This, or X3 Albion Prelude (basically "the newest" X3). With X3, there isn't any "input for beginners" that'd fit into a single forum post. X3 is HUGE. The only "input for beginners" that doesn't leave out the majority of options is "Go read a wiki". There's so much stuff you can do, so many routes to take... It's impossible to give any real advice.

Personally, I'd recommend to start with X:BtF. It's relatively "short" if you only play it for the story (don't play it for trading and building stations - it sucks), but it's worth it. X:BtF basically gives you all the background story to the X universe and does a really good job in making you feel lost in a foreign galaxy. It'll change how you see things in the later games. It's... just a bit weird sometimes... Fighters are slow and capital ships are freaking fast - makes sense when you think about non-existant air drag, zero gravity and the size of the engines, but... It just feels wrong and looks SUPER weird, if you know what I mean.

If you really don't care for any story, X2 is a good start for people who want to get into "typical" X-gameplay. You get to fly all the different ships, can build your own stations, assign your own freighters to do the needed trading to keep your stations running, etc. It already has everything that made the X games great. Yet it doesn't overwhelm you with a million possibilities (only with a few hundred thousand ;P). X2 is a pretty good "tutorial" for X3. Playing it for ~50 hours will be a good preparation for X3. If you want the most freedom, then X3 is your game. Linearity? Non. Most jobs? Yup (but that's probably nothing you'll want to waste your time with - believe me, you'll have enough own work to do). Most ships? DEFINITELY YES!

But be warned: X3TC can be frustrating if you don't know anything about the games (Albion Preludes is "easier")! Forget "I grew up with flight sims". X3 isn't a space sim. It looks like one and feels like one during the first few (dozen) hours. But sooner or later you'll reach a point where you'll need a destroyer to do a mission. You'll look for lucrative jobs to earn the shitload of money that a destroyer costs. You'll realize that it'll take too long to earn the money with bill-board jobs, so you'll spend some of your money to set up a few freighters to do some trading for you (learning and doing this takes a few hours). And when you finally have enough money for your destroyer, you'll realize that shields and weapons are prettty hard to get. Then you'll start to google stuff and find forum posts that tell you how to get a good equipped destroyer "for free" - you'll only have to start a new game, because you'll need a specific start scenario to get the ship. Sucks? Yeah, well, that's X3 ;)

You'll start a new game, get your destroyer and you'll feel like the most badass pilot in the whole universe. You won't regret starting a new game, because "fixing" your old game would've taken much longer. You enjoy the game, build a small trading fleet, build a few stations, follow some of the plot lines... And then you'll get the "The Hub" plot. First few missions are annoying, but still doable with some work. But then... then comes the point where you finally realize that X isn't a space sim, but a tycoon game! Remember how you started a new game, because you realized that you wasted hours to get 15 million Credits for a weak destroyer? Well, now you'll need a few hundred million credits to build hundreds of factories to do the mission. Buying the ressources to keep your factories running will be way to expensive, so you'll have to build other factories that'll produce the resources you need. These factories will need energy cells so you'll have to produce them too. And you'll need a ridiculously huge fleet to transport your ressources from A to B. To prevent that, you'll have to learn how to build complexes (different stations conneceted to each other). There goes your space sim ;)

Chances are huge you'll want to skip this mission and keep on playing your little space sim. But you'll sense that there must be a very special reward for it. Something you'll want to have. When you google it, you'll feel that you have no other choice than to do this mission, or stop playing the game because you'll feel that you totally suck at it. This reward (more precisely: the reward for the plot after this one) is worth every single second of your time. And while it is the ultimate reward of the game, it is just the starting point to an even harder part of the game. But one that you can't miss!

That was my first experience with X3 Terran Conflict. And I already knew a lot of things from X2! I'm not someone who reads a walktrhough or wiki before I play a game. But X3TC is just too overwhelming. You'll learn new things even after you've played the game for more than 100 hours already. It isn't non hand-holding "slow" gameplay. There isn't a "steep learning curve". When you think you understood how the game works, you'll find/try something new and have to learn again. No matter how good you are, you'll always find something that is "impossible" to do - until you finally did it!




X3TC is awesome! But it isn't a space sim. You can play it as a space sim, but you'll hit some walls really fast. That's the point where you have to decide if you want to stay in your little world or if you want to waste some serious amount of time with a game. I've probably dumped more than 1000 hours into X3 O.O

Albion Prelude is supposed to be a lot easier (didn't play it as much as Terran Conflict). You'll get the big rewards without having to build hundreds of factories and reach the "endgame" (I hate that word) faster. And with the stock exchange (not in X3TC), you don't have to build a huge trading empire to get some good income. There's still a lot to do, but things go a bit faster. X3TC was really extreme at some points (frustrating for most people), so they changed that with this expansion.