space

I only write a review if something is really good or really bad, happily in this case it's really good. I know its hard, if you don't have the rest of your life to play this game to build up the economic empire you'll need to complete the story or at least the credits you'll need to stay alive. I'd suggest you download the pre-made savegame that starts you out with 989,999,999 credits, once you get a chance to see how good and how much fun this game can be you'll be impressed. It's not only 21th century elite but it's the first space game I've played that I liked more then privateer and for all those who played Tachyon: The Fringe, you'll enjoy flying your huge capships around.

Not only can you own fleets but your ships can own ships and your bases too, all this going at one time. After you get a large empire you'll find that you don't notice the long waits for the next gate. Also some alien ships go alot faster, you have at least 5 races worth to choose from and you can capture pirate ships aswell.

But you'll need some real hardware or a clean running system, the 1.3 patch runs ok on my P4 1.3ghz but if I were you I'd get a faster system for this one, it's worth it.

Only bad things I can say really is that the cool stuff costs too much (as in life), the weapons are hard to come by even when you have the cool ships and the character animations are a bit stiff.

All in all I am very happy with this game and there are fan mods for it aswell. Haven't tested any yet however.

This is really an excellent game. It is much like freelancer, but even better.

Main Favorite Features:
1. You can do anything, not just follow the storyline.
2. You can fly around in stations, your own, or someone else's.
3. You begin fighting when you want to begin fighting.
4. Their are HUGE carriers and transport ships you can pilot.
5. Time device allows you to speed up gameplay (good for long journies if you don't have a jumpdrive).
6. You can leave your ship and fly in your spacesuit if you wish.
much more!

Main features that need improvement:
1. VERY hard to make money as a newbie.
2. Bad instruction manual.
3. Kind of hard to get the hang of it at first, but if you stick with it, it will get better!
4. Can't land on planets.

I would suggest this game to anyone who likes a good space sim. If you even remotely liked freelancer, then you should definately try this game, or at least the demo. 5 stars!

This a game with a lot of potential, but so riddled with flaws that in the end, it isn't all that much fun.

A game like this is all about atmosphere (glossing over the fact that there's no air in space). The player is (or should be) free to explore a bewilderingly vast and beautiful universe - sailing gracefully through the endless reaches of space, cooing at the majestic scenery, and marvelling at the strangeness of the alien races. This, at least, is how I remember the original X - a very slow-paced game, but one that rewarded the player's patience, as its mysterious plot unfolded.

However, any sense of atmosphere or strangeness one might get out of "X2: The Threat" is scuppered by the shoddiness of the the things the NPC's say. In short, they sound like a bunch of annoying, sarcastic Americans from the year 2004. Their ignorance about their own universe is astounding. For instance, if one of them hires you to carry something from A to B, then when you're en route, they'll make some sarcastic remark about how they expected you to go much faster than this (even if you're actually as fast as a ship of your type can possibly be). Also, there are some puzzling continuity errors. For instance, if you're ferrying a passenger from one place to another, and you don't get them there in time, then (of course) you get an ear-bashing about how stupid and incompetent you are, but then the angry passenger mysteriously disappears (rather than asking you to drop them off somewhere else, or whatever). Even "Frontier: Elite 2" was better in this respect. Sarcastic, disappearing NPC's can do a hell of a lot to destroy your suspension of disbelief - reminding you that here you are, in the early 21st century, wasting your time on a silly computer game.

Now I want to talk about how the economy of the game is messed up. Trading forms the backbone of games like this, especially early on, when you're not that rich. In theory, the player is supposed to be able to work out profitable trade routes for each type of resource, buying them at the factories where they're produced, and then selling to other factories who need those resources as inputs. However, for some reason nearly all of the factories are nearly always out of production, waiting for some of their inputs to arrive (and hence have very little to sell). I think the underlying cause of this 'gridlock' can be traced back to there never enough 'Delexian wheat' - it looks as if the designers simply misjudged the number of these wheat farms necessary at the outset to balance the economy. Also the system by which the various space stations determine their buying and selling prices is disappointingly simplistic: For each of the game's resources, there's a function of the form P(Q) = b - aQ, where P is the price, Q is the quantity present in the station and b and a are a couple of constants that depend *only* on what kind of resource it is (irrespective of whether it's an input or an output for that particular factory, or how abundant the resource usually is in that sector etc.) Ultimately, the economics of the 'X' universe gives the impression of being rushed, flawed and brainless, which detracts very much from the enjoyment of the game.

The physics model is indeed very very simple (just like X-wing, Wing Commander, or even Elite for that matter), but this needn't necessarily ruin the game. However, I have to say the combat isn't very exhiliating. Whereas in X-wing, we had lots of little, fragile fighters whizzing around, firing fast-moving laser beams at each other, combat in "X2" usually consists of a couple of relatively big, ponderous ships, dancing slowly at very close range, which can quite easily hit each other (even with their ridiculously slow-moving lasers), but whose shields are often excessively strong compared to the weapons fired at them.

This just leaves the adventure side of the game. I haven't yet got very far into it this aspect of X2, but I suspect it's where most of the enjoyment is going to lie. There are some nice long cut scenes (marred by wooden acting and robotic animation, but I still like them), that gradually explain the story to you, at quite some length.

It's a beautiful-looking game, but ultimately rather shallow and annoying.