This is a good thing, because it means the developers have been paying close attention to the ways the fans have modified the game, and integrated these changes to make them better than ever. In addition, the developers have worked to make the game a bit more accessible – fans of Freelancer will recognize the context-sensitive command sidebar to make accessing some of the game’s functions a bit more straightforward, as well as the ability to tap the spacebar to get a mouse-driven “virtual joystick” cursor for flying your ship with ease. These changes have been integrated with surprisingly minimal impact against the existing UI design, though long-time fans might be thrown by the modifications at first.

Oh, and those who hated the tedium of trying to track down side-missions to do in the previous game will be overjoyed at the new approach being used: various ships and stations throughout each sector now have an icon indicating if they have a side mission available or not. The only downside is that this seemingly came at the expense of the “bulletin board” series that’s been present since X2, which I actually miss now due to how it made the universe feel a bit more ‘alive’.

Sadly, for all the little improvements the new game brings to the table, it seems to still carry just as many problems over from its predecessors. Ship pathfinding is still terrible; I’ve had some newly-purchased ships collide with me and explode less than 20 seconds after first launching when a simple “follow me” command was issued (alas, purchased ships don’t include a lemon clause), and you can forget about trying to do precision fleet maneuvers with capital ships if there’s anything larger than a small cargo container in the area, thanks to the overly-aggressive avoidance code.

Considering how this has been a problem plaguing the series since its launch with X: Beyond the Frontier, I’m pretty surprised the pathfinding systems haven’t been looked over in detail and overhauled yet (especially when so much of the game relies on issuing remote commands to AI-controlled wingmen). It’s also still very difficult to issue independent commands to large fleets; the developers tried to offset this with a new “Wings” feature that lets you form ships into special control groups, but much of this functionality is broken and leaves your ships sitting idle when they should be docking or retreating.

And don’t even get me started on the way some of the missions are scripted – expect to grow more than a few gray hairs when you find you have to keep second-guessing the mission code. Why the developers felt it was a good idea to place a given escort objective two sectors away and provide you with a whopping thirty seconds to huff it there before the objective is destroyed is beyond me. Thankfully many of these issues have been fixed with the latest updates for the game, but they still present quite a black mark. Maddeningly, the game still doesn't come with any multiplayer features either, which is something I'd absolutely kill to see with an environment this large, interactive, and free-form.

In a nutshell, this new game is going through the exact same growing pains its predecessors have, leaving me to wonder where exactly the developer’s efforts have been focused these past few years. With that said though, I really can't think of a compelling reason not to recommend it to any space-sim fan - but only because of the depressing fact that there isn't anything else that really compares out there for the moment.

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