X3: Terran Conflict PC Review
Before I start off this review I just want to say that I have never played an X3 game in my life. Let me restate that. I have never played an X game in my life. I thought I’d get this across so you know where I am coming from.
If you are like me then you won’t know much about the X franchise. X is a series of games developed by Egosoft. A simple description of X is that the game is a space simulator. They usually feature a living colony where you can trade, do missions and build an empire.
X3: Terran Conflict is the latest edition to the X series. It’s a standalone expansion to 2005’s X3: Reunion and it is based in the same universe. The story in X3 is hard to summarise, as the game is part of a huge universe that other games in the series have supplied story towards. They follow a timeline and this is supposed to be the grand finale of the X series. It’s the year 2983 and Earth has been rediscovered by Julian Brennan, the main character from the last game. A new faction has come into play, the Terrans. The manual has a nice little brief history for you to get indulged in if you’ve never played the games before.
For a newbie who had never played any of the series I was in for a big surprise when I cracked open the game. It’s so overwhelming when you first get into it and that isn’t just the game as well. The manual that comes with it is 118 pages and it’s all in English. It is a space simulator after all, but I wasn’t expecting this amount of detail. The manual will probably take a few reads for all the information to set in as it details pretty much all you need about the races, ships and other information. It’s good to have it on hand just in case.
The reason why X3: Terran Conflict is so overwhelming is because there is so much that is accessible to you from the start. When you click to start your new game you can either choose one of the characters that tell you parts of the plot or start your own adventure in a custom game. Choosing the characters is advised at first because you are given set tasks and missions to follow. They don’t really have a personality; they are just starting points for you to begin with. Having a fresh adventure starts you out as a dude in a weak little ship and you have to build your reputation from the ground up.
Starting as a character was one of the first things I did. They are four to select from at first, each with their own missions and difficulty. As you beat the game more starter characters become unlocked for you to play as. Depending who you selected determines where you start. The first thing the game offers to you is a training mode with one of the pilots that are flying around near you at the start. The thing is that little tips flash in the top right corner of the screen, but that still doesn’t help. The training requires you to know a little bit about the controls, so you need to figure them out by looking in the manual or in the options menu. It tells you some of them, but a few you will have to look up. I found out that I could speed time up if I pressed J, something the game doesn’t alert you to in the training. The training really could have done with a section on the main menu instead where you could select topics that you would like to have training in.
It would also help players who have never played it before, like me. Because you only get a handle on the combat, all the other things that you can do, and that’s a lot, aren’t explained. I didn’t know how to buy something from a trade station until I read the manual. I was clicking everywhere, looking for buy buttons and doing other stuff like pulling my hair out. After reading the manual it seems you have to press left and right to move objects onto your ship. A little bar at the bottom moves to show you are doing this. God if only I’d read that part before I got to buy stuff. It’s frustrating, but it shouldn’t be because it could be avoided.
There’s plenty of assigned buttons that do all sorts of things. It’s a steep learning curve and can feel daunting at first, luckily after playing it a while it starts to make sense and the buttons all became second nature. I started feeling more comfortable using key shortcuts at this point. You can also click on the tool bar at the side to do commands as well but it takes a lot longer doing it that way then just clicking the button. I remember a helicopter game along the same lines. That came with a cardboard slip to put on top of your keyboard so you knew what the buttons did. X3 could do with something like that to help users.
Just like learning the buttons though, once you become accustomed to how X3 plays you can really see the potential to be had. The game is simply massive. Also the story isn’t forced upon you, so most of the time you can do what you want to do in your own time. Sometimes you’ll probably forget to do the story for a while and will end up doing some side missions or pursue something out of your own interest, like trading.
I guess this is where X3’s tagline comes in. On the box it says at the top “Trade, Fight, Build, Think” and yeah you can do all that, it’s basically a sandbox game in space. This means you can travel to where you want, blow up anyone, talk to who you want, trade with anyone who wants to and of course build your own little empire. That little pilot who you start off as doesn’t seem to be as weak as you first thought once you are on your way.
It can be incredibly frustrating at times though. At some points I found myself swarmed in enemy fire and getting blown up into tiny little space particles. This leads to game over, which isn’t a nice word in X3 as this means referring back to your last save. This wouldn’t be bad if you could save whenever you wanted to, but I’m afraid you can’t. To save you need to dock at a nearby space station and then save your game. It can be really annoying if you forget to save after a long trip to a mission point, which then leads to you getting your arse handed to you by some difficult opponents. I’ve been in that situation plenty of times and man it does your head in after the fourth or fifth time.
From reading you can probably tell that there are certainly things wrong with X3 that could have been done better, but despite this the game is still decent enough to play. It might sound I’m been a bit harsh but I’m getting the complaints out first, there’s a solid game to be found under all that difficulty. Fans of the genre will most likely enjoy it after the steep learning curve has passed. Fans of the series will be used to it and won’t have much trouble adapting to the newest edition. For people who are slightly interested then this is a stern warning that if you don’t stick with it, or don’t have the patience for something like this, you simply will not enjoy this game and will no doubt turn it off. This is not to be taken lightly.
Space has probably never looked so nice in a game. X3 models are beautifully rendered with plenty of details shining from structures and spaceships. Lighting really helps give space an artistic and colourful gaze. To get this look you will need to own a beast PC machine. The recommend specs ask for 3GB ram, a Core 2 Duo and a pixel shader 3.0 enabled card. Even if you meet them you might still run into some problems with all the special effects and particles been thrown about to hamper your frame rate. There’s times when you want to just slip on auto pilot and take a look at the space around you. It’s fair to say you would expect space to be black and boring, but not according to Egosoft. X3 has debris, asteroids, stations, planets and far off stars all adding an atmospheric space system that is never empty or even totally black.
Autopilot is something that I should mention quickly, it’s a bit of a mix bag. There are times in the game where you have to travel long distances to get to your destination. The autopilot function should really be a godsend, but in reality it works only like 50% of the time. One point I enabled it and it took me the totally wrong direction and flew off somewhere else. Another one was it flew me maximum speed into a space station, not good at all. You need to keep an eye out with autopilot just in case it decides to do what it wants to. A simple patch should fix this and there are plenty of patches. While I was playing X3 over the course for this review, two patches had been released to fix problems gamers had with it. The determination of the staff at Egosoft is certainly there and a quick look at the X3 official forums also shows how dedicated the fans are.
You can’t hear sound in space, well you aren’t supposed to anyway. X3 has a decent enough soundtrack that is dynamic; it changes to suit what you are doing. Initiate a landing and you get this epic yet calm sounding tune for you to dock to. Engage in battle and the tempo increases along with your blood rate. Sound effects are a bit weak, you never really get that sense of epic explosions from them, and the voice acting is all over the place. The characters you speak to throughout the game can sometimes sound a bit monotonous or forced. The team at Egosoft have tried to go for some communication sounding interference for the chatter but it ends up making the people sound strange. The only real communication that gets away with this problem is the robotic voice that tells you all the information about places, ships and so on. You can click on anything and it will most likely speak to you telling you a description about it. It shows the detail Egosoft tried to go into when making this game.
It’s hard to judge X3 Terran Conflict as it has really has set itself in stone to all but a select few people. About 95% of those that touch the game will just give up within the hour. The other 5% that do take the time though will see that despite some inconveniences it can turn into an experience capable of taking down your social life. The sheer amount of things to do is a key factor that prevents it falling into the trap of the same old routines other space games have fallen into. X3 is deep, complex, insanely huge, annoyingly but yet rewarding. If you’ve enjoyed the series before give yourself a 1 on top of the score, if not then it’s staying at a 7 because for most people it won’t click because of the unnecessary complexity. If Egosoft bring back X again they should make it a bit more forgiving to give a player that welcome with open hands feeling.
16 comments ↓
Angela
December 20th, 2008
I’m not going to buy this game without a free trial because I don’t know if I will like it.
Mind77
December 23rd, 2008
You can save your game at all times. The trick is buying Salvage Insurance at a Goner Temple. No need to land first.
This game is for gamers who prefer more streamlined games without to much depth probably a bit too difficult and they would rate it a 6 or 7.
Actually this game is worth a 9 if you can get passed the initial learning curve and getting to learn the ropes. The strong community and the amount of great mods even intensify the gaming experience.
Tsais
January 1st, 2009
the reviewer hasn’t figured out a lot of stuff, before he wrote this review… the game saves being just one of them.
Egosoft’s main trick in the X games is, that they let you do certain things manually or the hard way for a while, then, just when your enjoyment of that would wane, they introduce you to ways to automate that, and there’s a next level of game play you’re able to do. This pattern repeats, and keeps the game fresh and new for a very long time.
The much bespoken depth of this game slowly becomes available to you over time, giving you a long term buildup…
DON’T try to understand and do it all at once, its not meant to be played that way. You can play it for months and still have “Oh WOW!” moments.
And with any complex system, there will always be things one person just doesn’t get, and to another its pretty much second nature.
The one complaint I have about the game is the heavy use of jumpgates and the mostly identical geometrical setup of jump gates in systems, it feels a little like flying from village to village, and is counter productive in producing a feel of the vastness of space. However, few space games have done this any better. Edge of Chaos did that part better, but I can’t think of anyone else. In every other aspect, this game is top dog in every area.
Hope they will regal us with an online version or at least a multiplayer version for like 16 players or something…
If you have just a reasonable amount of patience, i.e. have ever learned any other sim well, you can’t go wrong with this title, I think the reviewer rated a touch too low, due to personal troubles with individual controls and lack of prior reading. RTFM goes that very old saying
Timmy
January 7th, 2009
I’ve played all of the X games hoping they would improve but didn’t. X3 Reunion I would give it a 4/10
and thats being generous. Its not really a game, it doesn’t even qualify as a simulation because there is NOTHING to do in the game. You spend countless hours just going from one space port, picking up stupid cargo called Cahoona Cahoona sandwiches and delivering them. You could do the same thing with pencil and two papers for crying out loud, is that supposed to be a detailed game or simulation? Flying is outside the cockpit, is as simple as pointing and clicking and just as boring. There is no detail what so ever in the game, maybe if your between the ages of 2 and 5. There is no characters in the game, no NPC interaction. So basically its a game of pretty pictures-end of story.
steve
January 8th, 2009
I have played all the X titled games as well as the original it was based on ( Frontier) . This was the one game that got me hooked and I was very glad they expanded with the X series . I agree with the last person I just don’t think Reunion was up to scratch and I am looking for a serious opinion on this final chapter ( The Terran Conflict ) .
Arctic Lynx
January 18th, 2009
This is a good well balanced review, that highlights the main problems with the game and why it is effectively going to be money down the drain for anyone except someone with lots (and I am talking litterally weeks, or months) of time to invest in learing it.
Its frustrating, the interface is horrific and the manual and ingame information are in no way sufficient to tell the player what they need to know. Its learning by trial and error, with most of that being spent on error. 5/10
Paprsek
January 29th, 2009
I agreed with A.Lynx that this game review is fair as the reviewer clearly states his impartiality as a newbie. Yes, a newbie to the X-series would rate it around 7. I played X2 for a very long time. I bought X3 Reunion and left it to gather dust. So I can see it from both sides of the coin. I have just bought X3TC and need to find the time to prepare myself to engage in this new adventure…
Redlance
April 29th, 2009
This game is not one to hold your hand and walk ya step by step to the end. and as strange as it sounds , I wish it would do less hand holding than it does. as soon as you learn the various controls , they are right under your fingers and easy to use. its like first learning to type, its not intuitive , but once you have it , its nearly second nature. to me its largest real failure is that the stories are shallow and I never find my self with a reason to care about any of the folks in the universe. its a cold but very good looking universe.
Seal
May 14th, 2009
I’ve bought X2, X3:R, and now X3:TC. Each time has been an attempt to try to get into this game, because the concept sounds so appealing: it’s a space sim. Go anywhere, do anything.
However, each new iteration reminds me on why I gave up on the last. Sure the gameplay can be tedious, but that isn’t what turns me off. What kills it for me is the game world.
Essentially, the game world is you being able to travel to 150 cubes. Each cube has a few generic space stations and a pretty backdrop. That’s the extent of it. Your whole experience involves going from cube X to cube Y, doing a task, and coming back.
There’s no feeling that you’re actually in a living breathing world. Compare this experience to, say, Freelancer. To go from planet X to planet Y is a continuous experience, where you can see the planets shrink away as you use jump gates. You can exit a jump gate, and travel around. It’ll take forever, but you can do it. You’re in a living world. You don’t feel like you’re boxed in to minute cubes.
X3 is just too stale. I won’t buy another in the series until I can actually have a world to explore. Not a bunch of (pretty) cubes.
Kontos
June 20th, 2009
IMHO, there is nothing cripplingly wrong with this game. Yes: the voice-acting sucks badly. Yes: the first hours of this game are almost mind-blowingly boring. But once you get past these flaws, you’ve got the most immersive space simulation game EVER. Also, if you’re having trouble: the manual is always there. It’s not just for newbs.
Space Addict
August 4th, 2009
I have played this game for the last 9 years in all versions and Terran Conflict is the best of the lot! Just to let you know how much I love this game – I have bought a brand new, more powerful PC everytime a new version of the game has been released because every new version has been more power hungry than the last!
My latest machine purchase to play Terran Conflict was an Acer Predator Sniper at a whopping £1400, plus a 24″ monitor(HP) at another £289. Now I spend most of my evenings in X3 Space. I waited until the 2.1 upgrade before I started playing because my experience in the past was that the game wasn’t worth playing until it was properly patched cause you just ended up restarting if you didn’t wait.
I must say I am having the time of my life! I haven’t even touched Command and Conquer Zero Hour for the last 2 weeks, which is my favourite online game!
Trust me, if you are patient and have a power pc then the X3 series will give you endless entertainment for at least the next two years!
Rendruk
August 8th, 2009
Ok, a little backstory on myself first. I’m a long time gamer! I’ve been in love with PC games since before the first Doom came out. I was 7 year old playing reading rabbit or something before Doom even came out.
I feel in love with space games the moment I played X-wing VS. Tie fighter — unfortunately, no space game since then has matched the joy I felt while playing that game. I admit I’m new to the X3: Universe — but I’m not new to games of any sort.
Also, I illegally download and play all of these games — I have no job or school to go to, so I have tons of time to play games and tons of games to play! The reason I wrote so much backstory is so that anyone reading this will realize I know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to PC games!
The only type of gamer who will be snagged in by the X3 series for long is the type of gamer who loves to have a charecter built up. Who loves the long crawl up from a small fighter ship and no money to owning a massive fleet of trading and combat vessels along with sectors of the X3 universe completely owned by them.
These playrs don’t love the game-play so much as they love the reward they get for the work they put in. But that’s all that X3 really is. It’s so close to a “simulation” that I actually feel like I have a job in space doing all of this. But let me tell you – I hate jobs. There just isn’t actual gameplay…
The best way to see this is to download a cheating script when you first play the game. You can give yourself all the credits you want, and the favorite ship of your choice — and then bam, the game is over — there is no reason to play the game at that point other than to induldge in some of the most boring space combat I have ever seen.
SO you’ll love this game if it’s your thing to do something mindlessly boring for hours (Like killing thousands after thousands of monsters in a row farming for gold on World of Warcraft) in order to obtain enough resources to upgrade your ship just to do it all over again.
But as a person who knows games… I can’t really call that fun. I’d simply call it an addiction for loser who get no real reward from life and thus crave the feeling of accomplishment X3 gives them.
The end!
Matthew
August 9th, 2009
I bought this game off steam about a week ago, and have tried playing it every day since… What an effort!
First of all I tried being the fighter pilot, and managed to get to a specific pirate ship before trying to scan the vessel and getting blown up… I then tried the trader, but because the galaxy is changing the whole time I could spend a whole hour buying and selling goods and still lose money.
I am still trying to understand the game, the problem with steam is the manual is all electronic and I really do not want to print out all 140 pages…
Not sure if I will keep going, I keep comparing this to freelancer – a game with a brilliant plot, great visuals for the time, and a lot easier for a starting player…
Memphis Alizay
August 22nd, 2009
I will state this. I “LOVE” the people who keep saying “Yeah the first few ‘hours’ are boring but…” because let me put it this way…
I fork out 60 dollars NOT to be mindlessly bored for a few hours, I fork out 60 dollars of my hard earned cash from my job where I spend hours a day beinf mindlessly bored for hours so I can be entertained. I shouldn’t have to WORK for my entertainemt, because I already did the work part to earn the money to buy this game. Honestly, you are much better off buying Freelancer. In freelancer the universe is actually a universe, not a bunch of mini maps you can quick travel between. Right off the bat you can trade, combat (Without having to attack friendlies), and just pure out have fun. If you want to have a second job you have to pay for… Buy X3: TC. If you want to have FUN, buy Freelancer.
Arjen
October 28th, 2009
For me, the X-universe is a gameworld I can spend hours upons hours in… The steep learning curve and near-endless possibilities are the big plusses for me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like arcade/action/FPS/RTS games as well;)
I’ve played Elite style games since, well… Elite. Next to the brilliant followup of Elite, ‘Elite II: Frontiers’, I reckon X3: TC as one of the top-notch spacetrading games of all time…. And of course I do have a weak spot for X’s first incarnation, X-Beyond the frontiers…..
Brandon
December 9th, 2009
Memphis Alizay,
Unfortunately, i had just finished freelancer. I was looking for a similar themed game w/ ship upgrades and exploration (like the old game STARS! but with better graphics..) and that is how i discovered X3-TC. After installing the game and playing for a little bit, i settled into the bankrupt assasin role. I finally earned enough money to buy an additional ship. As soon as i did this, I have become the sole target for every pirate and bounty hunter in the universe. Every sector i enter i get attacked by about 7 enemies with faster ships and meaner weapons. I’ve tried going to different sectors and doing missions to improve my rep, nothing helped. I tried selling all of my ships and buying faster ones to outrun the enemies, but all that accomplished was my wingwan flying blindly into an obstacle and blowing up. yeah! I tried the other scenarios as well and honestly.. this game just didnt capture my attention. I played for a week and i just uninstalled it. I was hoping for a ES-Oblivion meets freelancer, but instead got scrapland minus the plot. Wow. Pretty pictures though.