(Review for Albion Prelude Addon since it's awesome. Terran Conflict has more story but is less optimized. Also my hours sank into this game at release, before steam)

Forget about half ♥♥♥ casual games like Elite: Dangerous. This is the best space game so far. It has everything you'd want: A LOT of different ships to fly, exploration, itemization, complex economy, several factions to interact with different personalities and likes/dislikes, build / take space stations, stuff to do / explore even late in the game and a huge amount of freedom in what to do. Capture ships, steal loads, trade illegal stuff (weapons, drugs) or just let your AI Pilotfleet trade while you join an army, it's really up to you.

Downside: You should look up some stuff! Many different items and customisations for your ship or goods mean to read about them. Some information is not easy to find at first, but it's worth it. It's a deep and complex space-/fight-/trade simulation which is it's strongest point.

What I'd want from x4: Stay the same. Be complex, be deep! We have enough of the shallow crossover plattform games with the fly-in-emptyness-and-don't-do-much-at-all ♥♥♥♥. We have enough of the stripped down games that are easy to get into but are boring after the first 5 hours.

<3 X3

More X-Goodness.

Looks and plays great.

New players will find X3TC very easy to get into because of the tutorial missions.
However, experienced X-gamers will feel ahead of the class.

Mission icons are added for easily finding missions.
Good if you want it... but bad if you don't as it makes you feel like it's holding your hand.

Missions are now given by NPCs that can be found on stations or flying their ships.
Good because it makes those ships that flew around before have more importance.
But bad because they removed the BBS to do it.
Which means no browsing the news articles while docked, no missions from a bulletin board, no blackjack, no lottery...

So, while the graphics continue getting improved with each incarnation of X, it seems like there's a limit to the actual features they implement. And when they add something, they remove something else.

However, it's still highly recommended because those things you miss from the older games can be put back in by editing the game yourself or finding a script or mod already created at the official forums.

So... I give X3TC 4 out of 5 stars 'as is'.
But if they could keep all the features from the past games it would be a 10 out of 5.
The mod community may compensate, however.

X3: Terran Conflict is one of those games from a series that if "Space exploration is your thing" you may like, it is however an underwelming experience with minimal direction, time padding events (to make you think there is more content) and overall subpar space sim. I cannot recommend this game unless you are one of those people who wants to play every space sim out there....because frankly there are games that do it better, and won't devour all your time.

This is the final Space sim. The absolute, glorious space sim that only a PC can have. You can fly anything. You can buy anything. You won´t be able to even dock a ship at the beggining, you won´t be able to win a single fight at the start, your ship will be a piece of crap and you won´t be able to even dock at the majority of the stations. Random squads of pirate fighthers ten times more well-armed than you will be at the majority of sectors corners. Alien enemies with battleships the size of your city clogging entire sectors will mop the floor with your face for their amusement. Yet, you can trade, steal, find or loot weapons, ships, containers with goods or missiles that worth ten times the price of your little fighther in the shipyards. Find your way around. Get rich. get frindly with one of the races, buy super corvettes that can kick the ♥♥♥ of all the enemies that made fun of you, parade in carriers that effortlessly kill hordes of the same things that would vaporize you in the begginning, build your own stations, command remote armies of both honestly bought or captured vessels and conquer entire sectors by force to build factory complexes that put anything ever builded anywhere to shame.

There is simply no other single player space simulation out there that even comes close to the depth and complexity of X3 Terran Conflict. A series high point as many improvements to the older X games can be found here in X3TC. Improved interface and UI gives way to full keyboard and mouse control with a new and improved flight model. A much more polished sandbox experience provides a larger and more detailed universe complete with a fully dynamic supply and demand based economy that you can exploit, support, and or decimate on a small scale or faction wide.

Improved combat from small fighters and scouts to massive capital ships and carriers. Different variations in ship types with upgradable engines and thrusters. Travel by stargate or use Jump Drives to instantly travel large distances through space. Varied assortment of ship systems and upgrades for specific roles that can all be created by NPC and or players complete with logistics and supply lines. Jump Drives require fuel and larger fleets will require support ships and stations to rearm and refuel.

Play to whatever style you favor the most at any time. From small scale skirmishes to large scale epic fleet battles. Traders, explorers, pirates, bounty hunters, mercenaries, haulers, miners, police, military, industrial, and civilian. Micro manage everything or automate it with RPG based NPC fleet and corporation controls. Industrial mining operations and station construction. Name your player, corporation, ships, and all of your assets. Fully simulated sandbox complete with a full array of terran and alien factions. Your actions will effect your reputation around the universe with each one. Play the story at your own pace with full 3D open world space flight where nothing is scripted and anything can happen, even full scale invasions.

The universe is alive with friendly, neutral, and hostile NPC's. Some will even offer you random jobs and trade. Fly any ship in the game in first or third person. Hire wingmen to fly your ships and protect your assets. Train soldiers for 3rd person boarding operations and defense. Deploy satelites to create a network for tactical and economic information in realtime. Explore the universe to find hidden stations and derelict ships. Perform spacewalks to claim and or repair ships. Keep track of your thoughts with the captains log as your experience unfolds. The only limitation is your imagination.

"Mount & Blade" in space.

A+

X3 IS A GOOD DAMN GAME IF YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB
AND HAVE A LOT OF TIME TO SPEND JUST DOING STUFF
AT YOUR COMPUTER.

IT IS A PRETTY SLOW PACED GAME
SO I WOULD SAY BUY IT IF YOU DON'T HAVE FRIENDS OR SOMETHING
BUT STAY AWAY IF YOU NEED TO SET ASIDE TIME TO DO STUFF LIKE
BREASTFEED YOUR CHILD.

X3 Terran Conflict, at first when I started this game I was lost on what I could do. Even when I found the script edit I was lost because of how big the game is. I then started to understand what I needed to do in the game. After a little while I found the game to be empty, not much was going on. No real wars or anything like that. I went through some really long missions and was starting to get sick of it already so I started to look for mods for the game. What I found was a rich list of really great mods which brings the game to life, I will add the link to the mods at the end of this review.

Wish the mods I give this game a 10/10. Without the mods I give the game a 6/10 or 7/10.

The graphics for the game are good and it is fun to fly around and build space stations. I just like war in space so I needed to have something more which the mods gave me.

Here is the link for the mods. http://forum.egosoft.com/search/index.html?template=default&style=default.css

I hope you have as much fun with this game as I do.

First, let me say that I really hate having to leave a negative review for this game. It actually has all the elements in place to make it truly great -- a huge, explorable universe, a complex economy, a huge variety of ships that each have their own use, a nice backstory, good graphics and music -- but it has some really critical flaws with playability that make the overall experience extremely tedious.

This is really three games in one: In the early game, it begins as a 3D space combat and flight simulator, and succeeds quite nicely at this. But in the later game, as you accumulate more resources and ships, it becomes more of a economy/trading simulator and fleet command style of game.

The critical problem is that the entire interface is designed around first-person navigation and combat, and controlling groups of other ships involves absolutely enormous amounts of navigating through menus for even the simplest task, like "move here". Secondly, ships move *very* slowly in this game, even with the built-in option to speed up time by 10X. Thirdly, trading ships, even the upgraded ones that are supposed to be self-sufficient, are stupid and require lots of hand-holding. The net result is that, once you have a large economy and fleet of ships, you will spend 30% of your time in menus, 69% of your time waiting for ships to move from point A to B, and 1% of your time actually doing whatever it is you intended to do in the first place. To build, equip, and move a medium-sized fleet into position to attack something is the work of several hours (not counting the time needed to get money for it), which is just absurd.

What this game *desperately* needs is a way to toggle between first-person cockpit style view and a third-person, RTS-style, "fleet commander" view to ease management of large numbers of ships.

Other minor criticisms are that the voice "acting" is generally terrible (major characters are often voiced by obvious computer-generated text-to-speech), and the quests are pretty simple "go here" or "deliver this to there". The different sectors start to all look the same after awhile. Also, there aren't many capital ship battles, a problem that was fixed in the expansion, X3: Albion Prelude. However, none of these are major problems in what is essentially an open-world game. The only critical problems are the interface and speed of doing anything, but these are enough to make the experience really frustrating.

All this said, if you have lot of patience and a lot of time to burn, I would actually recommend this game. For others, no.

Okay, two years after I had bought this game as a part of the X Superbox I feel obliged to write a few words about it. Simply because X3: Terran Conflict (and other X games) are some of the best games EVER made. I would actually hesitate whether to still call this a game. It will steal your life.

First things first. It's probably gonna be easy for veterans of previous X games to get into this one, few slight changes but the same mechanic in a nutshell. For the others though, be warned! This game has one of the steepest learning curves I've ever experienced in a game, yet it is also probably the most rewarding. You start out with one ship in a vastness of space and you can virtually build a galactic empire with hundreds of ships, factories, and resources at your disposal. It's not gonna be fast, it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be fun! And you can really do it! No MMO has ever come close to the level of freedom and complexity of all the mechanics in this game. No other sandbox game provides such a beautiful playground for making all your dreams of becoming an overlord come true. It's a gem, an absolute beast of a game, so patched and so loved that even when the developers provided little to no tutorial (very extensive manual however), you can get all the information you need to become great relatively easily.

It's difficult to recommend this game to just one group of players. You can get a lot of fighting experience in this one, which I personally enjoy very much, but it's not a simple grabba shipz and go pwn everybody rite nao. No... You have to work on your reputation with a faction, you then get to buy the ship of your dreams, then you have to take it and slap dozens of upgrades on it to make it really shine and then you go get yourself some kickass weapons. I love maintaining all these little details, you can change your weaponry on the fly and tear all kinds of enemies apart. There are limits of course, but lemme tell you... I did destroy a class M6 bomber with about 150 MJ shields with a little M5 ship that only has 1 MJ shield.... I did take out a Kha'ak corvette with my M3 Mamba thanks to an insane firepower provided by Mass Drivers and their non-existent energy consumption. This might not mean anything to you now, but trust me, when you get there and live it... you will remember ;)

Ooooor you can pretty much just ignore the whole shooting thing and become a filthy rich and successful trader and buy everyone :D The story isn't important, you write your own. The graphics are very good in my opinion. Music and sounds are more than adequate. Mostly you won't even notice the music, which makes those rare moments of entering a sector that's different than all the others that much more enjoyable.

This game is about options, freedom and passion for honing all your skills. And I love it.

Personal rating 10/10