X3 Reunion: Review

from Sins Forums
Ok just got this game last week and i want to write a review, since we are all into space games (or most of us should be) i thought this game would be nice to show around.

X3 reunion is the 3rd installment of the X series based on the Space Shooter concept. In this installment there are so many things you can do it makes you feel overwhelmed. First off there is a Vast and complex AI controlled economy that has prices of items that fluctuate with supply and demand. As a trader you can use the econmy to your advantage to become the next millionare. Also you can buy your own stations to produce items, create your own AI controlled trade fleet that finds the best deals and sells for the best price.
The fighting concept is the usual 1st or 3rd person space shooter, there are many ship options to choose from starting with the basic fighter and ending up with a titan or collosus size ship. You are also able to have multiple wingmen (AI controlled)that follow variouis commands. with 180 sectors to explore, there are over 100 (180 i think) to explore with 12 different races, you could spend days or weeks just exploring.
And on a side note X3 has an amazing graphics engine, if you have a graphics card that can handle it GET IT, i have never seen such awesome visuals in a space game in my life.

No game is perfect however and x3 is DEfinatly not perfect. There are the sneaky crash bugs that can happen once in a while and since you can only save while docked at a station crashing can be a hassle. Also since this game gives such a wide wide wide variety of things that you can do, it can be extremely overwhelming and you could be lost on what to do. The controls arent to bad but it takes a while to understand them since there are so many options availible. The demo of the game has a tutorial for some things but the actual game itself doesnt throwing the player in a world of confusion. All i can say is thank god for walkthroughs and noobie tips. Also dont expect to be palying the game for 2 days and conquer the universe with ease, i have been playing for a week and i dont have a space sation yet, but this is a good thing because it gives a long lasting appeal.

So in conclusion i beleive this game has amazing aspects to it. and even though some of the controls are confusing as well as the concepts, its easy to get used to after a few days of play. this definatly is a game of thinking and stratagy more than a shooter uper but for those homicidal maniacs there are some awesome fighting that can go on in this game. For $19 this game is fun and challenging at the same time and im definatly gonna be stuck with this one for a long time to come.
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15,129 views 31 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
ohh and i forgot you can check out their website at http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/info_en.php
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah its cool, but its hard to get yourself to start the game. Dunno why exactly, but when it is started hehe i cant let it go

Maybe the hard part of beginning a new game, is that its hard work
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
i know its a pain, but now that i have 3 sector traders, things are looking up
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
WWW Link
A random picture (Eye candy)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
are you playing with the 2.0 update?

Well i had played for loong time had 2 BS and alot of universial traders, and lots of factorys, specialy in argon prime, where i had about 30 or 40 factorys hehe.

I stopped playing since they couldnt help my with a bug, that when ever i entered some sectors the game would crash

But i might start again.

BTW you can get a sign to forums, that can tell what you have within your game

edit:
the thing i really like about it, is the music. It gets you in a special mood
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
i have the 2.o update, dang you have that much lol, sure ill sign up with the forums.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
X3 is pretty funky, you can read my take on it here:

http://tflclan.myfreeforum.org/about1342.html
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
My entire experience with the game was soured by bugs, path finding problems, and a rather sub-par interface in managing hundreds of ships. Of course, most of my grief seemed stemmed from the simple fact that traders have about as much piloting skill as a retarded monkey, and have a tendency of piloting straight into the side of an asteroid or station. I have lost MORE traders to collisions to non-hostile stationary objects then actual combat, which roughly comes to like one-hundred ships in fatal collisions to one ship killed-in-action -- the latter also accounting for combat ships colliding with things in combat.

Maybe, this entire problem is due to my insufficient processor power, but, the build-up of aggravation having to save-and-load every time it happens was sufficient enough to make me uninstall the game.

The game is very-nice to look at, hopefully it will get patched or a modification comes out to remove collision damage on traders. On the other hand, I heard the path finding and collision problems where far worse in earlier versions, and can only imagine how long it will take to be actually solved -- or me buying a more powerful PC.

Note: I was playing on the latest version being 2.0.2.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
weird i have an X3 fleet of 25 universal traders and never lost any of them in a collision.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I had a carrier (T2?) that i send out to attack an enemy base. So i send All my fighters (about 30 as i remember) to attack it. But only a few survived. They all was kamakazing into the base

So after the sector crash and the stupid AI, i stopped playing.
That was in path 1.4. So has anything changed from there?
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
From the change logs, it supposedly was improved, but from other player reports and my own experience it still tends to happen. I have even watched a few larger ships go into an attack run on a station, which then proceeded to head-on ram the station repeatedly till death.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
haha just built my first factory complex, and the money is flowing like crazy
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
just remember you cant have more then 2 billions on your accout or any factory . unless its been changed from 1.4
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I just reinstalled X3 this weekend and applied the 2.0 patch (my god, I've never seen a patch process so complex).  I remember now why I never played the game much.  There is no indication of what you're supposed to do or how you're supposed to do it.  The UI is terrible and doesn't give you much help, and you waste so much time traveling in the beginning to figure out the good trade routes.  Once you get through all of that and have some automated ships going... yeah, then the game gets a bit more manageable and the combat is fun, but getting there is a royal pain.  It's like they just toss you into the game world and then walk away saying "Good luck figuring it all out for yourself!"

Add to the fact that the options menu is extremely limited, and the manual doesn't actually match the game itself (incorrect keyboard shortcuts, showing menus that don't exist etc) and you have a game that doesn't have a learning curve so much as a sheer cliff you have to scale without any ropes, and with cooking grease all over your hands and feet.  If you manage to make it to the top, the game seems like it would be a lot of fun, but it's just near impossible to make it that far.

I was disappointed, since I love space sim games.  Combat at the very least is good... and the visuals are spectacular even a year after release.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
The crux of X3 gameplay is that you either see it as a challenge or pain in the backside. In my case and a warning to prospective X3 players is that it takes literally weeks of casual gameplay before you will own one of those big capital ships. I can certainly see how the cool graphics have lured or misrepresented some of the gameplay to the disappointment of many players.

Its not that its impossible to make progress, it just takes time. You need to learn how to progress through experience then things pickup pretty quickly tbh. Thats why a lot of player restart the game cos they feel they have made a pigs ear out of their first attempt but have learned how to do it right after a while.

I got pissed off with it too, but I decided to fight through the pain barrier and I'm glad I did its turned out to be very rewarding.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
X3 Reunion is a nice game, it's just VERY time consuming... the story is funy... the interface is really annoying and all... intense battle lag, but I like to play it sometime

I did a mini review, and took some screenshot of the game for my french website, take a look if you want to my x3 reunion gallery

It really could be improved to become more user friendly
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I had a carrier (T2?) that i send out to attack an enemy base. So i send All my fighters (about 30 as i remember) to attack it. But only a few survived. They all was kamakazing into the base



I attacked a pirate base the other day with an M2 Carrier, M7 & 14 M3+ fighters.... no collisions, no losses just a smoking hulk of a pirate base. The fighters were swarming like flies around the base so plenty of oppourtunity for a collision, it wasn't as if they were a safe distance away from the base or each other.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
hmm, thats nice to hear i installed the game just a few days ago, but havent started yet. But i will, well if sins is released soon, ill skip it a bit more lol
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Oh well, then i think ill start playing X3 Reunion tomorrow, so i can have my empire lust satisfied Since beta is about a month away
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
i don't like X3s controls...
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
If you want more out of x3 get the pluginmanager for the game.
Its for installing a lot of mods and such.
Makes the game a lot better.
Here is a link for the plug in manager:http://www.xpluginmanager.co.uk/
It finds mods, installs them uninstalls them, updates them. what more could you want?

Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
X3 is hard to get used to, but with the AI scripts you can download and other mods it's worth it if you keep with it. It probably has the steepest learning curve ever. As far as patching goes... If you do buy this game, get it via Steam--much better experience. I skipped this game when it came out because it has Starforce (yuck), but once it was on Steam I tried it. Really I was looking for a "Eve Offline" (or Elite) type of game and X3 fits the bill.

Of course I would have preferred for it to be in Stardock Central.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
This game isn't too bad, but I've played a good 10-20 hours and still only have 2 ships and around 100k credits... its hard to make any money!
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

This game isn't too bad, but I've played a good 10-20 hours and still only have 2 ships and around 100k credits... its hard to make any money!


And you call me a post digger? haha

The best way, i found to earn cash, is to sell most of your stuff on your ship, like shields and weapons, it will give you some more cash to start out.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
Having owned X and X2, but not played either (until X3), I can say it is very different from earlier space-sims like FreeSpace: The Great Conflict. However, it is a simply gorgeous game with a very well written and put together storyline.

The crash bugs mentioned above have been fixed on the latest patch release (2.1) as well as the Steam purchase (latest patch applied).