I'm thinking of getting X3: Gold (Reunion and Terran Conflict)

[Angel Molina]

While I was on the Forums of another website, I stumbled upon a discussion about base building systems in certain games. One of those games was X3, which is apparently a FPS/RTS/sandbox hybrid game (looking it over on Wikipedia). It sounded interesting so I decided to go over to Steam to see if they had it. And they do! Most of the installments come separately but some of them are packaged together at a lower price... However, I'm not sure how to go about it...

I was thinking of getting the latest ones (Reunion and Terran Conflict) but then I though, "wait, should I try the first installments? Is there something important that I might miss story-wise?!?" etc.

Right now I'm downloading the demo for Reunion (899 MB) and Terran Conflict (422 MB) to try it out first, but since there such large files their going to take awhile to download (right now, at optimal speed, it's downloading at 90 KB/s).

So while I'm waiting, I wanted ask and gather the opinions of anyone who might of played it before and gather any tips that I should know about before heading into the game. So, please leave any two-cents that you wish to spare if you can.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

The story in those games are piss... read them in the wiki pages then imagine them played out very badly (there saved you many hours). One boon the the story is it gives you some things you might find useful.

If your going to play the X games get X3, its X2 and X1 but better.

The game is slow going (and I mean SLOOOOWWW). You start off with relatively nothing, then you basically decide what to do first (petty trading- somewhat easy, petty piracy-very hard... etc). Gradually, as you earn cash you can invest in many many things. Usually in my first playthrough of a game I'll always invest in a vessel with a good cargo store, then get necessary trading softwares, speed upgrades and get it some shields and program it to do some local system trading... Then I go off to find profit elsewhere.

I never got far in x3, but in my stint in x2 I managed to have a small business running in various systems, and a fairly large fleet with a carrier, 2 destroyers, small fleet of fighter craft and a handful of Corvettes. That was after 2 months of playing.

It's also good to take your time before buying a ship to inspect what capabilities it has as each race in the game has different perks and weaknesses (Some are more manoeuvrable but fragile or faster but weaker weapons or can have better shields but not much cargo hold or can have greater firepower but weak shields etc.)

If you have the patience you can spend weeks getting lost just for the hell of it... the universe is HUGE! Beware of 2 things. The Xenon and the other aggressive alien race (forgot the name)... 1 stays (generally) in specific systems (usually named numerically) and the other can appear anywhere at any time and wipe you out and everything you own pretty handily.

EDIT: Get a joystick too... it just feels right

 

[Lacsapix]

I've only played X: Beyond the frontier and I loved it!
hearing you say that it's on Steam makes me happy, thank you.
Buy it, enjoy it and get a joystick (or use your ps3/xbox controller).

 

[TrevHead]

Ive played X2 and sank quite a bit of time into it (i quit just b4 i owned a carrier)

I also bought X3 (graphics are v good) near release and was totally disapointed with it due to having a even shorter main quest then X2.

A couple of days ago a found one of the DD services selling all the X games in 1 pack.
I might get it just to play through the main quests before picking one of the games to build my own little empire up in.

 

[gigastar]

Im going to be perfectly straight with you and tell you that its a very slow paced game, the interface is awkward and learning how to play is like playing an MMO where youre the only player.

Though if you can tough all that out then theres a great space sim that has actually improved with every installment.

 

[AccessGranted]

Im going to be perfectly straight with you and tell you that its a very slow paced game, the interface is awkward and learning how to play is like playing an MMO where youre the only player.

Though if you can tough all that out then theres a great space sim that has actually improved with every installment.

Gigastar pretty much summed it up here. I bought X2 on Steam on a whim about 2 years ago but just could not get into it because the keyboard controls are horrible... then about 6 months later or so I saw X3 reunion at Target and bought it for 10 bucks. The story seems better but I just couldn't get passed the bad keyboard controls... now that I have a joystick and xbox 360 wireless controller adapter for pc I might give them another go since they do supposedly get better as you progress...

 

[TrevHead]

Im going to be perfectly straight with you and tell you that its a very slow paced game, the interface is awkward and learning how to play is like playing an MMO where youre the only player.

You can say that again! Prepare to sink in some major time if you want to own the bigger ships. However (in X2 & X3) the main campaign can be finished relativly quickly. After which you can continue playing to build up your empire.

Ive heard that mods exist for the X3 games. One of which might change the economic model to make it less of a timesink

 

[JYzer]

IMO, you'll be fine if you buy only X3:Terran Conflict and ignore the rest. Make sure to get patched up, and make your life easier by checking out guides and mods on the Egosoft forums. [http://forum.egosoft.com/index.php]

You'll probably still get frustrated, but it'll be easier to reach the pot of gold at the end of the SpaceRainbow.

 

[RA92]

Also, if you're interested, there's a sequel on the way.

Damn it looks pretty!