X3: Reunion: 6.5/10 (with the Xtended mod, 9/10)
A single player sandbox-style space fighter game, offering a multitude of possible things to do. You, the player, can pilot numerous different types of ships ranging from fighters, to freighters, to larger battleships. An AI system also allows you to command other ships that are under your control, and eventually build entire fleets of ships. Of course, you can also build fleets of merchant ships to ferry goods throughout the universe while you undertake other tasks, like hunting down pirates or undertaking pirate actions yourself.
Graphically, the game is nice. The ships themselves look sweet, and the miscellaneous space battles you get into, from small encounters to epic fleet battles, are mind blowing.
Game play-wise, this is one of those games where you need to save often, just in case one of your AI controlled ships magically "disappear" in an asteroid belt leaving a stream of cargo and debris, or ram into a group of pirates. The game is also a bit buggy and problematic, one of those games only completely supported by the same kind of computer the designers used to make it. Mac users, don't even bother trying to get this thing to work for you.
This is also one of those games where you actually DO need to read the manual. The in-game tutorial is rather incomplete, and leaves you pretty much confused. It is possible to explore the game without reading the entire manual, that's very possible. But, it's a good idea to download it nonetheless and keep it handy, in case you need to clarify some things.
But, once you do get the hang of the game and get into the habit of saving often it can be ridiculously fun. The battles in this game are easily epic, even the small dogfights you get into. Another cool thing is the fact that you can buy and build your own stations, and link them together to make Complexes. Building your own empire in space is one of the game's finest points.
Story wise, not particularly the best story in the world. Better to just stick to pirating and conquering the galaxy.
In-game stuff.
There are several factions, including the 5 main "allied" factions in which one is human and the four others are alien. Of course there's the main pirate faction as well, they only fly fighters and become minimal threat as soon as you get into a decent ship. SPOILERS Then you have the freakier Xenon which are, long story short, AI controlled ships that went berserk and now want to destroy all the worlds or some ice cream (enemies by default), and the new Kha'ak which are a hive-like alien race with fancy lasers and purple pyramid ships (definitely enemies by default). There is also the Terran faction, which hate you for some reason, and the Sohnen, a mysterious god-like race of aliens which also hate you. END SPOILERS
Each of the factions (excluding the pirates) have a light, medium and heavy fighter, a small corvette, small transporter and king size freighter, battleship and carrier specific to their race. A current problem is the jump from corvette to carrier/battleship (with battleships costing at least 10 times more then the corvette, and the corvette is already expensive). This seems to leave a gap in the middle (this is fixed with the Xtended mod, which fills the gap with the Frigate class ships, the improved corvette and Specialty ships).
All in all the game seems and feels like the classic "Tie Fighter" and "X-Wing" star wars games, only on steroids. It's just a shame that the game felt somehow incomplete, luckily the community provided a mod to fill in all the gaps and turn the game around (the xtended mod, which added something like 80 ships and new interresting storylines).
