PeyoteCoyote

Nothing really new and innovating and absolutely horrible framerate problems even this long after release. I concur with other reviews that this game along with others that are targeted towards both PC and Console are ruining PC gaming.

Pretty sure you have the picture by now. Good ideas, poorly implemented. That being said, I agree with the critic review reminding folks that Egosoft has a good reputation for cleaning up messes, and I suspect there will be a lot of added content and fixes to the game over the coming year or so. But this is all speculation, and doesn't address that the game as-is can be close to unplayable due to buggy everything. As of now, you'd basically be paying to Beta test their game. Hard to believe it took them this long to come up with what they presented. For now, save your money.

You should get paid to have to play this game. Literally. If doing nothing but sitting on a tractor or combine and driving around thrills you, then this game is for you. However as far as actually 'simulating' a farm, this game is terrible. Cons: Horrible Horrible HORRIBLE AI. You can 'hire' employee's which amounts to simply automating a few of the tasks such as cultivating or harvesting a field. However, whatever means the game uses to automate these tasks is simply terrible. For example, put a plow on automatic and you'll come back to find that even though the field is perfectly rectangular, your 'employee' decided to plow at a random angle, leaving vast triangles of unplowed, or unharvested field. Less often, but even more annoying, they will just randomly decide that turning around in the middle of the field is a good option and will stop when they get to the end. Another AI problem is the "dynamic world" which amounts to spawned vehicles which amount to creating an obstacle course. If one of them CAN pull out in front of you... they will. Other problems include tasks that are totally meaningless. Such as cultivating and plowing. There is no need to plow at all. The yield of a field will not change at all if you cultivate and plow before drilling. Though I have not had a chance to test it, I suspect other features, such as spraying, slurry, and all the other fertilizing processes will have limited if any impact on the crop yield. Another problem is that there is no way to evaluate a crop or field, and there is no interface that lets you evaluate the world. You have no idea how a field is doing until you harvest it, and yield is determined by how many trailers you pull off of it. I am guessing the reason for this is that nothing you do ever affects yield anyway. You put the seeds in the ground and harvest them when they're ready. Not much "simulating" going on. The world pretends to be dynamic by adding people, AI cars, and weather. But none of these have an apparent impact on the game. You can not interact with any of them, other than rain/hail will stop your harvesters, and cars make good objects to run into. The mock-dynamic market prices are really just randomly raised/lowered prices that in no way reflect how much you are selling or who you are selling to. Want to take a shortcut through that field that is ready to harvest? No problem. The yield will be the same. No trampling. Pros: It is visually appealing. Most player controlled equipment is very realistic... that's about it. If playing a game where doing nothing but driving tractors around, with little to no impact on how things turn out, this is your game.

Since so many other posts remark on the learning curve on this game, I will offer my own take. I did not find the learning curve very steep at all. However, having said that, there are many things that make accomplishing certain tasks, such as trade routes and issuing certain commands to a large number of ships a real pain the neck. Furthermore, mods to improve these issues were generally not even on the agenda of the developers until they were proven to be fairly successful by the modding community. (Hence the "bonus" pack downloadable from the **** site.) In other words, it takes some real effort to accomplish some of the tasks available in the game. (Not the kind of effort that takes skill, but the kind of effort that takes either a large amount of patience or boredom.) Egosoft has been very attentive to listening to the community about performance problems and have released quite a few patches and updates. My experience, however, was that one problem would be fixed in a patch, only to arise later in another. With the release of Albion Prelude, and the TC version 3.2 patch, I doubt very much that many more will be forthecoming; it is what it is. Now that my big complaints are out of the way, TC is probably one of my most favorite games of all time. The universe is pretty much yours to do whatever you feel like doing... exploring, trading, fighting... whatever. The graphics are great, gameplay was smooth, and most all glitches and exploits have all been addressed by the game developers. (Who, as I said, are pretty great at listening to the community even if they don't always agree with what they hear.) What I wish TC had more of was a more personal touch... to me, what's the fun of having a capital ship if you don't have thousands of crewman to boss around? Fighters should be manned by pilots who can gain skills and earn promotions, not drones that do what the onboard flight computer tells them to do. There is also very limited customization options available for ships. Certain ships are for certain tasks, no matter how you load them out. (Don't get me wrong, just having that option is pretty cool... just limited.) Boarding marines are pretty much just an abstract concept as being things you lob out the airlock to try and jack some other abstract pilot out of their ship. One dies? No biggy, we'll just train another one... which takes forever to do. Oh, and those big planets you see in the background? Usually their just part of the wallpaper and rarely actually rendered objects. The map tells you there's a few billion people living there. Neat. Big deal. A lot of my reviews focus on what is done wrong in a game, and this is no different. X3TC gets it mostly right. The variety of options and the plethora of means to accomplish them is the games strongest points. Add on that fairly decent eye candy and limited frustrations with bugs, you'll have a winner. It could be so much more though.

Changes made in X3 Albion Prelude (AP) are pretty much all changes that should have been made in Terran Conflict (TC). If you take it at face value, as a open end sandbox space combat/trade game that is meant to introduce the events leading up to the next X game in the series (rebirth), it is what it says. A person who never played any of the other X games will be quite content with what AP offers. However, for those who played XTC, it seems that all the changes that AP brings, such as expanded menu options, performance tweaks, ship boarding modifications, and a few extra ships, are all things that TC should have had but did not. The problem is AP lacks any of the meat of TC. They both feel like two unfinished halves **** whole, which sadly, comes across as an attempt to squeeze a few more dollars/euro out of the system they already had, while calling it something different.

Pretty much just a storytelling game. The extent to which a player actually effects the outcomes is fairly limited. Sure you can pin a murder on x when it was probably y, but... so what. You still slog through the story same as before. As far as graphics and gameplay complaints voiced by others, I did not experience any problems whatsoever. I ran the game on full graphics with minimal tweaks and did not experience any framerate or crash issues at all. The detail level was fairly impressive. This game will keep you busy for a day or two, but after that, you'll either be finished or bored, and it's replay value is non-existant.

I won't waste a lot of time repeating what's been said. I love open end games that take a lifetime to fully explore. However, one thing I absolutely despise are the "run around" quests in games that are basically there just to keep the player in the game so they can make claims that it takes x amount of hours to complete. Skyrim if full of these. Gets old real fast.

I disagree with the other posts complaints that the learning curve is too steep for this game. The game delivers pretty much what it states. I found the flight physics pretty refreshing from the typical 'point and shoot' simulators. Also, the seamless flow from system to system of from space to planet surface was a pretty neat change from most games of the genre. The graphics are pretty blah, even though I have all the settings on their highest. That alone doesn't bother me, but I have found some of the screenshots and trailer vids to be misleading. My largest and greatest complaint is the amount of bugs and crashes I experienced. Most would counter with, "what do you expect with a privately developed indie game," blah blah. Unless a game is free, I expect it to at least work. The problem is that a lot of the bugs you may not even realize you're experiencing. A lot of the rendered objects and menu options flip out on me, and unless you know there supposed to be there, you don't miss them. I also experience frequent crashes, which is extrememly uncharacteristic for my system. This game gets an A+ for imagination and creativity, but a D- on execution. If you don't mind donating $20 to support the indie industry, this game is for you. Otherwise, go take your grandma out for a burger.