pretty much the same thing, only not fun to play at all. X2 was SO much better. You started the game with a better idea of what is going on, the controls were better (which is saying quite alot considering the controls in X2 were just plain bad) and you could atleast change your name, even if the computer players in the game still called you Julian. With "X3: Reunion" none of that is true. It has all the faults of the previous game in the series such as a terrible mission system and dull tedious gameplay focoused on making money by flying from space station to space station with cargo for hours on end. But on top of that all that has changed is the graphics and the interface/controls. The Grpahics are awful. I've read so many reviews of this game which claimed they were great, but they aren't. Sure they look pretty when you see screen shots of space ships, but once the graphics are actually in motion they are terrible. I have a system which easly meets the requirements of the "reccomended system" but I still see lag and random choppiness whenever I fly past another ship or station. There are no options to tune the graphics up or down either so fixing the problem is impossible. Worst of all is you constantly have the "flying stars" effect shooting past your ship everywhere you go and I found this to be a major distraction, not to mention that it doesn't make any sense in this game. This isn't Star Trek and we aren't at warp speed, Scotty. Even worse than the grpahics problem is the interface problem. The controls and interface in X2 weren't very good, and were in fact quite a problem if you don't own a joystick. But somehow the contols and interface in X3 is even worse. You can now use the mouse to control the in-game menus, which is something X2 was lacking, but this option is not turned on by default. When I first started the game it took me 5 minutes of flying in circles and cusssing before I figured out how to even navigate the menus. It took and another 15 minutes after that to figure out how to fly again. A vetran of the previous game in the series should not have this much trouble learning the controls of a new game! And before you ask, there is no tutorial either, so you WILL have to blunder blindly through the controls before you figure them out, just like I did. I could forgive the faulty graphics and the steep learning curve if there was some reedeming and/or new gameplay behind this mind bending system, but there isn't. The gameplay is exactly like X2. They didn't even fix the combat system which was the biggest complaint of fans of the previous games. The best tactic is still to shoot wildly and hope your computer opponents don't ram into you by accident (which they still do far too often). The biggest problem I wanted to see fixed was the mission system, but its EXACTLY the same. In X2 you had to fly to space stations and read "bulletin boards" to find missions. Every mission had requirements and usually requirements you didn't meet. Because each station had only one or two missions AT MOST, if you didn't meet one of them, you had to fly to another station and check there. Sometimes you had to check 10 or more stations before you found a mission you were willing and able to take. Then the mission would take 1/15 the amount of time you spent just to find it, pay almost nothing and you were back to searching for another mission again. I've VERY SAD to say this EXACT SAME MISSION SYSTEM IS BACK FOR X3. Right down to the very names and descriptions for the missions. THE EXACT SAME SYSTEM. Playing this game is even more tedious then trying to level up in Everquest or something. I would almost rather fight 100 rats to get to level 2 and afford a rusty sword than have to dock at one more space station. Also, there is no Multi-Player as far as I can see, so if thats a deal breaker for you then consider this deal broken. Further, even the single player options are lacking. There are three options for a "storyline" game (which amount to an easy, regular and hard modes) and then three options for playing the game with the story disabled. Reguardless of which option you choose, you are unable to choose your race or even your name and pretty much all the options are the same. The only real choice is what kind of ship(s) you want to start the game with. There is also a "Custom game" option but there is only one choice under that option and it just launched me into a regualr storyline game. I'm outraged at Egosoft that they managed to release a game this bad. X2 was a fine game that just needed a few minor improvements to become a great game. But somehow Egosoft managed to take a game that was fine and make it worse by taking the good parts and screweing them up and still failing to fix any of the problems from the previous game. Don't buy X3: The Reunion. For $40 there are SO many better games here on Amazon to spend your money on.

Eh, just buy games on steam.