July 21, 2006 - Not a whole lot of games come along that make you look at them and say "Woah. That's pretty impressive." Some do it with the graphics. Some do it with the scope of gameplay. Some do it with sectors that are so ridiculously huge that, even on your fastest speed with 1000% time compression, you still take a few minutes to cross the entire area, from north to south, and then make a few dozen of these areas for you to fly around in.
Take a guess at which one of these categories X3: Reunion falls into. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Okay, so, did you choose? Well, if you guessed 'all of the above,' then you might have just won a car.

X3 takes place in the curtly-named X Universe, one far removed from our own galaxy. In the main story of the game, you take the role of Julian Brennan, the son of a pilot from Earth, who must fight off the threat of the unfortunately-named Khaak while discovering that something else wants to destroy everything around you. Normally it wouldn't be a bad story, but in the immense sandbox that is this universe, it's easy to forget that there is a story going on. If you don't feel like following a plot as Julian, you don't have to, and instead can start up games of other characters, whether you're a bankrupt pirate hated by all, a respected trader, or an explorer.

What makes this game extremely different from most space shooters is that it is not, in essence, a space shooter. Yes, the action takes place behind the view of a cockpit, and you can fly around the universe and shoot things until they explode in a violent kaboom of debris and loot, but if you play this game believing that you and your ship is all it will take to defeat the penetrative force of the Khaak and whatever else threatens you, you will have a very difficult journey ahead of you.

In fact, the game is more of a business-building game, albeit approached from a very different angle than most. See, one man can not take on an entire race of destructive force without a load of credits at his back, and even if you take on a few flight jobs, it's going to be tough to progress far in the game. To put it in perspective: a good job that you can qualify for in the beginning of the game can net you two or three thousand credits. Finding jobs is mostly luck, since they appear on the bulletin board at each station you stop on. They don't appear often, and even if they do, you have to have the right ship, and a high enough rank to run them. Now, considering that payoff, know that repairing just one percent of damage afflicted to the hull of your ship costs, on the first ship you start the main game with, a little over three thousand credits. One percent. A single standard weapon can cost a little under thirty thousand credits itself. Suffice to say, bulletin board jobs soon stop being a main source of income.

What this game is mostly about is commerce. Capitalism, pure and simple. There are many space stations scattered throughout the various sectors that you'll travel between, selling everything from highly advanced circuitry to beef. The real way to make any sort of profit in this game is to get that circuitry, beef, or narcotic, from a place where you can buy it low to a place where you can sell it high. It's Economics 101, really, since it's all a matter of supply and demand, checking the stations that have a high supply, and finding those that don't. Eventually you can buy bigger, better ships, better equipped to take out the various pirates and Khaak that would like nothing better than to see you dead. Then, when you really get good and rich, all sorts of venues open up, such as creating and transporting your own stations. I'm talking setting up your own supply routes that other ships will run for their own profit, as you pocket the change. It is possible to make entire sectors become your own commercial playground, full of stations with supply ships flying between them, making products that sell for high product, while you galavant around the galaxy shooting stuff.

Unfortunately, economics does not an make an exciting game. The majority of your time, at least in the beginning, will be spent looking at the empty void of space while your autopilot takes you to the next gate or space station. To say that this is slow would be like saying water is a little wet. Early into the game you obtain a device known as a Singularity Engine Time Accelerator (SETA for short.) Essentially this is a black hole that warps time around you to make it time pass faster. What this means for the game is that you can reduce the time it takes for you to get from point A to point B, up to 10x. Unfortunately, it usually feels that this is not enough. Just getting to a space station in the middle of a sector takes uncomfortably long, but when you need to travel through multiple sectors to get to your destination, well, have something put aside to occupy your time while you wait. Keep in mind this is a device on your ship, and like all other devices, it can be destroyed. And if it is, well, you're in for a very long and very dull journey ahead of you.

When you start the game, profits are so low (due to your very limited cargo space) that it feels like you're going nowhere fast. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, just a warning. While it is excruciating to get anywhere, money-wise, when you do finally purchase your first cruiser, your first ship that has enough power to take out a small battalion, or your first space station, it feels so darn good to have reached such a point that the previous time spent to get there is completely validated. This, of course, is not the same for everyone, and so if you plan on going near this game, you have to remember that things come to those who wait.