X3: Reunion Review

By Oliver Clare Published 6 November, 2005

Lots of space, precious little pace.

Version tested: PC

Ah, the games industry, such a sweet, mad, baffling creature. Big complicated space sims obviously need to ship with fat manuals or loads of in-game tutorials so what do Deep Silver and Egosoft include with theirs? A 350-page sci-fi novel and no tutorials whatsoever. Nice one, guys.

To be fair there is a small printed manual (85 helpful pages) and there are occasional pop-up advice windows but still, the lack of guidance verges on the scandalous. The pity of it is that many players new to this impressive, ambitious series may well give up after an evening or two of head-scratching, missing out on an engrossing experience.

Just in case you're unaware of X3's father and grandfather, this is an Elite-like freeform space entertainment in which you trade, fight, and construct your way to galactic greatness. There is a plot but it's one you can opt out of any point. There is a ranking system similar to an RPG level ladder but there are no hard-and-fast character classes so every activity is open to every avatar.

The Merchant of Venus

'X3: Reunion' Screenshot 3

Ship polishers are never short of work in the X3 universe.

As in all freedom-based games, X3's success depends a lot on the richness and size of its play environment and the variety of activities available within that environment. Although you can't visit planets outside of the plot missions and the range of quest-style one-off jobs offered by NPCs is a bit on the slim side, there is a ton of stuff to do and lots of bustling interesting space to do it in. One of the most important things you can devote time to is trade. Egosoft has created an amazing 'living' economy involving AI merchants, dozens of different commodities and factory types, and prices that alter to reflect levels of supply and demand. By tramping around the game's 130 sectors (uncharted at the start) buying low and selling high you can, if you've got a lot of patience and skill, eventually build-up enough credits to get into factory building. A solar power station here, a bakery or weapons factory there, and before you know it you're running massive self-sufficient industrial networks that span several solar systems.

Don't see yourself as an interplanetary industrialist? Well, how about being a metaphorical tapeworm in the gut of an interplanetary industrialist? Piracy is X3's most exciting occupation but plays havoc with your race rankings (how players are regarded by the eight game races is crucial to trade) and your relationship with the ever-vigilant forces of law and order. If buccaneering sounds too confrontational, there's always contraband-running (folk will always need their space weed and their slaves), asteroid-mining or salvage. Spend enough time wandering around sector edges and exploring asteroid fields and generally you stumble on the odd Marie Celeste or Mary Rose that can be traded-in or repaired.

Shapely ships

'X3: Reunion' Screenshot 1

Boron men like their ships like their women: green and curvy.

Ships come in hundreds of different shapes and sizes and are, almost without exception, works of art. From the tiny single-seat runabouts to the mile-long freighters with their gleaming ventral cargo pods, and the giant carriers with bellies crammed with sleek fighters, everything looks like it's been made for a big budget sci-fi movie rather than a modestly funded PC game. Everything can be owned and flown too. True, there are no cockpits - only first-person perspective forward views. This omission drains some character from the flying experience, especially as the HUD design is identical whether you're at the controls of a standard Argon interceptor or some bizarre-but-beautiful Boron cucumber.

Customising ships is an important part of the game. Until you've fitted a mineral scanner, a drill and an ore-Hoover your craft isn't going to be much good as a mining tool. A privateer that hasn't invested in an engine tune-up, shield upgrades, new missiles systems, and a freight scanner won't be taken seriously in scum sectors like Farnham's Legend and Danna's Chance. There are no orbiting paint-shops allowing pilots to customise liveries, but otherwise there are few aspects of craft you can't fiddle with.

The strafe drive - one available upgrade - shows off very nicely the new 'semi-Newtonian' flight behaviour. Though not as pronounced an effect as it was in games like I-War 2, ships now don't turn as if they were running on rails; they drift allowing natty pivots and power-slides. The extra aerobatic possibilities improve X2's less-than-brilliant dogfighting significantly, as does the introduction of new missile types, slower shield recharging, and a vastly improved targeting system.

Engine trouble

'X3: Reunion' Screenshot 2

The Argon Nova is in. The Vauxhall Nova has been cruelly left out.

The last X title was a bit of a sloth in the performance department and, sadly, this episode keeps up the ignoble tradition. A lot of the worst slow-down (highly populated sectors can really crawl) seems to be linked to the HUD display which does mean it may be something that can be alleviated in a future patch. Right now, if you intend to run the game on rig anywhere near the minimum spec then expect frame-rates to drop into the teens and below on occasions. In the circumstances, a few more graphics settings options would have been nice.

Along with the poor performance and the unnecessarily steep learning curve, the worst accusation that you can level at X3 is that some of its features seem to have come directly from its predecessor. The most discouraging examples of recycling are the NPC quests advertised on the trading station bulletin boards. The majority of these appear to be X2 vintage. Not a problem if you're new to the series but veterans have every right to grumble.

X3 is a game that takes its time and demands a lot from you. If you're looking for a pacey polished space adventure where you never have to refer to the manual or post a query on the official forum then you're almost certainly better off with something like Freelancer. Bolder souls, as interested in commerce as they are in combat, can buy with much greater confidence.

7 / 10

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About Oliver Clare

Read more articles from Oliver by visiting the Oliver Clare archive page.

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Comments (36) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • smelliot #1 6 years ago

    An update on Sunday? You busy chaps. Still, I'm not complaining, I was waiting for a review of this!

  • Merefield #2 6 years ago

    Yeah, Sunday!

    Seems some ppl love their jobs - good for them!

    As for my job ....

  • #3 6 years ago

    only a 7!!! I never buy games lower than 8.. shite..

  • Eraysor #4 6 years ago

    I would have bought X2: The Threat, but when I played the demo my PC wouldn't display the cursor so I couldn't navigate the HUD...

  • Zem63 #5 6 years ago

    Bought the game on day of release,review is spot on.
    Changing desktop wallpaper through properties menu is quicker than playing this "game".

    Took it back for refund,if they release a patch to make it playable might buy it again.

  • #6 6 years ago

    Zem there is a patch mate and a big one mid Novemeber coming.. the 1.2 patch is nearly 80mb and it apparently makes a big differnce to performace.
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/05 @ 14:35

  • PearOfAnguish #7 6 years ago

    Yeah the patch is an improvement, bit of a joke that they haven't actually finished the game though. Features are being added via the patches.

  • Zem63 #8 6 years ago

    Thanks EvilGenius.
    Just been reading X3 forums,seems switching hud off gives massive jump in frame rate but then you're flying blind.

  • Shakermaker #9 6 years ago

    Anyone with hands-on experience that wants to elaborate a bit on mouse handling?

  • ave #10 6 years ago

    Is it just me or is this review a lot shorter than normal?

  • frod. #11 6 years ago

    From reading the review it seems like its lost marks mainly due to performance then? Well done for criticising recycling old features as well, too often you see EA getting hammered for it but noone else, nice to see some principles being applied.

    Still looking forward to my copy arriving though, never played the second one and have a pretty beefy PC. Fingers crossed eh?

  • Macross #12 6 years ago

    I got this on release, I downloaded the patch though :)

    I really like it so far, although i reccomend you start it on easy as it took me most of the weekend to get to that level on normal and the only difference seems to be what you start with!
    Great game though, although i agree sometimes it does run poorly, id probably give it an 8 providing they make good on their promises for v1.3

    this game has so much potential, i hope it realises it thanks to its great community

  • Xerx3s #13 6 years ago

    "Yeah the patch is an improvement, bit of a joke that they haven't actually finished the game though. Features are being added via the patches. "

    Welcome to the year 2k5.

  • TurdBreaker #14 6 years ago

    Would you guys recommend this to an old "Elite" player? I used to play Elite back on the c64/Amiga days and loved it to death. Never played the later Elite versions. But the idea of a limited amount of places and the non-interactive cockpit sounds discouraging -- I was hoping for a bit more of the "ship-piloting" experience...?

  • rinoaMW #15 6 years ago

    i still play Elite, and i still play Frontier.. so i bought this. Its quite a nice game, it has all the elements from frontier (in fact being docked at a station offers almost the exact same set up as frontier). There isn't the freedom as them either, but i'm only really playing the story atm so im being ushered from place to place, without teh chance to do much sightseeing. Control wise its pretty good.. i have to admit that i was quite dissapointed playing the game stright from a fresh install, but thanks to the patch it runs faster and has alot of bugs ironed out.. shame, as someone pointed out here, its 80mb :/

    Landing at a station is easier than Frontier/elite, and no less enjoyable.. the sense of achievement is still great! and the controlling your ship is really easy thanks to the easy to pick up controls... you can pretty much fly everywhere whithout an auto-pilot, and combat is alot easier too.. there's no hour-long dog-fight with 1 ship in this! :)

    In short, X3 is a fun, and amazing looking space sim, and you don't need a degree in astro-physics to play it either (like frontier :) ) but you do need a kick-ass pc to run this at even a remotly decent framerate, but this does get better with every patch.

    im glad i bought it anyway :)
    Edited by 1 at 07/11/05 @ 09:29

  • Harlequeen #16 6 years ago

    This is a fair review, though the game seems to run fine at 20-30fps on my nice but not state of the art laptop with the patch. I am loving this and loved X2 too, but do not play this game unless you are willing to put in the effort to get the reward. There are some useful easter eggs out there to discover too, like free ships floating waiting to be claimed. Really is a must for true fans of Elite.

  • Dizzy #17 6 years ago

    >Ship polishers are never short of work in the X3 universe.

    Hehe... yeah.. why do all these spaceships look so clean?? I am sure months of deep space travel will make you ship look pretty dirty ;)

  • PearOfAnguish #18 6 years ago

    "Yeah the patch is an improvement, bit of a joke that they haven't actually finished the game though. Features are being added via the patches. "

    Welcome to the year 2k5.

    Thanks, that's much appreciated.

    X3 is one of the worst examples I've seen of a game being released before it's finished, there are features described in the manual that don't yet work.

  • rinoaMW #19 6 years ago

    "Hehe... yeah.. why do all these spaceships look so clean?? I am sure months of deep space travel will make you ship look pretty dirty ;) "

    in fear of missing your sarcasm, something wouldn't get 'dirty' in space, the worst thing that could/would happen is the hull would get dented and perforated to hell by all the spacedust and micro asteroids, but you'd think that a futuristic space-fareing race would have managed to stop.

    like star-trek and their 'deflector-dishes'.

    The ships in X3 do land on planets tho, so i guess they could get 'dirty' that way..

    Edited by 1 at 07/11/05 @ 10:39

  • Stickman #20 6 years ago

    The learning curve in this game really is a major turn off. It's not just steep, it's bloody vertical! Push through the pain barrier though, and you will find an immersive trade/pirate space sim, that is at times jaw-dropping in looks.

  • shamblemonkee #21 6 years ago

    Had loads of trouble installing this due to the copy protection - so beware.

    Once i did get it going (running slowly) i did the combat 'tutorial' which consists of placing you in a firefight and explaining the controls as it goes via pop up windows.... not great in a fight!

    So after that I dived into the game proper - got my firstmission briefing, thought riiight, i'll figure out all this jumpgate malarky when i have more time and promptly instigated an impromptu test to see how long it takes to die if you attack a battleship - answer: not long :) but it was fun.

    In short, expect to devote a lot of time to learning how to play.

  • glaeken #22 6 years ago

    Well this performed really badly on my system even after the first patch. My system being a P4 2.6 HT, 1Gb DDR400 and a 6800GT. This system though not cutting edge can pretty much run any of the current games around with pretty high graphics settings. X3 though I had to run in something like 1028x768 with most graphics options as low and it still felt like FPS were in the 10-20 region. I really can not see what in the engine is justifying this level of performance as it all looked very sub par to me.

    Also a game like this needs a tutorial but it does not have one. Basically it drops you right into things with no idea what is going on or how anything works. Maybe I am getting lazy in my old age but is a tutorial too much to ask for?

  • Dizzy #23 6 years ago

    Get Space Rangers instead?

  • PearOfAnguish #24 6 years ago

    Easiest way to start that I've found is to choose 'Bankrupt Assassin'. Go to a Teladi sector (because they don't care if you're a pirate) and start capturing Boron and Perenid freighters. Shoot until their shields are gone then hit the hull until the pilot bails and it's yours. Dock your capped ships at a ship factory and you can get big ca$h prizes - a Boron Dolphin sells for almost 1m credits.

  • Teeth #25 6 years ago

    "Well this performed really badly on my system even after the first patch. My system being a P4 2.6 HT, 1Gb DDR400 and a 6800GT. This system though not cutting edge can pretty much run any of the current games around with pretty high graphics settings. X3 though I had to run in something like 1028x768 with most graphics options as low and it still felt like FPS were in the 10-20 region. I really can not see what in the engine is justifying this level of performance as it all looked very sub par to me.

    Also a game like this needs a tutorial but it does not have one. Basically it drops you right into things with no idea what is going on or how anything works. Maybe I am getting lazy in my old age but is a tutorial too much to ask for?"

    Exactly the same problems that occured in X2.

    I won't be going anywhere near this... Space Rangers 2 has given me everything I could have wanted in such games and more.

  • Xiphias #26 6 years ago

    Some strange comments here.

    "I would have bought X2: The Threat, but when I played the demo my PC wouldn't display the cursor so I couldn't navigate the HUD... "

    That's because X2 didn't have mouse control for the menus. X3 does, but it's completely messed up the keyboard control of them with half the old shortcuts not working and menus taking longer to navigate.

    "Ships come in hundreds of different shapes and sizes and are, almost without exception, works of art. From the tiny single-seat runabouts to the mile-long freighters with their gleaming ventral cargo pods, and the giant carriers with bellies crammed with sleek fighters, everything looks like it's been made for a big budget sci-fi movie rather than a modestly funded PC game. Everything can be owned and flown too."

    Not that ship design bears any relation to handling, cargobay size or even weapon mounts. Your ship may have a rear facing turret on the model but that doesn't guarentee it'll actually work. Oh, and the pictured boron ship with the large 'wings' actually has the smallest cargo bay in it's class.

    While all the standard class ships from the 5 main races you can trade with can be owned and flown none of the custom ships and many of the ships from the unstoppably hostile races (khaak and Xenon) can be owned.

    Oh yes, and if your a person like me who sees holes then be warned. Despite apparently being part of this universe we've got ships in vacuum not accelerating with their drives on and nebulae that can conceal a 1km long station at a range of 5km.

  • PearOfAnguish #27 6 years ago

    You can capture custom and Xenon ships.

  • Merefield #28 6 years ago

    For me its promise spoils the actual experience. It promotes the feeling that you are in a true sandbox, but then if you follow the plot you realise there are things that happen to you that you can't do in the game world's sandbox.

    For example, you land on a planet and are required to shoot pirates bearing down on you as you race down alley ways. Outside the plot, you cannot voluntarily land on the planets. Poo.

    And another, plenty of video cut scenes take you onboard ships and stations. But you can't walk around even the flight decks afaics.

    Yeah, i guess i'm expecting a lot for the interior of things to be explorable, but hey, its a shame that whilst the "outside" world is so beautifully rendered, you can't enter anything and walk around. That would have added a lot to the suspension of disbelief and it would have been pretty cool to be able to look out of a stations windows and see the world you had just been flying around - when are space sims going to achieve that level??
    Edited by 2 at 09/11/05 @ 20:56

  • spikes_2020 #29 6 years ago


    I was looking forward to a game that you could play like freelancer... have better polygons... and some nice game play, while installing it was 6 CDs... And 3 gigs of space, it’s got to be the worst programmed game I have seen in a while...

    Once inside the game flying around is ok... your ship moves so slow... and I thought that if you turn off your thrusters that you would drift in that same direction... like in real space but nope... you just stop... not only that but trying to figure out all the keys.. None of them are listed in the book and you have to search though menu’s to find them, o BTW the menu’s lag really bad also you can not pause the game while you’re looking in the menu’s... so you drift in to a station or something and explode on contact.

    EvE Online has twice the graphics as this, it runs smoother and it’s a multiplayer RPG... EvE is a 2 year old game and it beats the pants of this one... I think freelancer is even better... as far as the user friendliness goes. I’m taking this game right back if possible and if not I’m going to find some chump to sell it to...

  • #30 6 years ago

    right on dude.. same here.. if i cant send this back ill make my dog eat it somehow.

    Worst game i ever played and some tits on egosofts forum thinks this is the best game created ...EVAH !

    What a knob.

  • Flyingsub #31 6 years ago


    I'm going to pass on this one. Having too much fun with Space Rangers and Freelancer to go backwards.

  • rantanplandudu #32 6 years ago

    if you don't like it,someone will be happy to buy this from you...
    i'm fond of the last opus,and espect this is better...I really like the economic's strategy,the war,the new design(the same in fact but more realistic)is pretty,the universe in for me not unknow,and I'm sure to found the same sensation of x2...
    you said "eve" is better?eve is not a space opera is a tactic'smorpg,were dogfight ,territorial wars are limited to small battle faction...not huge battles whith undred battleships,no planet's life,universe is empty,no way to pilot more than one ship or to park in one bigger..no station to create item,you will rend a place for it,and,npc are....stupid. pvp is...good...and only in low sector security.you can't too control your ship as you whant....just clik on the foe,select your action,and look at your shiedl and armor...and don't expect use joystick...it's impossible.

    for freelancer,it's an educlcolored space opera game...too easy;one way to progress..folow the story.
    I prefer x2.
    if you dislike,try to explain,not just tell,"its a shit..."
    I will be glad to buy it,but it is not yet in my country...
    Edited by 1 at 16/11/05 @ 19:07

  • peppergomez #33 5 years ago

    this space sim is an incredible experience. i got it for $17 on valve, and it is fully patched to stability. there are loads of great mods out there that beef it up, making the combat more exciting, the universe more dynamic, cockpits in place, custom ships ("serenity", anyone?).

    yes, it is open ended, potentially slow, and has a pretty flimsy single player story, but it also happens to the best looking, most immersive 1st person cockpit pov space sim available for pc right now. there's not a space game that comes close.

  • DFawkes #34 4 years ago

    I prefer freelancer, because I liked the mouse controls in that better, and it's so undemanding of my PC I can set it to full resolution.

    Both are still good though.

  • Xinch #35 4 years ago

    Why does this game keep crashing when I have cycled thought about ten different targets? It's so bad the station voice should say "successfully saved" not "successfully docked".

  • dominalien #36 3 years ago

    Well, the Linux version is coming out on Nov 28, so I might see what state a 3-year-old game is in these days.