This is one of those games where you play it for a couple of hours then say "I need to go to sleep/do shopping/visit family/eat", then you forget and keep on micro-managing your fledgling empire of station complexes, fleets & such; all while doing plot missions.

Pros:
-Massive Universe (Not Elite:Dangerous size, but it's still huge)
-Over 100+ different flyable/pilotable ships
-Multiple, optional, plots and story lines
-Lots of different missions
-Build your own stations and complexes
-Very good modding support and active modding community (even in 2016)
-Good replayability value. I've put over 300+ hours into this game
-Simple UI with lots of keyboard shortcuts, all of which are modifable
-Script Editor, spawn your own Tyr or D*ca and lay waste to everything...that's cheating though
-Game Director keeps things fresh

Cons:
-Prone to crashing late game, especially if you use Universe Traders. DON'T USE UNIVERSE TRADERS!!
-Unforgiving combat and punishing play (although this isn't a massive con, it adds a challenge)
-Steep learning curve to X-Series newbies (I was new to X with X3:TC, but I'm awesome at it now)
-Buggy AI scripts
-Game Director is silly at times. Make sure you dock a ship in every Marine Training Barracks if you want any good Marines
-Sector Invasions can mean you lose entire station complexes, fleets or such if 5 Kha'ak or Xenon destroys/carriers decide to just spawn in randomly. Avoid the North East part of the Universe Map (Getsu Fune etc)
-Laggy on low performance PCs, it does still run though. Just don't expect to "like" Terran sectors or those with lots of Nebula/gas in them
-Poor rewards at the end of some quests.


It is overall a decent game. 7/10, would be higher but AI and Bug issues are annoying & the Modding Community were left to fix them.

Space trader sim that does not just have one steep learning curve but a series of them. The game just drops you in at the deep end and thats your lot. Without various online faqs and walkthroughs, I simply would not have figured out what to do. The problem is that even master the basics of trade and doing missions, require a lot patient grinding. There will be no quick or easy progress through this game. At the start trading is a nightmare unless you play the "humble merchant". Even then the game finds ways to obstruct you progress. Missions are available but may require you to have ship upgrades that you probably were unaware of.

I simply don't have the patience for a game so deep that its opaque.

I can't reccomend it unless this sort of grinding and constant referring to faqs and walkthroughs is your thing.

Got a 90% coupon on this very interesting game, however even after nearly 4 hours, I just couldn't get into it. Such a complicated interface and the flight school seems to be the only tutorial. This game looks and seems to play nice, but it is so freaking hard to get into.

Seems like the type of game I'd like, but if it takes me more than 3 hours to try and learn basic stuff about what you can do to start off, it just isn't worth the time. It would be comparable to taking 3 hours to figure out how to shoot a gun in a FPS game.

My score for content would probably be a 9/10 based on what I youtubed, but not noob friendly at all.

X3 Reunion had a good voice cast. The story was not good. The game engine is still beautiful. The hud can be a problem. X3 terran conflict and the add-on albion prelude are amazing. If I knew that x-rebirth would totally destroy the series by being completely horrible I would of just asked for a albion prelude 2 on this old engine. This is the end of the line for the series. Everything after albion prelude is considered a hallow lifeless body floating in space that is worshipped by shills.

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.

"Mount & Blade" in space.

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.

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.

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.

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.