A classic meld between Space and Trading, but only worth it if you have the time!
Beyond all those negative aspects lies a brilliant game, it has amazing graphics, each ship is nicely designed and individual (it wasn't the case to begin with, but patching sorted that out) the backgrounds are simply beautiful and the stations look like they do what they claim to! (e.g. giant solar arrays for solar power plants).
The gameplay allows you to take different pathways, or all of them at once, you can be a fighter and kill or capture pirate ships, or you can turn pirate and kill and capture ships of one of the 5 good races Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split and Teladi. There are multiple classes of fighters and for each fighter class there are multiple variants of that ship as well as pirate varieties which have their own specifications - the vanilla fighter is usually balanced amongst all its attributes, the vanguard edition focusses on weapons (i think), the sentinel on defence and the raider on speed and weapons (at the expense of shields) the pirates have their own variations of the vanguard and vanilla, I have yet to see a pirate sentinel class ship. There are 3 classes of fighters - scout (M5), light fighter (M4) and heavy fighter (M3) usually players start off in a light fighter of the Argon race (each race has its own ships) and from there the universe is open to them to do with as they please! You can own corvette class ships (M6), as well as the huge station transport class ships and carriers and destroyers all that can hold their own fighter wings and big big big guns!! To buy ships from each race you need to build up relations with them either through fighting or trading the higher the class of ship the better your relations need to be with them.
The trading system in this game is fairly straight forwards, factories in each sector require supplies of various different things to make products, the lower their supplies the higher the price they are willing to pay and vice versa. The same can be said of the produce of factories, the higher the surplus the lower the price. Trading can be done manually (indeed you have to at the start) or when you have enough money, software can be bough to automate the process (Trade software MK3 available from your local Terracorp HQ and Teladi equipment docks) Its a great way to make a bit of money whilst you galavant around in your fighter. There is also the opportunity to build factories or even (if you are brave) build complexes of factories (would recommend you having a look at the egosoft forums before you do for some tips) and sell your wares to the universe, you can open your ports to all traders to come and buy and sell or you can just have your own transports running your supplies. Eventually (if you have the latest patch) you will be given the opportunity to own your own sector and have your very own Player HQ where you can even give your ships custom paint jobs and reverse engineer other ships so that you may build them yourself!!! (I'm not this far along yet, only recently started playing again!)
The soundtrack is suitably "spacey" with very chilled out tunes serenading you as you zip or crawl across the sectors, changing when you get into close proximity of trouble, by trouble I mean anyone that is likely to fight you and that shows up as a red target (usually pirates, Xenon or Khaak if you are playing nicely) to something faster paced. The voice acting, as usual with space games, is corny and the dialogue can be annoying, but other times funny, probably unintentionally, when lines cut into each other e.g. killing a pirate ship piloted by a member of the split race: "Split say..AAARRRGGGGHHHH!"
This game is open ended so there is no limit to what you can do even after you finish the main plotline, that's if you actually choose to finish it, or if you are like me you may choose to do a couple of missions (enough to get a free jump drive and transporter) and then just do your own thing, it will take you hours to even explore all the sectors that are available. Will you choose the path of the trader, the fighter or something in between, can you be bothered to build factories, or would you prefer to just have automated sector and universe traders running. Starforce protection is gone now with the latest patch, so those that used to be worried about it messing up your system need worry no more and the latest patch even makes the game nocd so you can spare your precious dvd. It is also available via the steam client.
The one thing I really should mention is that this game is long, the amount of time you need to put in to get a decent ship can be daunting!!! Also the experience you get out of this game is dependant on the work you put in, if you cant be bothered to learn the controls and the interface, explore and simply mess around and get to know how the universe works you aren't going to get a lot out this game, chances are you would stop playing and say its rubbish. For those with the time and the perseverance, X3 is a amazing open ended game which presents you with a universe where what you see from ships to stations can all be yours, you can be a sole pilot, with one ship tooled up and blasting away, or you can have a full fleet and wipe out sectors indiscriminately. Build giant station complexes and have a fleet of traders or pirate other traders cargo!!!
X3 is one of those games I just keep coming back to I simply love the freedom, sometimes I will jump in my scout and simply zip around doing BBS missions (missions offered by individual stations) other times I'll get into my heavy fighter and blow some pirates away then go looking for bargains in one of my trade ships! This game has the potential to be an amazing game for some people, but be honest with yourself before you purchase it, do you have the time and the tenacity to learn the game first and the patience to find out what this game has to offer? If you do, prepare to lose many hours to the universe that is X3.