X4: Split Vendetta

Egosoft decided to make many game improvements and release them as a free patch, alongside the content-heavy paid DLC. As such, I'll be reviewing the DLC alongside the underlying improvements. How's the game after the patch? Stable, far less buggy, faster, prettier, and the controls are smoother. And I'm playing it on Linux. And they've added in a few Quality of Life settings, such as the UI scale slider - makes playing from the couch easy. The DLC adds systems, ships, modules, tech, story, you name it. Bigger, meaner, but it would have been for nothing if not for the improvements delivered in the free patch. With them, it's great DLC content. I've also just played the tutorial (I jumped straight into the game at launch, so this might've been in from the start), and it's very good. Does a good job explaining the basics, but it goes further: after explaining a mechanic, the game will let you experience its alternative setting (if it exists), and pop a dialogue allowing you to set it as you prefer right there and then, in the tutorial (e.g. axis inversion, pitch/yaw adaptive switching). Yes, there is actual QoL now in the X series we know and love. Oh, and the tiny intro movies that play when choosing game starts do a great job at explaining the starting situation and how it reflects on the story. I do have some complaints; while the alt-tab or save crashes are gone, the game engine does pause for ~5 seconds on alt-tab or graphics setting change. Also, the Linux version of the game wasn't available on launch, even after 8 hours or intermittent checking. I could download it after 24 hours; an annoyance, since I did pay for the DLC in full, on launch. Still, these are minor issues - if these are the things I'm complaining about, then the DLC (and the patch) must be great. And they are.

New ships. Bigger map. New alien race to start as. Great stuff! They also added some quality of life stuff to make the game a little more intuitive.However, it's still got a long way to go, especially on the galaxy map. It's so convoluted that it's somewhat detrimental to gameplay and unnecessarily steepens the learning curve. For example, if you want to remotely control a ship, you get two different command lists if you right-click on the ship vs if you left-click first and then right-click. There's also left-clicking on one object and then scrolling to find your ship to then right-click it for specific commands. If you miss your click, you clear the selections and have to start all over. It took me 5 tries to get my docked trading ship to fly to a specific station and dock. To be honest, I'm not even sure if I sent it to the right station as it's impossible to easily see details and drill them down.

Thought this would be as buggy as the base game release, but it hasn't been for me. I *LOVE* the new ships, and the damned ugly Split aberrations. I'll update this review as I play on, but so far - it's perfect.

Nice new ships which look great and a nice bigger map. It was worth the wait! 10/10 so far