This game was worth the cost for me. I spent a long time playing it. However, I personally was only able to play through it once. After getting to a certain point, I lost my enthusiasm to play. It simulates the space economy really well and I never did any combat (well, hardly any) because all I cared about was being a merchant. So this game doesn't force me to do the parts I don't like which was great. The rise to the top was great for me, but once you reach there (or start getting close) that's it.If I could play co-op with a friend or online this game would have a longer life for me. Travelling the trade routes while chatting with other traders (or forming a sort of caravan of cargo ships!) would be amazing! I would most certainly buy the next game in this series as well, because this game was fantastic, but i'm hoping for at least co-op in the next one!

Excellent game. Most worthy of the 5/5 I give it. Large community of players who make mods keep the ongoing play interesting. I as a Star Wars fan love having a squadron of TIEs as wingmen. Graphics are quite nice though not really important to me so judge for yourself in screenshots. Sound music and battle sounds are quite well done though can get repetitve. Gameplay is more or less sandbox there is a storyline (multiples depending on how you start out) but you can ignore them and just blaze your own path. Biggest complaint is not just for this game but across the series, major learning curve, you have the option to quit the tutorial at the beginning of the game, but if you're a newby to the X series I would suggest against it. Combat, once you get used to it can be either very easy patrol busts, to extremely difficult in all out sector warfare (bring your wingmen and some extra help). Some say that you can get just as much if not more out of the trading aspect of the game, you can setup mining facilities and factory complexes to churn out anything from chunks of ore all the way up to your very own capital ship weapons. Want to own a sector or 3? You can. What you do effects how the factions see you. Blast faction members of one group (or wipe out one of their sectors) they'll start to hate you, where others will start to like you. What you sell/make effects the universe economy, boulster your friends with cheap prices while drawing customers away from your enemies. All in all a great game.

An awesome game. Some bugs especialy in terran campain and territories. Joystick is pretty usefull. Other than that you should know it is only single player, a multiplayer version would just be too awesome!

Gameplay is fun and can become sometimes repedtive (same missions coming again and again) however there is alwais a new sector to explore and a almost imposible to finish main quest. Hours of fun

X3 is very intimidating at first but ultimately very deep. Loaded with more features than a tutorial could possibly cover, new players will have a hard time making sense of their spacecraft, the world and especially the economy at first. The user-created guides at various forums are strongly recommended. Once you're willing to put some time and effort in, the game reveals its unmatched complexity and infinite possibilities.

This game has a good economic model. You can purchase factories, ships, and goods. You can get them in "legit" way or the "risky" way. Each action you take will influence the overall universe, although the system seems to put some limitations on the effects so you won't break the economy. For example, shipyards and equipment docks will always be rebuilt. This is so you can still purchase the unique ships and equipments, and keep you from getting bored. Of course, you may also argue that the player should have more influence on the world. Well, if you are into that, you could always download sector takeover mod and disable this feature.

The game is highly moddable. After finishing the vanillia for the first time with a Bank account mod, I had installed X-Tended mod, which has an entirely different map and lots of new ships and even more features.

One thing that I have to complain about is the unrealistic flight model. Unlike older series like Edge of Chaos and Evochron, the spaceships you fly in this game doesn't fly like spaceships; it flies like a plane in atmosphere. You need to keep the engine running to travel at constant speed, which is contrary to Newtonian physics model. If you are a big physics fan, you will probably get turned off by this. Another contradiction is the presence of sound in space. No, I am not complaining about the in-cockpit view. I am complaining about the external view. Realistic sims don't have sounds while the player switches to the external view.

The game has ironed out most of the bugs, the only bugs left are plot-script specific ones. Plots are not that important to the game. It's important to remember when you are in a plot, don't do anything fancy. These are the rules that will alleviate you most of the headaches: 1) Once you start a plot, finish it! Don't dwindle, even though it says Time Limit: <Unlimited> It is okay to pause before initiating the next plot stage. 2) Don't use a fancy ship. Fancy as in "unpurchasable", "hacked (i.e. obtained through modding scripts)", "special rewards collected from other plots", etc. For example, I used an unpuchasable (but capturable) "Hyperion Vanguard" (M6) for a Terran mission to pick up two astronauts. It turns out I wasn't able to complete the mission because one of the pilot was "docking" into the docking bay instead of entering my ship. Hyperion is the only M6 vessel that can carry fighters, which means it's the only vessel that can carry fighters and dock to regular stations which the two pilots ejected from. I guess it's somewhat excusable for them to neglect this bug. 3) Try complete early plots ASAP, especially Operation Final Fury. Having a higher combat rank makes them a lot more difficult. 4) Save, Save, Save! Missions requiring you to board a ship with marines are extremely unpredictable. The marines fails the boarding randomly. They can fail at any stage. They can get killed. Once the ship is captured, the onboard equipments in the captured ship is also random. This list can go on forever...

Despite all these complains, I still believe this is one of the most enjoyable space game I have played. The space is huge, the structures and ships are multifarious, the graphics looks gorgeous, the ecosystem(as in modding and support) is solid, the economic model is good, and the AI is pretty though.

I can't play Multiplayer games these days anyway, so I am not concerned about the lack of MP in this game. But you might want to consider this if you aim for a MP space game.

X3:TC is a great sim with a great deal of complexity,

lucky there are a lot of guides and information available on Egosoft's website