Review by: Dave VanDyk

Ask me about Egosoft’s “X” series in casual conversation while I’m playing some other unrelated game, and you’ll find I have nothing but bad things to say about it. After enduring a half-hour long rant about poorly-presented storylines, horribly broken mission scripts, suicidal AI pathfinding, and the gamut of other damaging problems, it would be easy to dismiss the X series as an awful, awful franchise that should be avoided at all costs. Of course, then you’d be missing the moment where I inexplicably load up one of the games yet again and blow two weeks of productivity on trying to make my linked station complexes look pretty, or custom-outfitting my flotilla of capital ships with the best hardware I can find.

For all its damning problems, I just can’t ignore that this is one of the most addictive space series I’ve ever played. No other game on the market gives you the opportunity to start out as a lowly fighter pilot in a huge, free-form universe and work your way up to a position where you own hundreds of fighter squadrons, dozens of capital ships, and a wide array of profit-producing space station complexes – all from the cockpit of your ship.

This is why I was really hoping to see some of the major holes finally get patched up in what is effectively a re-release of X3: Reunion. Enter X3: Terran Conflict, which is Egosoft’s latest take on their intergalactic free-form empire-building game. Focusing on the xenophobic Terran faction and their recent integration into the “X universe” following the events of the previous game, X3:TC brings a whole range of new features, weapons, ships, and other gimmicks into play – much like each of the previous games in the series.

I actually don’t mind the fact that the developers keep re-releasing new versions of the same game every few years, because they keep finding ways to expand it in new and interesting ways while keeping the core gameplay intact. They’re also linked up with one of the few remaining publishers ballsy enough to release a space game that isn’t hard-scripted and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, which is worth automatic bonus points on my shopping list.

What is particularly nice about the new game is that most of the improvements and new features are based on those submitted by the community – this includes many parts of the famous “X-Tended” mod (such as the Orbital Weapons Platforms and the “OTAS” faction) and a huge number of general scripts, like exploration commands to send your ships through uncharted gates without having to guide them through first-hand.