Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big fan of the
Elite genre of games. I’ve played the original
Elite, the second, and the recalled
FFE, and enjoyed them all to some extent. I also loved
Wing Commander: Privateer. So
X: Beyond the Frontier is like coming home, only coming home in a much prettier universe.
The plot is your typical sci-fi “I warped somewhere bad and I want to get home” stuff, and the actual plot points of the game are quite weak and rather tedious. Trekking some of the ships all the way across the frickin’ galaxy can be a real pain in the butt. Luckily, the rest of the gameplay really makes up for it. You go around to various locales, buying and selling goods, and eventually you become capable of building your own factories for various products and selling them yourself. Very neat.
One of the good things about the trading engine in X: Beyond the Frontier is that it’s, well, realistic. Most of the previous games didn’t keep good track of how goods circulated, and either the markets were static or they changed with no real purpose. In this game, true supply and demand is met. A factory will send out ships to buy things that it needs, then ships will come to it to buy the things THEY need. It’s really interesting, and sometimes it’s a big pain in the ass when you fly into a Solar Power Plant to discover that they just sold all their stock and everything costs a good five or six times more than you wanted to pay.
There are a few problems with the game, however. Ships have no inertia, per say, and fly more video game-style than realistically. This makes combat somewhat droll, as it’s more of a “fly by, shoot a few times, loop, repeat” business than any real tactical combat. There are also a few problems that I’ve had when I went into a factory at roughly the same time as another ship, and when I come out, the game places me smack dab on top of them, subsequently blowing me up. Eep. Hopefully a patch will correct that little bugger of a problem.
Otherwise, I really dig X: BTF’s gameplay. If you’re not into long hours spent zooming between systems, buying low and selling high, I suggest you steer clear. Gorgeous or not, you’re going to get bored as hell. If you’re into that kind of thing, however, I highly recommend it.
