Playtime: 25 hours (that's only like 2-5% completed)

Intro

X4 is a game in which you click through menus to (try to) give orders, walk around generic space stations for hours, watch as the autopilot flies you somewhere for even longer and sometimes you get to shoot things.

X3:Terran Conflict

Back in 2008 Egosoft released X3:TC. It was a clunky and complicated game that required you to google how to do every basic thing. However, it was really cool that you had so much freedom. Explore a big galaxy, trade, build, fight, et cetera. It was like Mount & Blade, but in space. It took many hours letting the game run while you were eating dinner or whatever for the autotraders to make you money, but then you could build a cool fleet and big space stations. Awesome!

5/10/15 years later

In 2013 Egosoft released another X game called "X Rebirth". It severely limited the scope and was poorly received. So when they released Foundations another 5 years later it was seen as a glorious return to form. I finally decided to play it now -another 5 years later- with tons of patches and DLC. Obviously i'm not 24 anymore and i've literally played over a thousand games in the mean time, but surely i would still enjoy this... right?

The Good

I always start with "the good" because you should let someone know they did something right before you tell them all the things they did wrong.

• The tutorials are better.
• The autopilot doesn't crash as much anymore.
• The graphics are nice and it still has that distinct X look.
• Walking around space stations also helps break up the endless flying around space.
• Having someone fly you around space while you remotely give orders is kinda neat.
• There is some sort of system that lets you start a new game with bonuses based on what you unlocked in other games.

The Bad

• You constantly have to look up information. Constantly. Why can't i upgrade a ship? Oh, because it's set on repeat orders even though it doesn't have any? Okay...
• Alt+Tab doesn't work, you have Ctrl+Alt+Del.
• The autopilot does fuck up sometimes, it even managed to get stuck.
• Instead of a proper system to improve relations with unfriendly factions they just spawn criminals from every station every few minutes - destroying them makes people like you. Seriously, this literally always happens, it feels so fake.
• Stations are 100% copy-pasted and dull.
• Some of the (handful of) faces they used are horrifying. It's so weird.
• Almost all of the voice acting sounds bizarre like the actors didn't know how to speak normally. You'd think it was done by AI but much of it sounds like it was recorded in someone's bedroom so i don't think so.
• There are still a bunch of bugs, including non-spawning traders and ships flying through/into stations.

The Ugly

Traveling takes forever

They removed the hyperdrive! This was such a cool part of X3. It was expensive and required you to keep some energy cells on you, and it felt awesome when you finally got it. In X4 you have to fly from sector to sector and it takes forever.

Pointless extra steps

While stations are a nice break from space travel initially, they do get extremely tedious fast. They're all pretty much the same and you have to spend hours walking around them to trade and find crew.

Byzantine menus

They had a whole decade to improve the interface and in some ways it actually got worse. There are multiple ways to interact with things and you have to find the exact right way with little or no guidance. I wanted to transfer crew to a station for a quest. After trying a bunch of different menus including the "work somewhere else for me" menu i looked it up. Turns out you have to talk to people over comms. Later on i found out you can also right-click the station, after which the crew apparently teleport there.

So much information is presented so poorly. It doesn't help lots of menus require precise clicks on items with sometimes half-overlapping objects. Something similar goes for physical interactions. The AI pilot constantly gets in the way, both when you try to take control or when you want to eject into your (incredibly clumsy) spacesuit. Why put the space suit button where the AI spawns? Why make the captain's chair turn and remove the take control prompt if you're not fast enough? Egosoft fails even at a basic level.

Shit doesn't work

I tried to set up both an autotrader and an autominer. I followed all the steps in tutorials, guides and videos. They just don't work. Worse, i don't care enough to look even more for solutions. I can manually set a ship to mine and sell, sure, but what if i have a dozen traders and miners? It's just too annoying.

Conclusion

X3:TC is in my top 10 most played games on Steam, with a runtime of 366 hours. I got sick of this after less than 10% of that. Egosoft had over a decade to get their shit together and instead they shit the bed. Playing this game feels like them constantly giving you the finger.

I have fond memories of X3. Flying around in a fast little ship, making my Vidar corvette pick me up when i needed to fight, calling in my Elephant station builder/spacecraft carrier to launch half a dozen fighters at the enemy. I still kinda want to play this because i know it'll get decent eventually. It's probably better for my mental health to just uninstall it.