Comments on: X3: Terran Conflict (PC)

By: Brandon

Brandon — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:05:24 +0000

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.

By: Arjen

Arjen — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:57:17 +0000

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…..

By: Memphis Alizay

Memphis Alizay — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:27:24 +0000

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.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:24:42 +0000

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…

By: Rendruk

Rendruk — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:20:59 +0000

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!

By: Space Addict

Space Addict — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:40:16 +0000

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!

By: Kontos

Kontos — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:24:51 +0000

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.

By: Seal

Seal — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:38:09 +0000

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.

By: Redlance

Redlance — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:58:27 +0000

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.

By: Paprsek

Paprsek — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:51:28 +0000

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…

By: Arctic Lynx

Arctic Lynx — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 04:59:24 +0000

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

By: steve

steve — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:23:25 +0000

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 ) .

By: Timmy

Timmy — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:44:30 +0000

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.

By: Tsais

Tsais — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:49:17 +0000

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

By: Mind77

Mind77 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:51:35 +0000

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.

By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:50:47 +0000

I’m not going to buy this game without a free trial because I don’t know if I will like it.