X4: Foundations

It takes everything I love from all my favorite space sims and puts them into a single game. I love that you can build your fleets any way you want.

Want to claim the galaxy for yourself via war? Go for it.
Trade Empire? You got it.
Mining monopoly? Yessir.
Space exploration? Absolutley.
Lone Merc taking contracts? Yuuup.
Want to pilot your own ship in an immersive 1st person? Of course.
Action combat in the 3rd person? Hell yeah.

You can command entire fleets from a map and manage their resources or tactically command a squad in the middle of a dogfight from the seat of your own fighter. Build space stations. Board ships. Whatever you want.

All in a constantly simulated universe. So the game goes on without you, meaning you can take your time building your empire or just learning the ropes.

Open sandbox or narrative driven adventure? It has both.

I am only 16 hours in and I am obsessed. I can see myself playing this for the next few years EASY.

Space capitalist simulator.
Start in a small space ship and end up being the leading force in the galaxy.

Build space stations, exploit minerals to turn them into usable wares. Use those wares to make more complex wares, Use those wares to build ships. Sell them, or use them to build your own navy.
Set up factions to each others throat, more wars means more profit.

Or just be everyone friends and fight the Xenon threat.

You can be a pirate, a trader, a real estate magnate.

Anything you wish.

Truly a masterpiece.

It's the first time I've hit 100 hours in a game and felt like I've gotten relatively nothing accomplished but still managed to have fun.

This game is not for everyone most sure. But if it clicks with you, prepare to be lost in it. I'm over 150 hours in (began playing GOG version, then repurchased on Steam to use workshop and get faster updates), and feel like I just scratched the surface.

Very good game and totally addictive, love the ships, and the space you fly around in, and the lovely sky boxes in each new area. I like the way the game plays out with the stories and such. My only issue is there is a huge learning curve when you first start to play the game, with all the menu's what each one is for and what everything does. There is tutorials in the game but i dont think theres enough to explane everything there is that you can do. Other than that loving it so far 245.4 hours in only in a few weeks, man thats nuts.

x4 is my favorite space game. its what i always wanted in a space game. u can fly around in a small ship by yourself doing missions or u can make a huge fleet and go to war or u can build space stations and do business and profits and all that. its got a lot of ships and weapon types and a big universe to explore its great.

X4 is a difficult game to get into, but once you do get into it it's great fun. It gets a recommend from me.

I played almost 1400 hour's in this game. It got it up's and down, but by far it a great game. None other comes close. Early game there more action where late you mostly watching the map controlling your empire and fleet's. Think Grunt to admiral. I will put many more hour's into this game. The only bad thing i could ever say about it, is i cannot enjoy it with my friends. Besides that it one of my most favorite game's of all times.

The new update is amazing! The ships fly so well! In 2025 would definitely recommend to players who are looking for a sandbox game with unlimited potential. Thank you developers.

lowkey a game that ive always looked for but never found, do you like building an empire? do you like being influential on the ai economy? do you like being able make 2 factions go to war? do you like taking over the universe? do you like building stations in space? then this game is for you, the amount of times ive started a save over to learn something new i could do is absolutely insane, plus some awesome mods that make the game more fun and especially with the new flight model update coming, this game is just getting awesome, and its just gonna continue to become the best space game IMO in the world, with how much you can do nothing can beat this

Since X1 this series has always kept me engaged. X4 is no small game and you can get whatever you want from it.

Just want to fly around getting incremental upgrades and blowing stuff up? you can
want to engage in storyline missions? you can
want to be a simple trader? you can
want to build a giant capitalist empire? you can
want to topple governments and conquer space? you can

Editor's Note about 100 hours after my review:
They have taken the gate and Hatikvah's Choice I. We have rallied to the gate from Argon Prime but can not hold them for long. We cannot get out. Signals, from beyond the gate. We cannot get out. They are coming.

TL:DR Game is complicated but also makes it easy to learn the systems you want. Much recommend.

I've never heard of the X series until like, 3 weeks ago when I heard that it was a 4x Grand Strategy game where you have to manage things on a micro and macro scale. I have a love/hate relationship with complicated games (2,500 hours in HoI4) and when I heard there was a Star Wars mod for this, I decided to grab it since it was on sale. Turns out the Star Wars mod requires like 4 different DLC, which I did not grab. Damn.

ANYWAYS, on to the actual review.
This game is... interesting. There's, if I remember correctly, TWENTY-ONE tutorials you can play to learn various mechanics, and they don't cover everything. For a first impression, that did not give me a lot of confidence. HOWEVER, I now understand why that's necessary. You don't have to interact with a lot of the systems if you don't want to. Want to be a dedicated pilot who operates just their one ship completing missions, trading, or doing mercenary work for someone? Sure! Just play the pilot tutorials to learn how to pilot a ship and you're all set. Don't want to put the effort into piloting and instead want to run a mining company? Go look at how NPCs work and how to manage a station. BAM, now you've got your own mining operation turning ore for $60 into refined metal into hull parts for $200. You don't even need to pilot beyond landing at your first station and spending half your starting cash on an NPC!

Been playing a merc for 40 hours and only did the piloting tutorials and now want to make a space station? Fear not, the 21 tutorials allow you to play whichever tutorial you want at any time. Just hop into the space station tutorial to learn how that works and then apply it to your run!

If you want a more indepth review of generalized content, you can probably find some on youtube from someone much more experienced than I am. I may be 140ish hours in, but this is only my 2nd run and I've got a LOT to learn. Anyways, time for a review of my playtime:

I started a run as the basic start where I had to go do stuff, but had no real idea of how anything worked. I got a mission to go drop resource probes, but had no idea how getting resource probes worked. Rather than worry about that, I decided "You know what, I'm bored. Let's go do a sandbox run." HOLY SHIT, do I love the sandbox. There's 2 different versions. One lets you do everything from the get-go, the other is based off how much you've done and experienced. I chose the 2nd one because I like being able to track my progress. For my starting settings, I decided I wanted to be a mining company supporting the Argon/Antigone factions against HOP and so spent 2/3rds of my initial funding on setting up in a sector there with a few starting miners.
After an ungodly amount of time, and I mean probably like 60+ hours, I've finally turned my mining company into the worst "A Rearmament Group Organizational Network" you've ever seen. Not only do we mine stuff, but we also turn that mined stuff into other things, which get turned into other things, which get turned into EVEN MORE THINGS, and finally get turned into ships. These ships are purchased by Argon/Antigone and, because I (was) set up on the border, these ships are produced MID-INVASION and immediately sent to reinforce. This may sound psychotic, but it works. Antigone managed to not only fend off HOP's massive invasions that would level half the sector at the start, but managed to push south out into the HOP sector, taking it over.
That brings us to now. I'm, I think, 100ish hours into this current run. I have 8 miners working to gather me raw materials with escorts of 5 or 10 fighters depending on location. Pirates ignore regular shipbuilding and simply appear out of thin air, which angers me greatly and has resulted in a massive bulk up of escorts there. In addition, I managed to purchase my first ship, a Large ship, the Behemoth Destroyer. It's a carrier, but with bigger guns and is cheaper. It's super weird. I'm attempting to get the player HQ, but I want to find a new sector that'll be good to start establishing in before I do it. While my scout does scouting, I figured I'd leave a review because this game is fantastic.

Anyways I gotta run, the xenon have come in force to push the Argon Federation out of Hatikvah's Choice I and are currently winning. I need to see what I can scramble to mount a counteroffensive before they blast through into Argon Prime itself. War is good for business, but I'd rather my northern flank survive than all my meager funding being spent towards barely holding the xenon back.

Hard to describe, its a deep space sim like Elite Dangerous, Its also a polished mature rts/economy sim/strategy game. Its like having two games in one, switchable instantly with a press of "M" key. Game reaches its potential after initial few mission. Most of the yt videos don't do justice to the depth that gameplay has.

Base building is interesting, but placing modules is janky i should clarify that its not inaccurate or buggy, i would describe it as : if product like fusion 360 had bad navigation interface. Thats how it feels, its experience is more mechanical than smart.

Wishlist : local coop where two player can manage the empire together. Ship interiors? Performance improvements and hardware utilization can use some rework(Your mighty gpu wont make much of a difference, game seems to be cpu bound, and number of cores/threads wont matter beyond 4 cores (or 6?). That said, it runs good overall.

Also, looking at dlc history, patches and beta updates, i think devs/egosoft deserves a special mention. these are the folks community should support.


highly recommended if you like the genre.

I have spent several hours across several forums trying to get a control profile for my T.Flight HOTAS and I still cannot get a control scheme that makes any sense in the game. The default T.Flight profiles in game have no strafing inputs and have the throttle mapped to twisting? Can't believe in a game with a space flight sim that no effort was put into HOTAS controls.

at the start this is the closest to the perfect sandbox game as it can be - the first expedition around the map, the first mining fleet, the first base, the missions, all pure bliss. But as soon as you have L and XL class combat ships, thier AI is the most frustraiting thing i have ever experiensed. Please please please, devs, do some work on AI, i even don't mind buy it as an DLC

A fun game which scales from being a space mercenary type of game to a logistics simulator. The building and ship command bear some getting used to, so make sure you start small as you will likely need more money than you think to support your starting enterprises. Also, make surer you assign plenty of ships to mining as it is very profitable and important later - though watch to see if the sectors you mine in are safe first.

There are many mods for this game and once you learn the game a little i HIGHLY suggest you mod the game. There is SWI (10 of 10) there is VRO (10 of 10) also X4 Reemergence (11 of 10) all new games of their own. You WILLLL need a good system to run this game on higher settings and a GOOOOD CPU. The game is CPU bound. i play almost on max settings with a 7800x3D and a 4080, I still sometimes have issues. AMAZING game.......My top 2 of all time. Fair Warning...its a slow burn...but GOD is it a good burn.....I have never played a game like i have played this......egosoft......HATS OFF TO YOU....GOOD JOB!!! PLEASE DONT STOP. My only nock at the game is there are not many ships and weapons/turrets, mods fix this.

Best space-economy, battle and strategy game i ever played.

This is the space version of "Getting over it". A great game with a horrendous interface.

Once you get to the point that you are running a small space empire and you accept your automated ships are just a bunch of lemming, you are past the suffering part

As good a game it could. Just that bad the interface is. Things just dont work for an immersive experience.

This is a great game, not without it's flaws but still fun to play. It's a bit like single player Eve, safe(ish) areas, gate camps, deep economy, space stations and ships ... lots of ships. The random spawn seed means it's slightly different each time you start a fresh play-through. The seamless transition from walking across a station landing pad into a small fighter, flying to a medium ship docking and moving to the cockpit of that ship and then docking with a capitol ship and taking control of that all without a loading screen is very immersive. On the downside however is a somewhat clunky A.I. which can be frustrating. A mixed bag of DLC's although these can be de-selected which is a plus. The biggie for some will be the slow burn, this is a game that will take you longer than most games entire play time to decide if a seed has given you a playthrough you will want to commit to. Overall a good game but not for those who already have their next game lined up

The graphics are great. However, I found the controls confusing and unintuitive, and didn't even get through the tutorial. To shoot, you press down the third mouse button, or both mouse buttons? And yet also need to hold down left click to aim? So, you can't aim and shoot at the same time then?

Essentially Star Citizen but single player and more to do and less requirements to run

Yes. God yes. Why are you still reading this? Get the game and look at the mods. Make it into what you want and rule the galaxy!

I've played this game for over 1300 hours. Time enough to decide it's qualities. First, it's an awesome game - in theory. It is massive in scale, even if it doesn't look that way when opening the full map. The ships and stations are outstanding to visit, own, fly and command. The economy is tricky but dynamic and seems to work well. Over all I like this game. So why do I not recommend this game? I has one major flaw that it's had for years and doesn't appear to being fixed anytime soon. The load time is atrocious! I can literally start the load sequence, go get a cup of coffee, drink that cup slowly while waiting for this game to load, finish most of a 20oz cup of coffee - without hurrying to do so, and still be waiting for this thing to load! Exiting the game is just as bad. Press escape to get to the main menu, select Exit to Desktop and then - wait, wait, wait, and wait some more. I have a moderately powerful gaming PC. 32 gb ram, 16 gb GPU Nvidia 3060, 3 TB ssd drive with little on it, cpu running OC at 4.3 ghz. Even so, this game's loading and unloading takes so long that by the time I get into the game I've already lost my desire to play it. Then getting out of it to play a different game that actually loads in a decent amount of time is equally frustrating. So yes, I really would not recommend this game unless you have a PC so powerful that it can load this game in less then 90 seconds, because even though this is an amazing game, having to wait so very long to get to load in the first place just to play it makes it too frustrating for me to enjoy it.

Your mileage may vary.

(As an example, I set the game to exit to desktop, waited until I got tired of waiting, alt-tabbed out of it to write this review. Finished this review and posted it which took me back to my steam home screen and the game had still not exited to the desktop! I finally just clicked on the Stop option in steam to kill it!)

This is a fun game once you learn it and start getting multiple ships that trade and stations for a while. In reality if you want to make serious credits it would take more hours than I care to spend building an empire. If you're someone who plays the same game for 900 hours then this a game you could certainly do that. There is a wide variety of achievements that take time to get. It touts itself as play how you want style but reality it is a space trader game. You don't want to plan trades and build stations probably not for you. I enjoyed hiring crew member from all over the galaxy that made for a diverse work force. I hope the next X they make the people look better.

Well, it has so much potential, but AI ruined it. There is too much to learn before you really start to do things, it's ok to spend time to learn, but learning curve design is not so good, you can stuck forever if you miss one small point in the dialog.

I can see how design team try to build a good combat system, but the AI they write doesn't really work well. My fighter act differently when I set same command, for example: I ask it to bomber L ship, sometimes it will keep distance and use missile, and then next time, same order, they just run into enemy ship and fight closely(die in few seconds of cause), and some even just crash into enemy ship.

simple word: AI sux

Compared to Elite Dangerous, Stellaris, Homeworld, Star Citizen, EVE and No Mans Sky I am enjoying X4 the most while still in the learning curve. It's like a good mix of all those games.
Not as visually polished as Star Citizen, but it works.
No flying down to planets and walking around on them like No Mans Sky, but all the action is out in space anyway.
It's Stellaris but you can fly ships yourself and individually customize each one.
It's Homeworld building and commanding your fleet and stations, but you can 1st or 3rd person into any of your ships.
It's Elite Dangerous with the missions, mining, trade, bounty hunting etc, but you can RTS your fleet to run these missions for you.
Didn't get that far into EVE so might be wrong to say, but seems like a better version overall of EVE except it's single player. Do recommend playing with mods, I used about a dozen from steam workshop with no issues.

some absurd number of hours into my first playthrough i saw that my overall industrial throughput had been slowing down. looking into it, i found a mid-chain production bottleneck and realizing that my first solution (assign more miners) was not significantly helping, i came up with a comparatively radical solution (that i won't go into detail on here since it's boring). this solution was such a windfall that i seriously considered dismantling my entire industrial network and rebuilding from scratch, but instead i just started a new save. this game is ostensibly a sandbox space sim (like elite dangerous) but the entire time i worked this problem i was seated at a desk (in real life, and in-game).

you do not need to know any more about x4. despite the dodgy ai, lame storylines, okay voice acting, game economy that grinds to a halt if everyone is at peace, and oftentimes annoying ui, simply based on the paragraph above you already know if this is a game that tickles your brain in the particular ways that you enjoy. hell, if you're anything like me, you probably got to the part about analyzing production bottlenecks and had to get up and walk around for a minute

Great game. You can sink a lot of hours of gameplay and there are a lot of plotlines lettung you explore the galaxy through the eyes of different factions.

I will however say the main pull of this game is the extensive simulated economy that is in depth and worthy of the most obscure eurojank, yet very accessible.

I've actually played for hundreds of hours on GOG, it's getting better every year. My biggest complaint was always the lackluster flight model, but they have hired the guy that worked on Star Citizen and it's already much better. The game will continue to get addons thru 2026 and is well worth your time and money.

It has at STEEP learning curve, but stick with it and you'll be rewarded with a tremendous space empire at your control.

This game is very unintuitive. The controls are difficult and braking your ship is a two-hand-let-go-of-either-mouse-or-keyboard binding. The first thing I saw was that the first option in the first menu led me to the store page for DLC.

I had a mission disappear on me when doing an escort. As far as I can tell, I did not lose the mission, I didn't manage to collect any cargo due to aforementioned problem, and I also didn't get any messages. I feel like I went out playing for nothing.

I feel as though any and all achievements in this game I will ever make will be cheesed and that I can't ever come to properly enjoy this game.

All in all, I feel the developer has done a remarkably poor job at making this game accessible to players. It's like it's designed to be difficult on the parts that should be easy, and easy on the parts that should be difficult.

When you motivate yourself to learn the mechanics mostly by yourself and the community you open a a great sandbox for yourself to explore. After 70h+ I'm mostly at 1/4 of the content and I really like it.

There is jank and some bugs but noting major. More a pull from the immersion.

This is the best SciFi simulation game currently out there for the fairest price tag.

Fantastic Space Sandbox Sim. Coming from Elite this game had everything I wanted and more. Exploration is not really existent but almost everything just plays better. It's completely SP so I guess there's room for more creative and narrative freedom. Highly recommend for anyone that enjoys this genre.

I have 1300hrs in this game. However. For most people, I would not recommend this game, as calling it a game is a bit generous. Part flight sim, part spreadsheet with an interface, every aspect of X4: Foundations is "fine" but plagued with tedium. Even the fun parts like exploration, fleet building, combat, missions, all parts of this game are incredibly tedious. I have 35/165 steam achievements because most things in this game are SO tedious.

Is this an exciting combat sim? No.
--Try the boarding actions.
Is this an in depth and rewarding exploration game? No.
--Go ahead. Try to blast the locks off the lockbox you found. Hope you remembered to save
--before you started shooting.
Is this a well-structured and engaging 4X strategy/empire building game? No.
--Again, 1300hrs.
Is this a space RPG with deep decision significance and interesting story elements? No.
--They tried, but none of the characters feel like people.

This is a giant, beautiful sandbox where, in an effort to automate your money-making, you'll spend a hundred hours making money manually so you can finally build a big, bad-ass fleet and lose all your ships in your first battle because they haven't had enough time to train up and their pilots hardly know how to fly.

And yes, I probably suck at this game if I only have 20% of the achievements. But consider this:
--Only 57% of players have completed the tutorials
--Only 45% of players have built their first space station
--Only 39% of players have defeated a single Kha'ak ship (one of the main badguys)
--Only 36% of players have finished the first mission to find the mysterious installation

I could go on, but look at the achievements data and it speaks for itself. If you like flying around and mucking about in space, this game is beautiful and smooth. The ships fly well even if the combat is a little wonky. The modding community for this game is also pretty lively with everything from custom ships to quality of life improvements to a full Star Wars conversion. If you already like space sims, you'll get something out of this game. If you don't, I hope you've got a lot of time on your hands and patience to deal with the goofy AI and complexity of this game.

Oh and the DLC is only in my library because a lot of the bigger mods require all DLC to work. Be warned, this game will cost you more than the main purchase price if you want to try out VRO or the Star Wars Interworlds mod. That being said, I recommend both mods.

TLDR: This game is tedious and boring and I love it anyway. Not recommended for most players.

I have played this game for just about 400 hours - mostly enjoying it thoroughly - and I am finally at ragequit because of the Tides of Avarice DLC. And this - btw - is considered one of the BETTER dlc for X4.

It adds two new factions. One is a pirate faction of GREEDY capitalists who do terrible greedy capitalist things like charge $15 for a DLC that makes the game worse.

The other is a scrappy faction of proletarian scrappers who are oppressed by the pirate faction and introduce really cool trading opportunities, but you can't trade with them because of the pirates. Oh yeah also the scrappers are in a system that blows up roughly once per hour and the AI script that tells your ships to GTFO when that happens appears to be glitched so it doesn't work and so they get fried with all hands.

The pirates will roam all over your game in large raiding fleets and wreck your trading ships. If you have the temerity to shoot back at these pirates, then - unlike the SCA who account for "shooting back" as part of doing business - they will form a permanent murder blood oath against you and everyone you love. There is practically no way to fix this. Don't listen to anyone on the forums who say otherwise - they are stupid and wrong. They do not care if you shoot their enemies next to their bases. You could do 100 station glitch missions for them and never raise your rep by 1 point.

Their fleets are also cheesy AF. Small fighter ships with tons of missile/torpedo spam that will wipe out any fleet that isn't specifically designed to counteract them. Oh and they have HUNDREDS of these ships. Even better: they're made with asymmetrical designs which mean that very often your weapons won't hit them because there's nothing to hit at their center of mass.

Now there's a whole quest chain where the end result is that the pirates are supposed to be neutral or friendly... but it doesn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ work. As a brand-spanking new player, I spent at least 100 hours of game-time building up a fleet capable of fighting theirs and actually beat them, destroying several stations - part of the mission "to show that you're serious". Then after that, I gave them a FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLAR BRIBE.

You know what I got for all that? +1 reputation from -30 to -29. That's it.

I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate this game. Do not listen to the lying simps who tell you this is good. It isn't.

Oh yeah and I got a weird dildo battleship which is effectively worthless until I grind enough money to build an XL shipyard to modify it. And you have to search random sectors for half a dozen hidden data vaults or some crap to get it working. Oh my stars and garters 10,000,000/10 GOTY!

♥♥♥♥ this game. ♥♥♥♥ the horse it rode in on.

Summary: The real problem with the game isn't Tides of Avarice DLC or any of the bugs or crashes. It's the design philosophy that produces these million little headaches in the first place.

Tides of Avarice came out 3 years ago and the mission chain is still breathtakingly terribly designed... There's a casino you can't gamble in... Boarding mechanics are still only half-implemented (this was a PIRATE-themed DLC)... Vigor will still go MEGA RAGE aggro if you defend yourself... And your ships will still get nuked in Avarice on an hourly basis if you don't babysit them. Oh yeah and there's still no timer/warning which tells you when the next Tide is so you can get more REDACTED.

People who make half-baked games like this deserve negative reviews. I don't care that I was able to fix the problem with mods. The game should not be crap to begin with.

Truly the worst mission design in the history of video games. X is a lovely series and there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had, but dear god it's a mess. The game in general is barely acceptable at version 7, and will take Egosoft another decade to add basic features.

Fire whoever designed all of the story missions. They do not understand what gameplay is.

Its a game that has a specific niche.

A genuine sandbox.

Want to make a base? Sure.
Want to take over a sector?
Sure...

Want to steal other peoples' ships?

Yes.

Wish there was the ability to have a friend or two join your universe and cause chaos. I know there is an option to introduce their "ship" with AI but not the same.

Keep up the good work.

Maybe add a space station start?
Where you are the trade master of a space station.

Amazing open world first person space game. Starts off a little elite-dangerous like but ends up (or can end up) as an empire builder you get to play in!

Great game, its pretty much everything I've ever wanted in a space sim game.

I like the game due to its complexity, ability to build economical empire and building fleets. The missions are not that funny, but that is a minor issue and after time you can avoid them.

So addictive for the micro management/automation optimization lovers like myself. What makes it truly unique is the incredible sense of progression and scale of the universe. From starting in a tiny fighter to hundreds of hours later commanding a fleet of capital ships manufactured in your own shipyards... no other game gets close to what X4 offers

So the time played is kinda misleading. It says 34 hrs but twenty hours of that is dying and reloading to die again.

The game is tough, and it's sadly starting to really show it's age. Don't expect handholding. The tutorials help get the basics down. The timelines expansion is okay, but the sandbox game is fun and very much a sandbox. There aren't really any rails outside of the faction missions that sometimes block one another, forcing you to complete one to be able to do another.

100% would recommend but be ready to ready lots of guides, spreadsheets, or watch videos from veteran players to figure some things out.

IF I had to find a reason to complain, it would be the somewhat janky controls that take getting used to.

Originally I played this game for about 20 hrs and didn't like it at all. I thought it was just a space shooting game where you try to find your next combat in a maze of small sections of space. Discarded it as not for me and forgot about it for a long time.
After some time I started to look for a space economy sim game with rts elements and someone in reddit said that X4 is the best there is... I was very confused as I hadn't seen anything like that, BUT how wrong was I!
After spending a couple of hundred hours on trying to build my own space empire I really must agree that X4 is by far the most versatile and complex space game I have ever played and is now my favorite game.
Figuring out all the different features of this game took easily a 100hrs and I don't think I have even still tried all the different ways that you can actually play X4 Foundations.
It does have a quite steep learning curve in the beginning, but then again all space games do. I mean original Elite, Eve online and most of these newer ones don't really hold your hand and neither did X4 so if you're a slow learner like my self, you might struggle to get your bearings.
Just bear with it until you get a couple of ships and your first station, after that the game really begins and opens up possibilities, which allows you to become the most notorious space pirate ever, a mining magnate providing minerals to most sectors in game or the biggest military fleet securing your neighbours from angry machine lifeforms.

Game is a clunky mess, but i love every single second of it
New ship flight model is very cool

Absolutely fantastic game, once you get your bearings. Gave me everything I wanted from a space sandbox. Would definitely recommend strongly to anyone wanting to work their way up from space mercenary to space empire. If you are not willing to put the time in, you can always start with custom settings too, although I would say this is not the best way to enjoy the experience personally. Also, there is a lovely host of mods.

for a game this old its god damn amazing its confusing at first but once you get the hang of it you just cant put the game down and with easy mod support you are laughing

A first warning for new players: X4 is not a casual game or a space fighter simulator/shooter. It demands the willingness to learn, the ablility to handle frustrations and a lot of patience.
To give you an idea of it´s scope: While you can finish a usual fantasy RPG in 40 to 80 hours, in X4 after that time, the game universe just starts to recognize you. If you play a default game start, you might have some capital ships and stations after that time, but you´re nowhere near a bigger influence on the game universe (Storyline missions aside).

The second question that players interested in this game often have: Can I play peacefully without fighting? While it is possible to never engage in battles personally (if you got a very fast ship), the X4 universe is full of violence: civil wars, wars among major factions (even sectors changing ownership), plus active pirate groups and hostile species, so your ships and stations will be attacked. When you mostly stay in policed and safe sectors this will be less the case, but it still will happen. You need to prepare for that.

Compared to X Rebirth this game is better in every regard. Compared with X3 it depends on your playstile. While the players who like to command huge fleets into battle often prefer X3 (Reunion, Terran Conflict or Mods), trade and production empire builders might prefer X4. You can command large fleets in X4, but this aspect might feel less comfortable and relieable here for some.

Now a short list of likes and don´t likes (not including the Timelines Add-On which I don´t own yet):
+ huge developing open world universe for different play styles
+ overall good graphics, characters look ok, but the stations and universe give a good atmospheric experience
+ a huge amount of ships to fly and stations to build
+ customizable ships and stations (with predefined look of the hulls, so within a certain range, it´s not Empyrion in this regard)
+ largely customizable messenging system adjustable to the level of micromanagement you like
+ fantastic soundtrack

Neutral, but I´d like to mention it:
o the economy is mostly war and crisis based (producing and trading goods for the end of replacing or adding ships and stations and their drones, ammunition and weapons), except for food and medicine production and your HQ research and terraforming projects. I´d prefer having some additional commodity goods manufacturing chains too, but simulating the whole economy and logistics from mining and collecting raw materials to the production of complex high tech goods, with real supply and demand based market prices is very impressive as it is already.
o you can´t land on planets

What I don´t like:
- you can´t improve your rank at some factions once you reached a hostile level (Vigor Syndicate, Split outlaw faction) as those don´t offer missions.
- the missions for the late game are often just the demand to collect vast amounts of ressources or credits. Instead, reaching a certain diplomatic status with a faction or provide some production facilities could be used more often as a mission theme
- the autopilot is still not working very good (Egosoft is admitting it ingame ;) )
- without mods the universe changes very slowly
- space combat flying could be more complex, by having smarter opponents
- the NPCs could have more variety in design and dialogue
- no multiplayer mode

These are not major things for me, so overall I´d recommend this game to anybody who is ok with playing mostly one game on free evenings over a longer period of time. It doesn´t make much sense as a casual game as the complexity level is very high and you´ll already need some minutes just to figure out what was the status of your ships and stations after a longer time of not playing it.

Recommended, but only in a very good sale. It has lots of interesting systems, but everything struggles to hang together well, and becomes frustrating after a while. The fiddling changes being made, and some of the developer opinions expressed within the Steam discussion forums gives me a heavy vibe of early access with an unclear direction.

It's going to scratch that itch that Star Citizen / Starfield aren't quite hitting, but it's got some rough edges which conceal some even rougher bits in the middle.

Can be a fun game. But the NPC's ruined my mid-game experience. I ordered a small ship to defend a trading ship, which forms a fleet. My trading ship gets attacked, i expected my S ship to defend it. It did not. My S flew around, approaching random locations around my trading ship, which my trading ship also seems to be confused, and then blows up.

I expect thing to behave how they are explained in the game. This isn't the case, and after doing tutorials on youtube/google for explanations, it really isn't as simple to do.

More infurriating to play than it is for me to enjoy. I dont know, maybe i'm not understanding it properly...
Not a strict 'No' review, but i wouldn't encourage any of my friends to play who might be interested in managing a space empire