X3 Reunion

[hardrock 0]

Hi dear OFP friends!

Lately I wondered about this new game, X3 Reunion. It's a space game / simulation (?) produced by egosoft which aims (producer info) at trading, building and fighting in a large universe. The graphics are very detailed, as are the models (judging from screens and the rolling demo).

Now I'm basically a fan of the space scenario. I like the imagination of the wide open space without many limitations and a lot of freedom, the same reason for which I play OFP. But as I once decided to buy Freelancer (Microsoft) for the same reasons, which was graphically neat but pretty boring otherwise, I'm more careful now.

Has anyone of you played this game? Any feedback, ratings or reports? I'd really like to know if this game is worth the buy, as I don't want to spend 50 Euro on a game which I put on the shelf after a week. Are there cockpits for the spaceships? Can you move around on space stations? I didn't like the boring gameplay of Freelancer, only having to press a button to dock onto a station (do-it-yourself would be much funnier, not?) and every station being equal to each other.

Usually I try demos of such games, unfortunately Egosoft hasn't released any yet. Another possibility would be trying an illegal version to get a feel of the game, but this is, as said, illegal and hard as the game is protected by Starforce (I don't want any discussions about this here).

So I'm pretty perplexed what I should do and hope for your advice, as the most guys in the community share my likings.

Some links and pictures:

» Egosoft (Producer)

» Rolling Demo (watch only)

Cheers

hardrock

[NeMeSiS 11]

Heh, the screens remind me of Privateer 2...

[Mr. Cheese 0]

Personally, I had a quick bash of it recently and thought it seemed tedious. Looks nice enough but the combat engine isn't involved enough. You do get bounty hunter missions, but they pay quite shite - to make proper money, you have to trade all the time which is basically looking at and clicking on a spreadsheet then spending 20 mins autopiloting to your destination. The plot is frankly half assed and there's still the fact the X# franchise doesn't seem to be learning from its past mistakes. Might be worth a torrent or a bargain bin purchase, but I wouldn't spend 50 euros on it.

Play Elite [not OFP :P, the original great game that many half arsed ones have ripped this concept from] instead.

That said, it's my personal opinion. IGN gave it a pretty good write up:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/673/673886p1.html

[hardrock 0]

That said, it's my personal opinion. IGN gave it a pretty good write up:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/673/673886p1.html

Thank you, also for the link. Any more guys on that?

[Balschoiw 0]

I have played X and X2 which is X3 minus some minor updates.

I was very impressed with the gfx and ambience and the complexity of the universe and the trade system but I somehow got lost on the way. It´s either trade to make money or an almost impossible fight for money via looted goods from wrecked spaceships that will give you a hard time whenever you try to do it at the initial phase of the game which can take up to at least one week of regular gaming.

I was bollocked by the handling of the spaceship during fights and bored by the fact that I spent most of the time watching my autopilot fly up to the next jumpgate or searching for a specific factory in a system.

The list of possibillities is huge. And that is somewhat the problem. To keep my trade running and my transporters on track I had to literally klick millions of miles in the menus and submenus. That´s a bit odd and you get tired of it very early.

Don´t get me wrong. The overall ambience is outstanding. It looks fantastic to bypass a planet to fly along those huge cruisers, to communicate with the Boron Dolphins, to communicate with space stations on the way but you will get bored on some point. The trade system fills a book and is dynamic. As you will spend a lot of time circling from one system to another to make profit it gets kind of boring.

Space pirate attacks are nasty and the handling of the ship is to bulky for me to make it real fun to engage them. To build a ship that can deal with even minor enemies takes a lot of time and the result is never satisfying. So unless you hand me over some Argon prime destroyer I have a hard time touching the game again.

I could be all wrong though. I left the game after about 1 month gaming and I guess I wasn´t even really in it at the time.

Try to get your hands on X2. it should be budget by now. It will give you the input you´ll need as it is almost the same as X3.

Overall: Loved it-hated it, installed it uninstalled it, installed it and so on

[kavoven 4]

If you didn't play X2: Buy it, it's worth

If you played X2, don't do it...

I bought it just the day it was released, and since then I played only 24 ingame hours(since november), because there is nothing new for me...

So I'm waiting for the next patch, perhaps it will bring something new, don't know, but at the moment I don't want to do the same thing I did in X2.

[Myst9999 0]

I know of a online pay to play game (pay is optional, but game restricted if you dont) thats similar (fly around,trade fight). Only major difference is that its on only on 1 plane, no up or down.

Called Darkspace. Any of you heard of it?

[Heatseeker 0]

X2 came with my graphics card, 1 hour was enough , maybe i didnt try to like it hard enough but .

[Necromancer- 0]

The best realistic combat space-sim would be Independance War 1 and 2 for me...

I just love to do a strafing run while attacking bigger ships...

[Daddl 10]

I got it a few weeks ago and I like it so far - although I haven't had much time to play around with it yet (real life...). X2 was great but the interface was shit. X3 seems to fix that for me.

[pitufo 0]

Really? How is the interface different?

And as for the question, I had X2 and yes I got bored because I couldn't (or didn't have the patience to) learn the trading system.. (I suppose I shouldn't be trying to learn Falcon Allied Force then lol) And cheating in that game is a LOT of fun.... As others have said the ambience is amazing, and the fact that you can get out in your space-suit or pilot huge dreadnoughts is cool too. Yes there is a cockpit view. I think what killed X2 for me was the trading system was more complicated than I was expecting (so much micro-management), and I had a hard time figuring out what to do sometimes. (Probably because of the ass-awful cutscenes). But as the other guy said, try X2 first.

[hardrock 0]

I got the X2 demo now, it's much better than I had expected. But I'm not sure yet if I will get version 3.

[mr burns 109]

I´ve recently bought X3 but i dunno why, seems like shiny pics and stuff have had their magic on me.

Haven´t even played more than twice yet, somehow it turns me off that flying by mouse works better than using a force feedback joystick ._.

Second big downside for me is that jumpgates have become to loadong points, i remember back in freelancer you could actually fly through them, now the screen just goes black and beams you to the other side..kinda dull imho.

Besides that im totally agree with Mr. Cheese´s opinion.

[Garcia 0]

I've just bought it too. Seems like a fun game if you just understand it all and get a bit into the game. Haven't played it much, but so far it's quite fun.

Though I don't really like the combat too much. May be cause I suck in combat