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Three to Five Stars

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Download the trial version. Every basic aspect of the game is included. You can be docked with access to equipment, commodity, vehicle, bar, and spaceport facilities. Those are the only options available in the universe. Player options are to buy or sell things, get money-making jobs, or take off and land. You can fly your ship around to explore or fight. That is pretty much it.

The campaign is a linear 13 missions which you are led through so there is nothing to figure out. You can play the game without reading one news item, initiating a single optional conversation, or worrying about who to improve your reputation with. Involving youself in those game-playing activities can improve your enjoyment but have nothing to do with "winning".

The sequence is take a mission, make some money, take a mission, make some money, etc., etc., etc. Make money by fighting, mining, trading, or pirating. Basically, you just fight. The other options are less interesting diversions. Extremely simple money management skills are all that is needed, if at all. You only need three ships to get through the game. You do get a free one to start, but should be using a Heavy Fighter by Level 2 which comes almost immediately. The second and third major ships are essentially given to you.

It is a first person, flying/fighting, action game. There are no optional paths, no long term strategies, no mysteries to solve, no puzzles, no thinking. Wrapped around it is an interesting story, good graphics, and pleasant music. The fighting starts off easy and gets very difficult at the end of the campaign.

It is a short game (20 to 30 hours depending upon your fighting skill). Unless one enjoys fighting, exploring, mining, or trading for no real purpose, the game has little replayability potential. One is always led through the same 13 mission Path. After the final few battles, replaying the general or optional battles is less interesting.

I played it once. Then I played it again just to see what else the game might offer. It is pretty much all the same in different colors. It was a great deal of fun the first time through. After that, the fighting becomes repetitious and boring. Fighting is about the only thing the player does. It may be a fun game to play online but unless the ability is added to get fairly equal ships from different civilizations everybody will be using the same ships.

$$ is a fair price to play for the game craftmanship. The number of enjoyment hours per dollar spent is low for most people. Some will engage in fight after fight and will be happy for the money that they spent. It is a fighting game that requires little or no thinking.

Privateer and Traveller Revisited

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an engrossing and addicting game. Anyone that enjoyed the board game Traveller or the computer games MegaTraveller and Privateer will love it. The graphics of space are beautiful and the amount of space to explore is incredible. The mouse icon interface is easy to use to control the ship and your freelancer. The single player is a good starting point since it allows you the opportunity to see the lawless bases which are more difficult to visit in multiplayer without bribes on the Freeport stations.

I am still trying to find out why once I hit level 29 in single player it keeps saying Mission to advance next level but yet no indication of what that mission is or where to go to complete it. Usually you are contacted and given way points for missions in single player as required. The game has numerous wrecked ships, bases, and jump holes to locate in clouds and asteroid fields in the numerous systems. The variety of ships, weapons, and other equipment to be found on bases and shipwrecks are great and unique in their abilities. You can be a merchant and run cargo between bases and planets, be a mercenary for law or the lawless, or pirate the lanes of space.

All in all one of the best games I have seen. It was the only thing that could pull me away from Battlefield 1942 and MOH. My only complaints are you can only own one ship, and you can't store cargo and weapons off your ship at a base or planet. The downside to not being able to use base storage for great weapons you tractor in or trade for is that if they are not equipped and your ship is destroyed you lose them permanently. Hopefully these things will be addressed in a patch, mod, or expansion. Along with various races that are similar to those on Earth, there is an alien "Nomad" race that is quite deadly. So be wary at the Unknown jump hole. Check out the demo at Microsoft. I am sure you will want to buy the full version. As I said my complaints are minor compared to the enjoyment I have gotten playing this game by myself and with my friends online.

There are many mods available for this game now that you can fly ships from Star Wars, Star Trek, or a number of other movies or books. The price on it is about half what it was not so long ago. I highly recommend it since it has a great deal of playability. Even though I buy new games I still go back to this one from time to time.

Never Ending Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Once you finish the campain, this game lets you do just about any thing you want to. Graphics are unequalled and control is great and many weapon upgrading opertunities. Ship upgrading is limited... I wish there were more and larger ships to upgrade to.

Simply a great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There hasn't been a game of this much fun since Freespace 2. This is by far my second favorite video game of all time. The story gets annoying in the later missions, but the game really doesn't start until the single player campaign is over. The sheer size of the Freelancer universe is what makes the game interesting. The replay value is unequal, even compared with Privateer.

Great add on mods available and multiplayer!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Freelancer is a fantastic game which includes all aspects of space gaming. Fighting, trade, exploration, mining and politics. There are several add on modifications for this game available that can be downloaded for free and used with the help of Freelancer Mod Manager program which is also downloadable for free. There are several mods that allow open single player with different options so you don't have to follow the story line. Their are mods that also include new ships, new weapons and power ups as well as new systems and trade goods. The online Freelancer gaming community is fantastic and there are numerous FREE servers to play on with different custom mod versions of the game that add a lot to the variety and excitement of game play. I play on the Slammers server which currently runs the Discovery 4.81 mod in conjunction with the Nemesis Booster Pack. Most servers also run a forum site for their players. Check out the Slammers Discovery server for more Freelancer and game information!

The best space game I've ever played!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing Freelancer for a looong time now,and it still hold appeal to me.This is the easiest space game to control I have ever played.Note I said control,not anythin else.As you advance it gets tougher to survive the fights.And the multiplayer is great too.This game has a very nice community that is happy to help new players.I'd recomend checking out [...] for the latest mods and server news.This was the best buy of games that I have ever made.I hope to see you on the servers.

Very Good Game Play

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Freelancer is as good as Privateer, with excellent game play and a strong story line. Although not without its short comings Freelancer is a very fun game at the current price. I agree with the comments regarding repetitive dialogue, and stale readings. At first I was not excited about using a mouse to control flight, yet I now find it enjoyable and the controls are great. Having played the multi-player I give it very high marks and enthusiastically recommend it. Going from 19 to 20 level has a bug that should be addressed, at least in my game. Of course the "bug" could be built in on the idea that there would be an expansion, which would be nice. In the end I still love this game and feel that its short coming are the result of losing key personnel during development. It just seems that the project reached a point where the publishers said "Good enough" and shipped it out.

Good value for the price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok, the price of this game has dropped ..., so on a whim, I went and bought it. It's no "Star Wars:Knights of the Old Republic", but it's certainly a playable game (albeit a bit repetitive.)

They try to make it open-ended which in theory sounds great, but in practice tends to make every mission seem like more of the same.

The controls aren't the most intuitive, but it's playable even if you can't use a joystick. It may take you a mission or two to get used to it, but you eventually will.

The plotline is decent, and overall I'd recommend this game, especially for the price.

I would've liked to have had more variety in the missions, but the graphics are certainly top-notch and the game seems to be stable - unlike several other games I have bought recently.

I don't think the commodity trading is implemented very well either. I would've preferred a lot more variation in price. For example, a better commodity trading model is the one used in Dope Wars, where you buy a commodity, and every time you go to a new place, the price changes by some random factor. Instead, in Freelancer, prices are at constant fixed value, and too many items that are for sale, are at their most expensive.

It feels like a game where they had grand visions of what they wanted to do with it, but were forced to hurry and get it out the door. A little more polish (like having a little more personality to the factions or at least better variation in their conversation), and it could've been great. Instead, it's merely ok.

This is a Must Own

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have played many computer games and I can say that this game is among the alltime top three: including Half-Life and GTA Vice City. This game rocks. It is almost completely open ended and it can get very intence.
First of all the graphics are fantastic and yet somehow they are not too demanding.
The storyline is great as well as the dialog. It is set a few centuries in the future and the super powers of today (America, Britain, Germany, Japan) have all inhabited their own piece of the universe - each one with mutiple star systems and planets for you to explore. You play as the character Trent, you are a freelancer, looking for jobs and earning money as you please - though at certain points you have to follow the storyline in order to open up new opportunities.
Different jobs have different levels of dificulty - The harder the job is the more money you earn, and vice versa. You will need keep looking for jobs because you will need the money. You can buy all sorts of equipment, buy and sell comodities, and purchase bigger and better ships - You WILL need to buy new ships.
The fighting gets incredibly intence at times. Sometimes it may seem like there is no way of making it out alive, and sometimes you don't, but with a little practice and the right equipment you can demolish your enemies. The explosions are extremely well done, with bits and pieces of ships being torn off as your enemy screams for his life, muhahaha.
The controls are pretty simple. Either click and drag with your mouse (when you're not in combat) or for better aiming you can use the free movement mode by pressing the space button. Select any number of weapons and fire them all at once by clicking the right mouse button.
So in conclusion: great story and cool futuristic concepts, intence space simulation action (you may find yourself sweating in your seat), The whole game is very open ended - choose your enemies wisely.
A superb game. Couldn't have designed it better myself...

Not bad but not stellar

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm a fan of the work of the Robert brothers all the way back to wing commander days. I like how Freelancer takes off were Starlancer ends (The Alliance is fighting a losing war against the Coalition *no more spoilers*). I'm not crazy about using the mouse for flight and the interface takes a little getting use to. This game would be real nice if the joystick and/or keyboard were open options for flight control.

Pros, awesome flight graphics but I think a little extra work could have been done on the character models though even though they do look decent with good shadowing (characters in Starlancer looked better even w/o shadowing).

I havn't finished the game yet but the story is good so far. I would recommend this to anyone into space-sims but not hardcore players.

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