"Post-Patch greatness"

There was Starflight, Elite, Privateer, and their respective sequels, now there is X2, the sequel of an average game. At firs it was nothing special, it was unstable, unbalanced, and with poor combat AI. Then came patches, at first they corrected bugs, then they added more depth to gameplay, the game has changed a lot, for the better, and now it has (finally) fulfilled every game's scope (other than making money), being an addicting experience. I've played videogames much of my life, and after all this years is very rare that I decide to sacrifice sleep for a game. Yes, it can be THAT addicting.

Gameplay: With so many options I don't know where to star, really, you can be a merchant, or go further and found your own activity, owning factories, and cargo ships that deliver your goods. You can be a pirate, and go smuggling illegal goods, or steal other ships cargo. You can be the police and hunt down the pirates and the other hostile ships. You'll be all of this and much more.
All of this come with a price, a steep learning curve, it takes patience, but with time you'll end commanding a hundred of ships without much problem, and making millions of credits selling you products.
There is so much to do, so much to learn, and so much to explore.
Lastly there is combat, and I'd say that I never get bored by it, when there is nothing better to do, I just jump some sector away and go destroying/capturing some ship. But you can also sit into the captain chair of a capital ship, and have tens of ships that fights for you.
I have only two complaints, the first is that I would have preferred a newtonian physic model, with inertia, relative velocity, like in Frontier, but that's just me, the game is fun anyway. The other is the inability do land on planets, you can reach them with you ship, but you get destroyed as soon as you touch them, they are there just for show.

Story: The story is involving, but it could be better. It revolves around you and the search for your father, that will lead you to interesting discoveries about the invasion of a mysterious alien race. But this isn't really the real meat of the game.

Graphic: The ships and the station are nicely done, most of the time the universe isn't plain black, there are a lot of nebulas, and some fog clouds that fill the empty space. Generally you'll appreciate it, it only requires and high end system, with my P4 2,6, 768MB of RAM, and GFFX 5600 128MB the framerate is good as long as you avoid fog or in general particle effects, and that without having all the effects on and at 1024x768....

Sound: The sound effects are well done, the only perplexity is: how come that there are sounds in space? Well, I've already stated that this is no simulation, and the sounds add to experience anyway, so why complain? On the other hand music gives mix feelings, sometime just fits the situation, some other time not, more often than not it ends up being irritating, especially the "combat music".

Replayability: You'll spend hundreds of hour into this title, and from my point of view that's more than enough, especially if you compare to other title that can be completed in 10 hours. On the other side there isn't any multiplayer support, but this is a solo game, if what you really want is to dogfight with someone else, go play Freespace 2.

This game is a must buy if you like space sims. It cannot reach the simulative greatness of Frontier, with an entire galaxy to explore, nor it can offer intense dogfights like the ones in Freespace 2, but will provide an immersive experience though. If you are a casual gamer avoid it this game, it is not for you, but if you like to be immersed in an alternate universe, you'll be sorry to have missed such a great title

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/04