Rating: 
Summary: Great Game for the Elite Fan - so far...
Review: This is the closest game I found in the Elite genre of space faring simulations, which is both good and bad. I always enjoyed Elite on the truly Old School gaming computer platforms, and I remember being discouraged at it's difficulty and obtuse interface - but eventually satisfied knowing that I used skill to overcome those obstacles. X2 comes with many of these same problems and reminds me that it will eventually have the same reward.It's a fantastic trade-combat space simulation based in a giant universe, filled with hundreds of stations and planets and plenty of bad guys. You fly around in a ton of completely configurable and different ships, dock and trade with many stations, create your own factories, and eventually develop a fleet filled with fighters, cruisers, and destroyers - all of which you can put into formations and control at any time, including any of their turrets. Sounds great so far. I was hooked. However, there's a very steep learning curve involved at first, and the tutorials do little to help you other than give you basic controls and only a slight mention of how the economy of the X2 universe works. The game is not originally in English and the cutscenes are often poorly translated and very lame, with bad character animation, awful camera angles, and confusing mission parameters. Personally, I chose the "sand-box" mode by ignoring any mission past #2 and giving me free reign throughout the galaxy. Anyway, you have to find out much on your own, and you'll find yourself creating multiple Save Game files before and after you buy/sell some expensive items - just like the original 1990ish Elite. That's a good thing for experienced and "realism" sim players, but bad for the casual player. In another nod to Elite you can only save at stations or when you have bought "Salvage Insurance". The game can be very unforgiving. You'll be excited after your 2nd mission when you are rewarded with a decent sized freighter, just to find it comes with NO weapons or shields... AND there isn't a base selling those things anywhere near you. Or, you'll find this freighter MUCH slower than the ships you piloted before - we're talking 10 times slower, requiring you to spend 4+ minutes travelling to a station before you can even dock to sell your Energy Cells for a mere 7 credit profit each. The initial pacing of the game is more than a little bit off, because you'll barely want to spend time exploring the trade opportunities in the first system, let alone screw around in the other 4 systems you discovered during the first mission. Manual flight and combat is very hard, mostly because your initial fighters behave like a slug, and you can tell the navigation console in the game is NOT built for real time action. Forget the intuitive control of Freelancer or even Freespace 2. Learning to use the mouse or joystick for control is a fairly involved effort, especially because the game simply doesn't let you remap many hotkeys. After 10 hours in the game, you'll rarely bother to pilot your ship manually, often relying on Sector maps, auto piloting and time compression - and pre-programming fighter wingman defense - to get your to your destination. However these automatic features make the game a ton more fun. With enough cash, you can create a massive, shielded freighter - or five - and assign each of them an escort of completely configurable fighters. Every figher or freighter can have multiple turrets, each with individual AI. If you don't care for the AI, you can use the Remote Monitor features to jump into command of any ship in your fleet, at any time - in the current system or any other system. The options are daunting, especially considering that you can create your own factories (and transports for those factories), and then set fighters to defend them if they come under pirate attack. Although difficult to get used to, and not necessarily for the average Freelancer-ish game player, X2 is not without it's charms. The graphics are gorgeous, the universe is huge, and the options to create your own stations / factories / economy / fleet are there. The options to manually dock with stations and escort your ship inside the station and into their actual loading bays grows old after a while - and you can skip it with autopilot and the right equipment - but it's still a nice touch. Definitely head to the developers website to download the latest patch after you install the game, which improves on the often suicidal enemy AI and fixes a ton of bugs that ship with the commercial reelase.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable and Worth the money
Review: This truly is a great game but with any game it has its strengths and weaknesses. You simpily have to weigh them according to what your looking for in a game. As far as economic empire building and large scale naval stratagy it shines above many others. The economic model is very complex yet easy to learn making it fun to explore and build up massive industrys all with fully automated transports that actually do what you tell them (the AI actually uses a bit of common sense when doing so). However, if your looking to hop into the cockpit of a heavy fighter for a dog fight with lasers blazing you'll find that the flight controll is so sloppy that you will want to turn the auto-pilot on and sit back and watch the computer smoke the enemys itself. Which again it does a decent job at. As far a the people anamations go, yea there so terrible I actually found them rather houmorous but it takes up about 3-5 minutes of a game that may last you several weeks or even months. At any rate its not what you would buy this game for so who cares, hit ESC and skip'em. All in all I am glad I bought this game and the company "Egosoft" stands behind their product with free game "updates" which combine add-ons and patches into one and have a "modder kit" to help the gamer create there own changes to the game. Rather than microsoft who published Freelancer and abanded it this company continues to make it better by listning to what gammers have to say in their forum on the company website. And that says alot about a company and its product.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible!
Review: Very involving! I love space games and I'm glad this one is out. It was hard and frustrating in the 1st day, but its more amazing every day now. I think it is more for the enjoyers of games like Flight Simulator, and the oldies Elite (MSX) and Starflight (Genesis). It is a space RPG, not an action game. You fly around, buy items, mine asteroids, trade, get to fight here and then, and enjoy the graphics and the relaxing feeling you're in space. But I say again that it is hard and complicated at the beginning, but when it's mastered it gets very simple to control. I have a joystick but I don't use it at all. Not even the mouse. So, give it a time, and don't worry about the very slow graphics. You'll adjust the settings as you go and it'll get fast. Let me give it some marks: From F to A+, a big A+ to the variety of products, ships, stations, and resources to trade with. A+ to the graphics, A to the planets and D for never reaching them. B- to the cockpit with all those blinking lights and F for not being able to hide it. X2 never crashed or interfered with Windows (A+ for that), but a D to the silent turbine. I think I'd get more imersed if there were a turbine sound like in MS Flight Simulator. What I also liked a lot was the very smart autopilot, and the option to press ESC to dock in and out of the station, still being able to do it on manual. Two big A+ for that, but a D to the "teleport" that takes us to the other side of the door. D also to the loading on the jump gates. That always gives me a moment to remember I have class tomorrow. In sumary: would I return it if I could? Never! Am I addicted to it? A little. Do I get home ancious to play it? All the time. My other favorites (from best on): Empire Earth, Freespace 2 and 1, MS Flight Simulator, Starfox.
Rating:
Summary: Very good complex space economics game (don't forget combat)
Review: X2 is definitely a complex game that can be difficult to learn and even more difficult to master. However, if you like games that are similar to Privateer and Elite, then X2 shuod be worth the time and effort to learn how to play.
For the most part is an economics game that takes place in space. Yes, yes there is combat too, but how do you think you will be able to afford a heavy fighter, not to mention a carrier than can carry large numbers of fighters? The game focuses a lot on making money. One way would be to trade commodities from stations that supplies such products to those that demand such products like energy, and silicon waffers. The game is truly expansive and there are more ways than one to make money.
Pros:
1. A space simulation that focuses on making money as well as combat.
2. A simple to understand economy, however due to the dynamics of of the economy, mastering it can be difficult.
3. Multiple ways of making money be it trading, providing transportation, travel tours, or assassination missions, and a few more.
4. The ability to change the economy be build several different types of factories. There are some factories that are unique to certain races. You can truly build an economic empire that can span throughout the explored sectors.
5. You want ships, or better yet, your own space faring armada? You got it! Provided you can make enough money to buy capital ships, various types of fighters, corvettes, and a fleet of transports to keep your factories going.
6. Each ship has different flight characteristics so learning how each ship fly can be interesting or exasperating depending your point of view.
7. Space is huge, and so are the number of sectors to explore. The game is expansive and freeform, but not to the extent Morrowind is.
8. The Forum. Yes, the Forum. Believe it or not, but one of the best features about the game is the Forum at Egosoft.com. Are you stumped, want to learn tricks, or just looking for info? Then don't hesitate to go to the Forum, you'll be glad you did. There is a wealth of info there.
9. Scripts and mods that are freely available that can change the way the game is played. Some user created scripts are even signed off by the developer. Thus, they are completely safe to run in the game.
10. Oh, did I mention the nice graphics?
Cons:
1. Not a game for those looking to jump right into combat.
2. Can be a little time consuming just to get acquainted with the game.
3. Different flight characteristics for each ship. What, you expect a frieghter to turn on a dime like a scout ship (light fighter)?
4.Do you want to humble your computer? Think your system can handle any current game out there if it can handle the likes of Doom 3, or Half Life 2? Then go build up a sector with lots of factories, and watch your frame rate plummet. You'll think there's something wrong with your computer or graphics card. Nope!!! There are a lot of calculations going on in the background. The more factories there are in a system, the more traffic there will be, and your poor CPU will have to calculate the path of all those transports running around.
5. Combat can be frustrating in very populated sectors.
This is not a game for everyone, but it is the best game there is for those looking for a space econmics game like Privateer, and Elite. Oh, wait let me rephrase that. It is the only game out there.
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