X3: Reunion impressions?
Sunday, January 15th, 2006 - 5:20pm
I've been interested in this game but never really looked into it until this weekend. Now Im thinking of getting it and Im curious if any of you guys have played it, enjoyed it, or hate it.
Im also curious how they got to their 3rd game without me ever, ever hearing even a peep about it. Has it primarilly been a european game?
I'm in pretty much the same boat you are, polypusher. The current Computer Gaming World has a short review of it. I believe they gave it 2 out of 5 stars lamenting many many bugs including incorrect information in the manual, odd economic structures, and *cough* Framerates tally like Midwest winter Iowa (which is funny, because it hasn't hit below freezing for the past few weeks here in Iowa! This afternoon? A balmy 62 degrees! But I think you get the idea)
I just checked, the latest patch added the second star otherwise it would have rated a one-star stinker. According to the article the Developer is committed to 'fixing' this game and staying with it until it's right.
I see a lot of potential for this game, and the gameplay description seems right up my alley... did anyone give this one a shot?
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
Well I was going to give it a try after a friend told me how much he loved X2: The Threat.
But I bought BF2 instead. Maybe next time.
Amazon.com has it for 35$ so I went ahead and bought it. Gamerankings shows an average rating of about 70% and most sites fault its learning curve which makes it tough for beginners... a demographic I dont exactly consider myself a part of, so Ill try it
The modding potential sounds promising. There are mods/scripts that add lots of missions, helpers and other functionality to the game, so I figure its worth the shot. Ill let yall know
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
It's still on hold here at La Casa Robear, waiting for the Big Patch that will bring it up to what the developers say is the intended game. There have been a few interim patches, but not enough for me to warrant the continued investment in time.
Remember, Trevor Chan did the Seven Kingdoms series, as well as Capitalism, so there's a real economic game in there that you have to deal with. You'll put a lot of time into building that side of it. So might as well wait until the game is finally "complete", as intended by the devs.
Litmus test for determining whether any space-sim is worth bothering with: "Is it as good as Freespace 2?"
It's a trick of course, because the answer will always be "no".
I kid. A friend of mine enjoyed X2 a lot, but X (X1) slipped by him too. Does it even exist? Is it like the bigfoot/yeti of the computer gaming world?
Same friend has held off on X3, because the reviews are very mixed. Some give it really good scores, others, not so much.
"YOU SPOIL, YOU GET SPOILED! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!"
I actually got burned on X1. Not sure whether it was done by the current devs - is it still by Egosoft?
Essentially, you'd start with a tiny ship, no cash, no directions, and vast, vast amounts of nothing on all sides. I understand that it got really immersive once you had invested a few dozen hours and assembled a decent ship, but I really couldn't be arsed. The bug situation was comparable to what is apparently happening today.
And if I haven't seen further, it's because those bloody giants blocked my sight.
I have, and played X1. I liked it for the fact that it was so big. the only downside to it for me was once I got to the end of the game and finished the last boss battle, there was some bug preventing me from finishing the storyline. I eventually gave up on it, but I really enjoyed making space stations and slowly taking control of everything. =) The only major downside of the base building aspect was you couldn't automatically send shipments of resources to your power plant... or some super annoying glitch. You had to rely on AI economy to fuel your startup business. (or make shipments yourself for hours on end) but once you get past that point and buy other types of stations, the power station doesn't matter anymore. =) I never tried X2, but I'm going to order X3 soon.
If you want a really deep economic game, go for it. If space combat is your thing, stay far far away.
My days of not taking you seriously have certainly come to a middle.
Whoa!
My Gamercard
really? the combat was something I had heard good things about. Most people agree that the bugs are really the only frustrating part and those complaints are quieting with each patch
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
This thread : http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/19802 has some impressions of X3 before the 1.3 patch. Since my last post on that thread I really haven't played it much. Accomplishing my method of stealing ships to make money became more difficult to pull off and I've been broke for a while. Even if you're only interested in combat, you will have to spend a lot of time trading and building factories to build a ship / fleet capable of performing well against groups of enemies. And this takes time.
This isn't a game you can play for just a few minutes at a time, you need to devote probably at least an hour at a time to progress. And it probably has hundreds of hours of gameplay in it if you devote yourself to it.
Edit: I just fired up X3 again and discovered that while RAM overheating problems may have affected some of the other games I have been playing, I am still getting hard crashes (comp shuts off) with X3. I am patched up to 1.3. sigh...
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I got my copy of X3 today. I cant say much yet except this: The learning curve is as advertised. Everest-like. I tooled around in my tiny ship a bit, made some dinky trades that netted a few k, then I captured a pirate fighter and sold it for a (by comparison) whopping 60k. I got stuck -inside- a station when my foolish docking attempt sent me flying through the wall and into the dead space on its interior.
After I loaded I took on another few pirates, then attacked a small ship advertising itself as a weapons dealer. Was promptly dusted.
Not bad for a first session. All the intricacies of the game are going to be tough to figure out but once I have the hang of it, it should be great.
I saw someone created a mod/utility that actually allows you to run your game remotely. Leave it running at home and activate a web interface, then you can manage your traders/stations/etc from work... very interesting
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
Lord, what was I thinking?? I finally got my copy from Amazon and loaded it up. First, after turning all the video settings WAY down, I was able to play... but it was still really notchy. That's not even the worst part... Ever since I installed it, my computer likes to reboot itself randomly. I'm assuming this is caused by Starforce copy protection.
I wonder what Amazon's return policy is on opened PC software. =(
Crack it.
You could also unplug all your cd drives.
http://fileforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=52117
http://forum.alcohol-software.com/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=2838
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While you wait to find out if Amazon will let you return it, you can at least make it playable by installing the mod linked here.. the mod takes out the millions of decorative asteroids (I use the asteroids only version, didnt feel the need to eliminate a bunch of ships)
That mod absolutely made the game playable for me.
Cant help with the reboots though.
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
Cool! I'll try some of those suggestions when I'm feeling well enough to turn on my computer after work. :/
X2 and X3 are now available via Steam and one would assume sans Starforce.
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There's definitely an awsome game in there somewhere. The trick is sticking with it long enough to find it. My problems so far have been related to actually making money. Not to mention it costs A ZILLION GAJILLION dollars to get your damn ship fixed if its hull is damaged. I've been drifting at 45km/h for a while now because I can't afford to repair my fighter :/
You can't do this!
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That may make it worth my purchase. I'm a sucker for space sims, but putting the starforce protection on my new computer wasn't going to happen. That and the price is now 30 bones for the game.
Somewhere on a deep ocean vent no man has ever seen, God smites a small colony of tube worms because you masturbate.-JoeBedurndurn, on sin
There's always....Eve.
Well I finally bought X3: Reunion since it was on sale. Only afterwards did I remember it once had Starforce and it definetely has CD protection, but I haven't been able to detect starforce itself so I guess that's been solved.
After a somewhat difficult installation, the game itself is definately confusing to a noob like myself, but I guess it's not to hard to follow the main story once you get used to the interface and the controls. Which reminds me I'm gunna have to buy a joystick soon if I want to survive the harder battles.
Other than that it seems rather stable with the latest patch despite a few glitches. I've only had one serious crash in about five hours. Also I was wondering what you guys do while you're just floating through space for 5 minutes to get from point A to B. I managed to watch a movie with winamp by putting it always on top and by not having the game at full screen. It's still agravating (yet sometimes convenient) that the game pauses if you minimize it to do something else. Oh well, patience is a virtue. Especially in space I guess.
The game seriously took me 3 days to learn to play with any degree of confidence, and many visits to the official forums, which were very helpful. I havent played in months but I still consider going back now and then.
On the long times in space, do you know about the time compression feature? I dont remember the button but you have to install a SETA device on your ship to be able to use the command. It cut the flight times way down.
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
So $19.95 on Steam. Almost an impulse buy. Yeah or Nah? Does it support multimonitors like X2?
" Did my love gun hit you?" -Gaald to Certis while playing Sins of the Solar Empire.
There's a lot of game there for $20, you just have to do a lot of work to get there. At its best, X3 is an amazingly deep combination of space combat sim, Empire manager, trade simulator and some sort of 'sim-spacestation' when you've got the funds to start manufacturing.
At its worst, the game is frustratingly unintuitive, hard, and in some cases, just dull. If you have 1 million and you need 10 million to do whatever it is you want to do next, sometimes its just a matter of waiting for your empire to build that much cash. You can usually find something to do to occupy yourself, but sometimes you'll just find a quiet spot in space, engage time compression, and go watch a movie.
ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
I just bought X3: Reunion through Steam. It took a gawdawful amount of time to download from Steam, but it's pretty sweet.
I actually really enjoy the whole aspect of the empire building and the building infrastructure to supply other infrastructure. It's cool how it's a much deeper and richer economy than, say Homeworld ever was.
I've only had the game a few playable days, but I bought it on the advice of another Steam user, who is a friend and co-worker.
Impressions are like polypusher is talking about. There is a steep learning curve. I'd investigate learning how to use and manage (there's a utility available - go to the official forums, look at the sticky threads on the scripts & mods forum) scripts. If you want to cheat to a huge amount of cash, to just play, there's a script for that. If you just want to use "legitimate" scripts to manage your empire, there're scripts for that. If you want to install mods with extra ships or ships from established sci-fi series, there are some of those.
Scale is pleasing. In capital ships, fighters really do look, properly, like specks. You can lose notoriety by running fighters over, so you have to be careful to move carefully.
You can also drop out of ships all together and tool around in your spacesuit, looking for likely derelict ships to take over, or jump the 60m or so between your two quickstart vehicles.
And yes, the time compression is also key.
What I also like about the game is that when I want to go start sh*t with the pirates, I can go and have a rousing dog fight (with my laptop plugged in and on a wooden table for ventillation and run the thing at 1600x1024 (or whatever the WXGA resolution is)) so I get decent framerates, but if I'm unplugged, I can still play if I'm looking to just keep managing my trade empire, and crank the res down to 1024x768, turn off all the pretty colors and get down to brass tacks.
But I'm afraid I don't know about multimonitor support.
It's all good!
Wasn't this the game with the Morgan Webb dirty talkin' review?
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ThePolypusher
GH3 Stats
Actually bought this in early July (along with a new joystick... thats probably the reason I bought this game cuz I had no reason to buy a joystick) and I am still playing it.
The learning curve is quite steep... Im still getting used to it even after a month. I took tons of advice from the website forums and derailed myself from the main plot right away so I could enjoy the game as a whole. Now that I have some major complexes set up and almost every ship in the game that you can buy (except for the ones that require very high rank) I am starting to get bored with it.
But what is cool is that it does draw you back in... and I have yet to touch the main storyline. It was so good and enthralling (after you get past the learning curve) that I am skipping all of my AQ40 and Naxx raids to play this instead LOL....
Edit: Got ahead of myself with the submit button... nice to be able to use that again:
Anyway, to answer or point out some stuff with some of the concerns in this post, I actually really like the space combat. Yes it is pretty darn simple.. but there are times when I fly into a battle thinking it will be rather easy and end up having to reload 8-9 times and then finally go another way because I just cannot do it with my current ship/fleet. There is an "easy" mode where you can have your guns automatically adjust when leading the target... it makes combat VERY simple, but you can turn it off (which is what I have done recently and it has totally changed the combat in a much more challenging way).
The controls and interface are HORRIBLE until you get everything all set up. Its one of those games where it will take at least a week to set joystick and hotkeys up. I have been playing for almost a month now and I STILL find myself reconfiguring simple keys because commands that I never really needed before are starting to come in handy.
Money is very important in this game but so is Race Rank. I have been playing for a month, have 2 rather large complexes, a couple fleets, 135Million dollars at my disposal (inceasing about 2-3mil an hour) along with plenty of ships and I still cannot buy the best battleships that my highest ranking race can make. Mainly because I had no clue as to how important rank was when I started. So if you decide to play this game.. make sure when you kill pirates you are doing it inside an "owned" sector so you can not only get the credits but also the rank for the kills.
Another piece of advice I would give is to download all the handbooks and how-to's available. Its one thing discovering this type of stuff on your own, but with THIS game.. it is SO huge and SO dynamic and SO complex that... unless you have months of patience, it is highly helpful to have this information handy. I have a map of the universe (including where dockyards and other important stations are located), a spreadsheet of all the different types of ships available (including all of their stats and where you can buy them), another spreadsheet of all the available weapons, another spreadsheet of all the factories that can be bought (including their price, location, size and necessary resources) and then a final spreadsheet of race rankings.
All of this is important... and I have gotten quite far in the free play game but nowhere in the actual story line. It is quite fun and very engaging... but only if you have the patience for it.
PAR
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Purchased, and downloading.
" Did my love gun hit you?" -Gaald to Certis while playing Sins of the Solar Empire.
Welcome back Par! Missed you all these months.
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Does anyone happen to know of a demo for X3 that doesn't have Starforce copy protection embedded into it? I am curious to see what the game's like but I can't risk having Starforce installed on my work laptop.
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