X3: Terran Conflict PC
  • Publisher: Atari
  • Release Date: Mar 31, 2009
User Score
7.9 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 166 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 131 out of 166
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 166
  3. Negative: 23 out of 166

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  1. colintheys
    Dec 27, 2010
    3
    Alright. I love sim games. I love complicated, thoughtfully-paced strategy games. But this is ridiculous. I've played for hours and have achieved precisely nothing. You start the game with an AGONIZINGLY slow ship. I tried three different start scenarios, hoping it was just the one situation. It wasn't. There's a feature that lets you accelerate the game to 600%, which approximates the speed that I would like it to run at normally, but even so, you can literally select the closest object, turn on autopilot and time acceleration, go make and eat lunch, and return to find that you're still not there. Playing this game would be a full time job. I don't know who thought "waiting to get places" would be fun, but it isn't. And making "patrol system" a repeated objective when that basically means sit still and wait until something happens isn't fun either. Least fun I've had playing a game in recent memory. If I want the space sim feeling, I'll just go replay EV: Nova.… Expand
  2. PCforever
    Mar 17, 2011
    1
    As somebody who thoroughly loved X3: Reunion, simply because to me a game is pointless without a main story, I was thoroughly disappointed in Terran Conflict.

    It's basically a boring, money making space simulator with tiny little pathetic single player "storylines" thrown in that you can complete in under an hour. A disgusting and pathetic letdown after the awesome epic storyline of     X3:Reunion where you play as Julian Brennan in a movie like storyline.

    I am so disappointed with this plotless garbage and it will be the last thing I ever again buy from Egosoft.    … Expand
  3. TruckarJ
    Mar 7, 2009
    3
    While I enjoy slow and thoughtful gameplay X3 only provides an agonizing single player grinding experience with no real challenge to beat at the end of that grind. Add to this a combat system that doesn't really require a player, a user interface that will leave you wondering where the information you want is located, and frame rate drops that will leave even the best systems presenting you with one to two frames a second and you have a fairly joyless space simulator. I would recommend thinking carefully before purchasing this game.… Expand
  4. DavidN.
    Sep 13, 2009
    0
    I got this game because I have heard nothing but kick-ass enjoyment. I was thrilled when the game finished downloading. I started the game, about 10 minutes later I died and I had to redo EVERYTHING I did. Thought this was rather interesting and tried it again. 2 hours later, I die again. Fine, I see I have to wait 20 minutes to dock to save my game, or else I have to restart all over. Fine, I will try a trader. Thanks for no credits to spend to buy stuff with.. making it a grueling task. (This is suppose to be a FUN game, not work.) Thanks for making travel in this game unbelievably boring. Thanks for wasting my 50 dollars. /uninstalls X3: Terran Conflict… Expand
  5. Devslilhelper
    Nov 6, 2010
    3
    OK listen, I came in new to the "X universe" and i KNEW there would be a learning curve after reading reviews. The learning curve however really isnt that steep at all if you have a brain... flight controls come pretty smoothly after some adjustment and its not hard to dock/buy/sell/switch ships/ etc. especially with freaking auto pilot to do everything. Now im only like four hours into game play here and I know on a game like this where it is so massive thats just scratching the surface but honestly the thing I notice the most and like the least about the game that no one else seems to mention is how SLOW it is! I mean my god you get a mission to go somewhere right? so you target the star gate, move to full speed in your starter ship and it takes like 5 minutes to get there! Nothing eventful happens in flying time so far you just sit there and fly in straight line to your target, go through, and fly to your next far off target thats going to take you a solid 5 minutes to get to at least. I started watching TV during these flying times there so long and so far honestly the TV holds my attention more where I end up just saving and exiting the game to watch TV! Another negative aspect to this game is you can ONLY save when docked. Well, if you have to leave the computer in a hurry you CANNOT save because it takes, again, 5 mins or so to get to the star port and dock and save. So all in all this game was a major disappointment for me, I was really looking forward to a challenging space sim but this is more a retard-paced flight simulator...… Expand
  6. finky45
    Mar 19, 2011
    4
    I don't normally take the time to write reviews but I feel it's necessary to give a fair warning for those who might think about buying this game. First of all yes the game does have a steep learning curve because of the lack of a proper tutorial. There is a mission to get you started but its hardly adequate.
    My issues with this game in a nutshell are: lack of saving feature in space (unle    ss you buy/rebuy this thing called insurance) and tons of bugs bugs bugs bugs. This will make you very angry time and time again after spending 15 minutes of your real life trying to do something in the game only to die or fail because of a game bug, such as your own ships being attacked for no reason by the police, or being run over by your own ship when you're out in a space suit, or being given impossible missions that fail before you even reach the mission area or whatever. I found a new bug every day and you will find that you need to get accustomed to the game bugs and treat them like they are part of the game. The game is also very slow. This isn't a game you sit down and play for 1 hour. You need to dedicate at least 2 or more per session if you want to enjoy the game, at least what is enjoyable. The user interface although not terrible, it shows a lack of planning and cohesiveness. Options are not where you would expect them to be and sometimes hard to find.
    Another big problem is the inability to adjust mouse sensitivity. In the game it's a lot lower than what you would use in Windows. Since you will be using the mouse most of the time this will bother you. You can use a joystick but I found that using the mouse is by far a better way to play and be more accurate with guns.

    It's really sad that after making the same game for the 3rd time Egosoft still hasn't fixed some bugs which should never be in a video game, and hasn't added features that should have been there, like an option to allow you to save in space which is a major problem. It's also sad that this game looks so good yet plays so bad. It feels like it's more of a tech demo than anything else. Egosoft, properly named, is egotistical. They think they know what a good game is. They also would probably use an excuse like they lack funding and that is why they did not include these fixes. However they spent plenty of money on DRM to ensure you do not pirate their crappy game and get suckered into buying it like me. Once bought you can't return and they made their money so the game served its purpose and made them their bucks.

    My advice is if you really want to try this game, you should buy it used. That way you can satisfy your curiosity, see how crappy it is after you punch your keyboard and break your computer because of the endless frustration this game gives you and then not feel bad about supporting the lazy workers at Egosoft.

    Don't listen to the fanboys that are on here. I have played the other installments of this game and it is the same game. Why buy it? Do you want to support a company that just re-releases the same product with minor improvements? They're milking their community. They let the modders do the hard work of fixing the game for them for free. It's quite lame. Egosoft is LAME and I think I gave them enough money by mistake.    … Expand
  7. Lorderan
    May 13, 2011
    4
    Yep I tried this game, again and again and again. There are some really awesome aspects. Massive universe, incredibly diverse numbers of ships and ways of playing the game. But I'm done, there are just too many painful and annoying things with the game. NUMBER 1 is the inability to save in space. You have to fly to a base and save. No big deal, but it is when you've just spent 15 minutes flying to the mission location and you die you want to scream. I mean really what is the logic in forcing people to dock to save. It doesn't contribute to the game, other than being a royal pain in the arse, THERE IS NO POINT. Secondly, but maybe as big a problem as the first is the flight time. The sectors are bloody huge, say 400 km, but your ship flies at 100 m/s (fastest ship I had was 260m/s), so to fly from one side of the sector to the other it will take you 400,000 m / 100 m/s = 4,000 seconds or wait for it 66 minutes, you can increase time by 10 but that still means it will take you 6 minutes to fly through 1 section. When a mission makes you fly through 5 sectors to get to the mission site the time painful!! I mean serious WHY do that to your players, there is no reason you would do that. I just give up. Fro the new X Rebirth release, have an option for the fan boys if they want these stupid features in the game, but give the rest of us a bloody break. DO NOT waste your money on this game.… Expand
  8. BigA
    Mar 17, 2009
    1
    The gameplay is terrible. It keeps losing your ships. It loses missions. Sometimes it refuses to accept commands and goes into a loop. Some of the scenarios start you off without weapons and make you prey to pirates, even though the trainer waits for you to shoot! Etc. Enough said.
  9. SJT-Ruler*
    Feb 11, 2009
    0
    This is really a pathetic game. At first, I thought it would be great, perhaps a nice space simulator. Guess what, it's really a big fail. The gameplay is boring, it can literally take minutes sometimes to fly to something with nothing to do in between, boring slow-flying in space... everyone's dream, right? First of all, the tutorial is superbly flawed and makes not much sense, as are the controls. Second of all, a part in the tutorial keeps crashing, meaning I cannot get further into the game. Enough said, if this is to be called a game, they should make it work properly FIRST.… Expand
  10. JasonM
    May 15, 2009
    2
    Way, way, way too slow... It was like Eve Online, except even slower paced... Its interface and controls were clumsy and not very intuitive... A shame really, as I was interested in what this game had to offer; too bad they decided to deliver the gameplay via root canal... There is no reason that time-lapse could not be increased and remain in effect the whole time... Why did they have to make docking suck a long and drawn out affair... Throw some smoke and mirrors in there, lie to me, or at least let me opt out of this laborious task... Can I have my money back?… Expand
  11. JimE
    Jul 26, 2009
    3
    I've played both EVE Online, X2 and X3. I really only played X2/X3 because someone said it was just like EVE. They lied and I fell for it twice. Take all the multi-player aspects of EVE away, slap on some terrible controls, touch up graphics and set the player loose in a never ending single player "sand box" grind fest. Spend a few hours learning the game and the rest of the time trying to dock in a space station and you'll either try the grinding missions next (cause you find that kind of thing amusing) or attempt to self destruct your PC. Seriously, save your money or spend that $40 on 3 month's of EVE if you are really that hard up to play a space sim. I like space sim games, but this one is always seems 30 degrees off center and it WILL drive you nuts when you play it. This game actually changed my spending habits on games. I now REQUIRE a game to have a demo before I would even think about buying it. (If it has a demo now, good for them, but it didn't when I bought it).… Expand
  12. Coeco
    Sep 1, 2012
    2
    A space grindfest with awkward controls, a steep learning curve and broken achievements which only limits itself to single-player. Stay away from this one.
  13. meru
    Mar 10, 2013
    3
    I love complex simulations. I love space games. I went through the real bad tutorials of EVE Online and learned the game nevertheless. For X3: Terran Conflict, I tried all the starter tutorials and achieved exactly nothing. All of the tutorials failed at some point. Example: The tutorial throws some garbage at me, which I am supposed to shoot. The bad news: The tutorial throws the garbage at me at an angle where my ship automatically catches the garbage and puts it into the cargo hold. And the tutorial stops just there, as the developers forgot to consider this case. The only choice is to delete the character and start again. Oh, did I mention that after some digging through online resources, I found that the ship actually does not HAVE a gun to shoot the garbage with? The developers of this game seriously should consider getting a usability expert for their team. This is the third installment of the X games, and for a new player it still feels like an alpha version. Three Metacritic points for the players who managed to figure out how to play it and how to have fun, I admire your stamina. A hint for new players: Watch these videos, they will show you what the tutorials fail to teach, plus a lot more: http://www.youtube.com/user/CdrDave?feature=watch… Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
73 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. GameStar
    62
    X3: Terran Conflict is the last episode of the space saga from Egosoft. There is a huge war going on, a war against the Xenon and against the game's controls. Terran Conflict looks great, there's more action than before and it's possible to control lots of ships - theoretically. But in reality controlling more than one ship is very complicated, if not impossible. But if you liked the other X-series games, then you might like this one, too.
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  2. GamePro
    75
    The saving grace in this title is the level design. A living breathing world has never looked so good.
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  3. IGN
    80
    Lovingly concocted, generally well executed, and hampered only by a few niggles, this is a game that not only achieves its goal -- plunking us into another time and place to live the life of an entrepreneurial spaceman -- but shows us that some titles can truly take us places.
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