A frustrating start turns away most casual gamers, but once you get used to the controls and manage to upgrade your ship for faster travel this game begins to shine.
Robust economics, a faction-based political system and a vast universe to explore has made this game a welcome addition to my collection.
Players that don't suffer from short-attention spans that enjoy simulations and economic driven games (ie. Simcity) with combat thrown into the mix may find this to be an entertaining title.
Some points before purchasing:
* The graphics feel dated (1999), but it handles itself well with no problems so far.
* Slow "grinding" period when first starting the game.
* No configurable controls. (save for about 5 keys)
Find a downloadable Demo at Egosoft's website.…Full Review »
This game, no....this entire series is a complete pile of badly programmed rubbish. I have had more trouble with what's been deemed a audio/video "codec" issue. Seriously? With all four of the titles I've installed? You would think that Egosoft (wow, not a humble bone is this crowd huh?) would have released a "patch" like every other reputable game manufacturer would have done to fix this issue. However this task of spending more time trying to fix a "scratchy-assed" noise through your speakers, then actually playing the game is left up to us consumers. I'll just chalk this X-turd-box series up to a loss. I personally couldn't "rate" this crap any lower than I did, so I would highly advise steering clear of this, and any other EGOSOFT software in the future.…Full Review »
After playing around a bit with X3, I decided to give the original game in the series a try. As a gamer who really misses Wing Commander: Privateer and the original Mechwarrior game for the PC, I've been very pleased with X-BTF. It seems to have the same balance of combat tactics and resource strategy that keep the game interesting over the long term: You can switch from Businessman to Demolition Man and vice-versa as the mood takes you.
As with most sandbox games, you don't start with much in the way of resources... but there's no point to playing an empire building game if the empire's already half-built by the time you start. For newcomers who find the complexity of the more recent games of the X series a bit overwhelming. I'd recommend X-BTF as good way to get a feel for the combat/trading systems and the plot/setting without getting hit by option overload.…Full Review »
