X Rebirth

[Skybird]

It has been an uphill battle the last two days, but I fight myself back into liking XR more.

I quit on the official campaign, and this immediately gave some relief. Maybe this is the most important message to get put to potential customer: ignore the campaign. The campaign seems to be more seriously bugged, than the sandbox (=free) play, and its the free play you like more in these type of open world games anymore. Well, I certainly do.

With the related bugs gone, I had more willingness and time to focus on other aspects of the gameplay. These however are unfortunately badly documented, and so I had a lot of switching between gaming and forum search.

I discovered the versatility of drones in the game, which actually almost completely compensate for the fact that you fly only one ship - dogfighting with drones is fun, for example. Or spying, scouting, and more. I need to learn more about their options, however, and their automatic modes.

I am also approaching the point where I can buy my first additional ship. They have split trading into two classes now: small-item related trading which you do personally in the style you know from Elite-kind of games, and industrial mass transports, which you just organize, but do not fly yourself with your ship, you need your own fleet of trading ships for that. That actually is a clever feature. You do the desktop job only, but while the transaction goes on,. you can spend your own ship'S time doing something different, or watch your freighter getting loaded and unloaded from the cockpit of your own ship, if you are close by.

I also want to find out if I can buy me a second combat ship, having it escorting me. Or a whole squadron. Drones can be comm anded via communicated commands, orders can be given to your freighters. Why not ordering your other ships to follow you into a battle? Would be cool, with drones it seems to be possible.

I read that there is the option to not buy stations, but actually build them, piece by piece. You need to organize the needed money and resources in time. You seem to be able to watch it at scene.

The menu structure I still do not like, and I often have fired missiles by mistake when just wanting to do a scan, and some more mishaps of this kind. The way you interact with individuals on stations is time-consuming and repetitive, counteracting in a way the new trading scheme with industrial mass goods as outlined above.

Far fewer bugs in free play. That is the important message to get.

The game has had a very rough start, and they made some bad mistakes on the release procedure. The title already has so bad ratings that I currently cannot see it fully recovering from that first blow, it gets massacred everywhere. Well, their bad, they could have avoided that. However, they claim it is the top number one seller at Steam currently. They will need to fight hard to gain back terrain they mindlessly lost in just the first few hours o the release. The game needs time to get into it, yes, but it seems to be worth it. One needs to tame it, so to speak, but I find it increasingly rewarding. They promised patches and changes, and support going beyond just one or two hotfixes.

Don't let this title down too easily, guys. Plenty of detail and complexity under the hood and behind the superficial shine. The future looks bright!

P.S. Some bugs are confirmed to be linked to French and German releases only, especially sound-related bugs. It is also confirmed they are on these, and the others as well.