It wasn't anywhere near the way I like to play a space game.
All the added complexity of flying from here to there.
Giant, mostly empty station to waste my time walking long distances in station environments, that lacked anything of interest and characters looked like 3D assets from the 90's.
I get that Egosoft isn't Ubisoft with hundreds of people creating assets. But Egosoft didn't seem to make X4 according to their resources anymore.
Everything from XbtF to the last X3 played to the particular strengths of Egosoft's small team.
Especially XbtF and Xtension, with the whimsical races and great story elements.
In X4, tech was overwhelming everything else. And space flight required the use of 'highways' in space to get anywhere fast. I bought it and played it for a few hours.
Even following along the quest line was difficult - figuring out where to continue turned out to be a futile exercise. I probably could have looked it up on some website. But I wanted to play, not read websites about playing.
And whatever happened to X3's fabulous and super-quick menu?
Egosoft basically pulled the same maneuver that killed Netscape, when they rewrote their browser from scratch without pressing need, and lost its browser monopoly in the process.
I suspect that X4 nearly killed Egosoft too. But they pulled through, which is good, since there is no other company like this
I'll be on board for this one.
Much thanks to the crew who did this!!
)
