A great sim that's not for the impatient.
When X3 first came out, it had a TON of bugs, so people gave it bad review. These people were also impatient. You need to give this game time and patience to get into it.
Now, it is 2008. X3 is a whole new game. No bugs anywhere. The game developer, Egosoft has added tons of bonus content ot make amends for the bad start.
Okay, now let's pretend you don't know what the hell I'm talking about. In X3, you play as space pilot in that lives and works in a group of star linked together by jump gates called the X Universe. Your character, if you follow the plot, gets involved in fighting back a hostile alien race called the Kha'ak. The story isn't what you call fresh, and the original story writers need lessons in level design, but whatever. Following the plot is an option, thankfully. It also shows how free-form the game is.
Both the graphics and gameplay make X3 shine. The graphics, even for a 2005 game, are amazing and can give the Xbox 360 a run for its money, if you have settings on high. They're that good.
As for the immersive gameplay, you can do pretty much anything. Be a trader, a pirate, whatever. This next part is what caused original reviews to sink. The gameplay's pace is slow. Some parts of the game can get boring. However, once you get the in game credits, you do a lot more stuff. But to get to that stuff, you have to work your way up. The average player (playing without cheat scripts) starts with a basic fighter equipped with some weapons and upgrades. The only map you have is the one of the system you are in. You have to explore to reveal the other systems. You then would have to find work that gives you some easy money. Not a lot, but you have to work your way up. Once you get going, you can buy more upgrades for your ships. Eventually, you can buy a whole new ship, or even a space station to manufacture goods to sell on a dynamically changing economy that tries to be like the real world economy. After lots of gameplay hours and money making, you can go as far as to buying capital ships. Awesome, isn't it? Remember, it will take a very long time to get that far into the game, but in the end, seeing a fleet of ships that you saved up for and bought give your enemies a butt kicking is worth it. If you demand a fast paced game, you won't find it here.
Now every game has its bad spots. This game has no tutorial. But don't let that scare you. The version 2 manual will easily help you. Keep it within arms reach, and you can get past any tough spot that involves learning the game.
The plot also isn't that good. While the story gets the job done for this game, its poor execution is annoying. Once you get into the story, the game imposes gameplay limits to make an incentive to finish the missions created by level designers who need to take lessons about what they do. Grrrr... At one part in the game, you may lose that empire of stations you have built thanks to poorly implemented twist in the storyline. The rewards for completing the story also aren't great.
Don't let that stuff scare you. You are getting on awesome game for $20-30 (not sure how much). Just don't get the original version. You'll have to download the patches. Get the Game of the Year or 2.0 editions.
This game will show you that the space sim series isn't dead. : )