X4: Discovery Pack (X4: Foundations + X4: Timelines)

X4 on-boarding is rough. The controls are all over the place and the tutorials are bare-bone. Underneath however lies a gem of a game with an unmatched sense of scale. You can own and/or pilot everything you're eyes can lay on, from the small fighter to the 10km wide space station. You can custom build your stations and gear them to produce goods and even ships, that you'll then be able to plug into the global economy or use for yourself. As everything can be adjusted and automated you can craft the perfect war economy and take over the universe, sectors after sectors... or don't and hone your pilot skills in missions for the other factions or delve into piracy! -1 star for all the jank you have to go through to best experience this game! But it is definitely a warm recommendation from me. Hop on the official discord for help!

The game looks good from the reviews but once you play it you will realize what a mess it is. The game is also designed to drive the player insane. 1. Suicidal destroyers, simply put the destoryers can not attack the station without getting themseleves blown up. It doesnt matter that their weapons outrage station turrets. Since there is no awarness of where the enemies are (crappy AI) ships just fly into enemy guns. So you constantly have to babysit them and keep them away from the enemies. 2. Ships flying about doing their own things have no idea that they are flying into the enemy guns. They just fly into them and once they get hit they panic. Its pure nonsense. 3. The AI is horrible. Some ships cant fly though the sector without stopping and trying to fly different ways to get to the highway for example. They do zig zag when finding a path to highway. 4. Xenon is nowhere to be seen. I decided to help them on the east part of the map and took Teladi out but since the game is designed to react to wars, Xenon isnt taking Teladi secotrs because there is no fighting. On the west part of the map Xenon is not able to fight back because overpowered Hop and Ant took all their sectors and destroyed all Xenon. 5. Its been more than 5 years and the game still does not have the Ignore setting under the pirate haressment. This is ridiculous and only designed to mess with the player. Most ships could make it to their destinations and outrun pirates if we had them ignore pirates. These are just few points that wont ever get fixed. I dont recommend the game.

The best entry of the X-series yet! Downsides: The UI is definitely clunky; some choices are not the best for UX. The NPC AI is limited, flawed and often janky; ships absolutely will get stuck on stations sometimes. The station economy barely limps along on its own in the long run, and balance - particularly between different ship classes - is lacking. People animations and voice acting are basic (but then that is hopefully not what you came here for). Its learning curve is fairly steep. Despite all of this: The logistics/economy simulation is one of the best I've seen in a singleplayer space game. You can acquire and build almost any ship in the game, including the largest. You can prop up your favorite factions, or go out and conquer the galaxy for yourself. You can hunt pirates, or be one. You can design and build your own stations, trade inputs and outputs with factions or go for full vertical integration and build ships from resources you mine by yourself. You can be friends with everyone or declare a one-faction war against the whole network. You can go from flying individual fighters, to flying XL-class ships, to delegating all the flying to your employees and focusing on managing your empire instead. X4 offers a complicated, involved universe with a number of factions vying for power, filled with a mixture of strife and cooperation. More than anything else, this serves to provide a sandbox for the player to interact with in whatever ways they choose. You are likely to not enjoy X4 much if you'd prefer to focus entirely on either the high-level management and planning layer, or on flying ships yourself. If, however, both those are up your alley and you can see past its weaknesses though, I recommend you give it a try. Technical notes: I've run the GOG Linux versions of X4 versions 6, 7.00 and 7.10 hotfix 2. All installed and ran fine for me, after some poking to make them work on my (fairly unusual) system setup.

I'm so glad I stumbled across this game recommendation in a Reddit thread, because it's about as close to the perfect space sim/strategy game that I could ask for. Don't get me wrong, it's not without its flaws (some bugs here and there; steep learning curve; graphics feel a bit outdated for a 2018 game), but it takes the strongest aspects of games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, Mount & Blade, and combines them all into one! Not to mention Star Citizen is STILL nowhere near finished, so this scratches my itch in all the right places.