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Immersive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A space flight / fight / trading / empire building game. It is like later day version of 'Elite'.

You can command a fighter ship which embarks on missions and captures enemy ships where you progress through a storyline. You can also command a trader which trades the space lanes, eventually you can build factories and gigantic fleets of ships, dreadnoughts, carrier ships.

The whole world is dynamic and filled with traders, stations and computer players that react intelligently to anything that you do or happens.

It takes about 3 hours just to get used to the controls and how to fly around and do anything, the graphics are incredible and you will just fly around looknig at things everywhere. I almost gave up on this game early on as I couldn't seem to really do anything or work out the controls. It then takes another 4 hours to start to understand the dynamic economy as a trader. Once you understand the game it becomes completely immersive as there is just so much to it.

Replay value is huge. You can spend an unlimited amount of time playing this game and enjoying it. You need a good PC to run it though.

Here is a good description.
[...]

Ignore Pre-Patch reviews, this game is Awesome!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: February 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is incredible!! The graphics are the best I have ever seen in a PC game (even at lower settings on my 128mb video card) and the gameplay is addicting (as an understatement). Be prepared for a steep learning curve, but after you spend a day or two with this game, you wont be able to put it down. It is the ultimate "sand-box", open ended space sim and I only hope they continue to make more games like it. Ignore the old pre-patch reviews and do the following:

1. Buy this game
2. Download the 1.3 patch (yes, its big)
3. Download the new manual
4. Be prepared for a new addiction

You can follow the 'missions' or pursue your own whims and build a trading empire (complete with your own custom built stations, etc), become a pirate hunter, become a pirate :), or do pretty much whatever you want while amassing a huge fortune and an armada of ships and stations.

Its bad when corporate execs force developers to ship a game before its complete, but this is definately one game I'll forgive them for. The 1.3 patch feels very complete, and the game is amazing. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone that enjoys a game that requires more than just "point and shoot" skills. Great sim, great gameplay, great game. I hope they make an X4, just a long time from now so I can get the most out of X3 :)

Slow paced, but very addicting.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing this game for almost a month now, and i cant comment on the differences from X2 to X3 as i could never get X2 to run. I have read over other peoples comments on this game, and just about every negative point was either completly wrong, or has since been fixed. for example, just to nitpick, one person mentioned changing your players name in X3, sure you can, yeah everyone still calls you julian in the storyline and such. heck you can even change the name of any one of your ships, which is handy at later points in the game when you need to track 10, 20, 30, or more ships.

One true point to some peoples complaints, is the graphics in the game. they are absolutly beautiful, but at a high cost. in recent patches they have added more options for tweaking the graphics levels to help run on lower end machines. myself, i run it in med-high settings with a 6600gt gfx card. It looks great, sounds great, just great.

The storyline is a bit dry, but i dont feel that the storyline drives the game really. You have to kinda look at this game like a combo between a Sim City style game, a RPG, and a real time strategy. The space combat is not that much of a force in the game, you can of course choose to go this route to just fly around killing pirates or whatever all day. you may also choose to build a vast empire of trade ships, stations, complexes, and factories.

One of the interesting points to this game, is the scripts engine. there are scripts of all sorts, from cheats, to temp bug fixes, to tweaks of the current game. you can do quite a bit with the scripting engine if you have the ability to learn how to work it, or you can simply use the egosoft website to download other scripts for your use.

Myself, i rate this as one of my most favorite games for the last few years. For those people who enjoy a bit of a slower pace of things sometimes, this game could be for you. For those who like to jump in and go non stop action....go buy the latest first person shooter. I do enjoy both of those actually, and this game can really suck up my time.

Fantastic Space Simulation in the Mold of Starflight

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you are, like me, someone who has always hankered after a space role-playing game with the graphics of Freelancer and the depth of the Civilization series, you are looking at THE game. I purchased my copy in February. Yes, it was initially buggy -- but 98% of the bugs have been fixed. I routinely let the game trade for me all night and I have not had a crash recently. I don't understand why people are complaining about the interface. It is complicated, but if you are patient you will learn it and even appreciate how logical most of it is. Documentation has been substantially improved since release, and there are large FAQs available on any of the forums. The graphics are fantastic, the scope is amazing, and the gameplay is very very deep. A great buy for space traders and armchair warlords.

X3: The Reunion - challenging but rewarding

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It has been said by some of these reviews that the game is difficult to learn. I for one require that in a game. I'm sick of mindless games that you can annhilate in hours, or spend years doing the same thing for little reward. X3 is a challenging game to learn and incredibly complex. That is the beauty of the game - I love how complex the universe and how much you cna do. There are some drawbacks in that it is not multi-player, and it installs a program on your computer called starforce that is pretty demanding, but if you have a good computer you should have no problems with it. I love the game because there are endless possibilities. Even once you 'finish' the storyline, you can continue on, and that, in my opinion, is when the game begins.

Simply Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is just a Myriad of everything you could expect out of a great space game. This game is truely an original-nothing comes close at all. I know because I played just about everthing. As far as the poor people who wrote earlier-This is the explanation-I asked someone on the egosoft forum site before I received my copy:

My Question:

I don't have my copy yet, but I've been hearing quite a few players in the US either not being able to install this game: claiming that certain installation files are missing, corrupting their OS, or just simply not receiving all 6 of the CDs in the box. Has anyone else had this problem?

The response:

Best guess is that it's related to Enlight having trouble at the disc fab...

Enlight was having issues shortly before the release date, which pushed the date for US copies.

With the UK DVDs, you don't hear much about problems like this... it was mostly complaints (and trouble) about StarForce.

although I live in the US... i'm glad i bought the UK DVD version ((...)had it for a little while.)... luckily, i don't have problems with SF.

I bought my copy from amazon and it works like a charm.

Huge game, immersive, big learning curve

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A marvelous, ambitious game. The last patch, 1.4, has cleared up almost all off the game mechanics errors--I have had no crashes to the desktop or freezes since that patch. The game finally appears stable.

If you like empire building games, with a dose of heart pounding space combat action (plus some gorgeous visuals), then this may be what you are looking for. You'll need a decent graphics card, relatively recent, with a PC to match. This game is used by a number of online Gaming PC review sites because of the load it puts both on the CPU and on the graphics card.

Finally, if you are a newbie to the "X" games, as I was, make sure you spend some time browsing the forums whenever you start feeling overwhelmed or confused. They are very good about marking spoiler information so you need not worry about ruining your own discovery of the game.

Very Fun and Addicting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: May 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a huge fan of Freelancer and enjoy space sim style games. This game has excellent graphics and an improved configurable interface that allowed for a quick learning curve. This game is a little slow at times, but this slow pace adds to the realism of being in space. The open ended game play is a huge plus. I am not a fan of time based linear games that take a week to complete. I had no issues with the game play, nor had trouble with installing the program. I'm not sure what legacy systems these other reviewers are using, but my system had no problems. Overall a very fun game that I would definitely recommend to any space sim fan.

It is a complete game now.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

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.

Open Ended and Complex

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: September 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Not nearly as difficult to play as many of the reviews I have read here and elsewhere. Controls are nested or hidden from view but can be easily found by either ENTER or ESC key.

Beginning with the Normal game worked fine for me but has been a little slow earning the credits you need to upgrade your ship. Combat is great fun but also is frustrating as your ship has light shields ( if your hull gets moderately damaged I would reload the game as it is $$$ to repair). Trading and taking people to other stations is my primary income right now.
If you have the attention span of a Space Fly and need constants action then this game is not for you. there is a great deal of exploring other systems and visiting various bases looking for work.
The graphics look spectacular on my system: AMD x2 4400, 1 gb Ram, 2- 7800gtx graphics cards in SLI. I got the latest game patch and have not had any bugs or issues so far (3 weeks now).

I think they did a great job with this game. I was a big Privateer fan and have played other games from that genre. X3: Reunion finally nailed it on the head.

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