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.
