A decent space flying game with a lot of variety in the gameplay... but also a very broken game.
X3: AP is about flying and doing whatever you like. "Whatever" in this particular case can mean a lot of things, such as fighting or trading or completing missions or playing with stock exchange, building your own fleet and base, exploring new territories... and most of these things are fun. When they work.
The flying is pretty good, and the gameworld consists of many small areas (which is pretty weird for a space game, I think), many of the mare quite similar, but the environments are impressive nonetheless. There is about 270 areas to explore, and flying to see new places is a joy in itself.
Combat is alright, but it could be better. It's not bad though, just very average. Fortunately, building your own fleet and base give a lot of satisfaction and are worth your time.
There are both main quest missions and generated random missions. While I can say that I quite like the randomized missions, which are varied and even interesting (for a generated ones), the main quests are simply... broken. Sometimes I could not complete a main quest because one of the missions bugged out. The story isn't really that interesting in the first place though, so you might as well forget about the storyline.
Trading is alright, just like combat, and it's a totally viable option too. If you don't want to fight, then trading is a good way to spend your time in this game, enjoyable when combined with exploration, and it's also the easiest way to generate a lot of money. Avoid stock exchange though, it's broken and developers never cared enough to fix it.
AI is dumb as bricks... or even worse. Autopilot crashes you into other ships (or "buildings") a lot, and if you are near gates, then sometimes a ship spans at your position and you explode. This is quite frustrating. Enemies are easy to out-maneouver.
The sounds in this game... are bad. You should accept the fact that apparently there is air in space and you hear sounds of everything around you, while explosions look very... Earthy. Sounds disappoint, but music is great and differentiates a lot between various areas. Some of the tracks are great to listen to even outside of the game.
X3: Albion Prelude is even larger than previous X games. It has more territories and more ships. It's a decent game well worth a purchase, and probably the best to play in the series, especially if you have never played any X game before. I recommend it to those who like space action games (some people wrongly describe it as "space simulator", do not get mistaken, there is no simulation in this game) and sandbox games where they just play around without any specific goal, and I recommend it to those who have never tried any space game before as X3: AP is a good way to check out if you like the genre. Overall, a good game, but quite bugged.
X3: AP is about flying and doing whatever you like. "Whatever" in this particular case can mean a lot of things, such as fighting or trading or completing missions or playing with stock exchange, building your own fleet and base, exploring new territories... and most of these things are fun. When they work.
The flying is pretty good, and the gameworld consists of many small areas (which is pretty weird for a space game, I think), many of the mare quite similar, but the environments are impressive nonetheless. There is about 270 areas to explore, and flying to see new places is a joy in itself.
Combat is alright, but it could be better. It's not bad though, just very average. Fortunately, building your own fleet and base give a lot of satisfaction and are worth your time.
There are both main quest missions and generated random missions. While I can say that I quite like the randomized missions, which are varied and even interesting (for a generated ones), the main quests are simply... broken. Sometimes I could not complete a main quest because one of the missions bugged out. The story isn't really that interesting in the first place though, so you might as well forget about the storyline.
Trading is alright, just like combat, and it's a totally viable option too. If you don't want to fight, then trading is a good way to spend your time in this game, enjoyable when combined with exploration, and it's also the easiest way to generate a lot of money. Avoid stock exchange though, it's broken and developers never cared enough to fix it.
AI is dumb as bricks... or even worse. Autopilot crashes you into other ships (or "buildings") a lot, and if you are near gates, then sometimes a ship spans at your position and you explode. This is quite frustrating. Enemies are easy to out-maneouver.
The sounds in this game... are bad. You should accept the fact that apparently there is air in space and you hear sounds of everything around you, while explosions look very... Earthy. Sounds disappoint, but music is great and differentiates a lot between various areas. Some of the tracks are great to listen to even outside of the game.
X3: Albion Prelude is even larger than previous X games. It has more territories and more ships. It's a decent game well worth a purchase, and probably the best to play in the series, especially if you have never played any X game before. I recommend it to those who like space action games (some people wrongly describe it as "space simulator", do not get mistaken, there is no simulation in this game) and sandbox games where they just play around without any specific goal, and I recommend it to those who have never tried any space game before as X3: AP is a good way to check out if you like the genre. Overall, a good game, but quite bugged.