*arrives*
I saw this thread and decided to myself that I simply must post a review for you guys.
I am a big X2 junkie. I have played it ever since I got it with my XFX graphics card I bought about 2 years ago. I had been looking forward to this sequel ever since they announced it way back last January. The screenshots made me drool and I thought it was going to be so cool.
I payed 56$ to get a copy of X3 early from Europe at gogamer. When it arrived at my doorstep thanks to Fedex overnight shipping I frantically opened the package and proceeded to install it(all 6 CDs). To be perfectly honest I have been VERY disappointed so far. I will start from the beginning. First impressions: the intro movie sucked. There is no other way to put it. Poor voice acting and video quality. All along at first I kept telling myself "oh, a game can still be good without a good intro...after all look at freespace 2" and witheld further judgement until later. I proceeded to the main menu and got a CTD, and after a second try the same thing happened. Ugh. I went and downloaded the patch and the problem was fixed. I then started a new game and I discovered to my great dismay that my ship did not have a cockpit. To make matters worse the interface on the screen was one of the worst and blockiest that I have ever seen before. This is doubtlessly one of the side effects of the console neutering that X3 underwent about 2 months before release. I continued playing. I then discovered to my horror that they had recycled most of the X2 graphics and sounds in some way, shape, form or fashion. Speech was still not synchronized with the graphics. The list goes on and on. My biggest complaint, however, was the performance hit. Here are my comps specs:
AMD X2 4800+ @ 2.74 Ghz
1536 mb of DDR @ 433mhz
BFG GF 7800GT @ 550mhz
SATA, RAID, the whole shibang
I have one of the most advanced computers that you can buy right now, performance should simply not be an issue. After about 3 hours of playing (and several CTDs), a broken story, and interface annoyances I closed the game and never have opened it since.
I never have been so disappointed about a game in my life. I have been looking forward to this game for nearly an year and I feel egosoft has really let me down. The XBOX neutering and them trying to kick this thing out the door before it was ready were probably most responsible. Boo hoo.
Luckily a few days later I found Eve-Online and started playing Freespace 2 again. These are 2 games that were done right and have withstood the test of time. If you are thinking about buying X3 you may want to hold off until they release the next couple of patches to increase system performance and to fix the many many different bugs.
{ /rant }
