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.

One of the best Space Trading and Combat Simulator ever created. Although the plot of this game is not so good, but what makes this game fun is the open ended world with its dynamic economic system and a constantly changing enviroment wich make it feels really lively.

In this game you can also own your very own Space Station and create a trading empire or buy countless ship to create your own army and take over the universe for yoursef! \(^_^)/
And with tons of mod , this game will cost you even more hours of gaming >_<

Stick with the learning curve and this is one hell of a game. I found watching CdrDaves' tutorial videos immensely helpful as I was about to give up on this and I'm so glad I didn't. The devs need to realise this game could be a monster hit if they actually help people learn to play it.

Once you get going, you can pretty much do anything. Start out as trader and make money to create a solar empire? Check

Create a combat fighter and kick the ♥♥♥♥ out of pirates? Check

Leave it on autopilot, go and make a cuppa and come back to find your ship has crashed into an asteroid field? Check

X3: Terran Conflict is a massive game, which works both for and against it. If you invest enough time into this game you can create sprawling industrial complexes and an armada of warships. Unfortunately, after playing the game for a relatively brief amount of time I grew unable to care less about having an empire in the X3 universe. If I had to describe this game in a few words those words would be: monotonous, insipid, and glitchy.

As soon as I started playing the game my first mission was to go on patrol. I believe I had to patrol four or five times within the first five hours of the game. Patrolling missions mostly consist of floating around aimlessly and possibly blowing a few enemies up. There were also some combat missions, but I found those to be equally boring. To fight enemies you simply fly within their proximity and hold the right mouse button while aiming over a reticle. Combat could have benefitted immensely from flanking bonuses as well as bonuses for strategically targeting different ship components.

There are several other types of missions as well but they all primarily consisted of going from point A to point B and accomplishing eerily similar tasks. These shortcomings in mission and combat design could have been mitigated by the presence of interesting characters and an engaging story. Instead these shortcomings are amplified by a cast of annoying characters that spew forth inane drivel and a story that moves at a snail’s pace. The dialogue isn’t necessarily bad (or interesting) but the voiceover work is unbelievably annoying. Every character I encountered spoke as if they were poorly reading from a script, exhibiting inexplicable tonal shifts and awkward pauses.

Despite all of the aforementioned flaws I still intended to continue playing this game. After getting a more complete sense of the games mechanics and contents this changed. To start doing anything really profitable in this game, such as starting a factory, a number of exceedingly expensive components are required. This wouldn’t really be a problem if acquiring credits were fun or enjoyable, but this is not the case.

Every aspect of this game demands that you waste your time to accomplish anything. Travel times are ridiculously high even when you use a time accelerator. Missions that award you anything more than a pittance are incredibly hard to find and are frequently completed by some other spacefarer before you even get half way to your destination. Additionally, as stated before, most missions just involve going from point A to point B and are typically monotonous.

To make things worse, the time accelerator is actually a ship component that needs to be bought. The ship you begin the game with will always have an accelerator, but several of the ships I acquired didn’t have that functionality immediately. Another thing I found to be quite annoying was the implementation of this time acceleration mechanic. Initializing time acceleration literally makes the game process two to ten times faster. This would probably be fine if the AI could handle it, but apparently it can’t. One of my AI ships smashed into a wall and exploded when I activated time acceleration, and many of the other ships in the area started acting nonsensically as well.

There are many other issues that I could address in more detail, but the critical flaw of this game for me is relatively simple. X3: Terran Conflict just isn’t fun to play. I really wanted to like X3: TC but I found that I was just forcing myself to play in the otiose hope that I might actually have fun playing this game. I’m sure someone would really enjoy this game and its wealth of content but that someone isn’t me. I simply can’t recommend X3: Terran Conflict to anyone based on my experience with it.

Edit: I removed a rather hyperbolic statement from the last paragraph. I never said anything about the interesting ship, space station and alien designs either. The game has a unique aesthetic and the overall design of ships, infrastructure and organisms are pretty nice. That's also pretty much the only nice thing I have to say about this game though.

This is game is praised for finally being involved with the Earth race since I waited 10 years back in X-BTF for the "Return to Earth" storyline and flying on new Earth built ships. The GFX and quality is truly amazing and the controls are not bad.

Despite trying to climb up the steep learning curve, this game should be awarded and listed as the best unoffical successor to Elite or Frontier: Elite II, due to the high similarities.

Also, my retail version of this game had some bugs since I first bought it when it was on the market since it's debut. Bare in mind it isn't uncommon that most Modern games around in this decade, can have a dodgy headstart. So please make sure you report any important bugs to EgoSoft Forums provided. They cannot help you if you cannot explain the bug assertively and clearly to them.

And if you do decide to play a game like this, don't get committed to start a space campaign that you want to keep in the long term. Because EgoSoft made some changes back in X-Tension v1.4 near 2000 when my saves needed replaced for the TL class for X-Tension v2. And I won't be surprised that happened for X3TC when the patch reached to v3 onwards.

One very important note, if you use Money Cheat, Reputation Cheat or use Script Editor, you will no longer unlock achievements, so DON'T use any Cheats or Mods. Personally I use Money Cheat on this game predecessor as I really didn't want to waste time rebuilding my Space Empire and Reputation as that will take months - years even to complete this game. But this game is the best of all of the X-Series game so far, and it is more enhanced and easy-to-use in comparsion to X3: Reunion.

So my simple final advice is: No Money Cheat, no modifications and use the spoilers at your own risk for when you are totally stuck!

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.