X4: Foundations

Love this game. Freedom, complexity, nuance, it's all there. Can be a little rough for new players, but once you settle in, it's hours of fun. Plus it's the type of game you can multi-task with as there's plenty of ways to automate actions while you tab out to something else.

This is a space combat flight sim version of EVE Offline. Very addictive. While I do recommend it, for anybody who has been winning EVE, myself since 2018, this will eat up all of your free time. I stole a construction ship the other night and was aligning it to a gate to bring it home and it felt just like when I would be in a Rhea which is jump freighter in EVE, and it would take forever to align to a highsec gate when I was coming back home for the next load to ship. Highly addictive game!

I've been playing X since Beyond the Frontier and it just keeps getting better. I spent over 2000 hours in X3 using LitCubes mod and I expect X4 will capture at least as much of my time. It is an incredible space sandbox. It has its weaknesses, specifically NPC AI, but most of these issues can be overcome by clever play. The empire building aspect is unmatched in my experience. Replayability is outstanding with the custom start options that allows you to start a new play-through without having to endlessly repeat some of the starter quests or the initial fleet setup. Egosoft is dedicated to making this game awesome, and is constantly pushing the boundaries of what the game can do. It will only get better.

x4 is an amazing game, with a steep learning curve. the management system could be simplified but the sheer amount of features and mechanics are unmatched. This game makes Elite:Dangerous look half-finished; MANY more ships, of many different sizes and uses. From what i've seen people leaving negative reviews either don't use a joystick, didn't put in the effort to learn, or dislike strategic management games. Don't go into this looking to immediately start building bases and creating fleets, choose your starting scenario and let the game guide you.

favorite game of the year, 8/10

When I started playing X3 years ago, it was the game I didn't know existed but was always dreaming of. Exploring vast space, building and managing your own space federation, and shaping your own story—it scratches that itch perfectly. Where in X3 you were confined to your ship, X4 has added the element where you can also move around the world yourself, which I think adds a cool new dimension.

What makes the game stand out for me:
A living universe - the galaxy feels huge and alive, with dynamic factions and alien species that act independently.
Playstyle - fleet commander, trader, explorer, pirate, or a scavenger hauling scrap and recycling it for profitsss.
Game depth - the interface is complex and takes some time to master, but once you do, the control and possibilities feel great.

Downside is that I forget time exists when I play this.

Great space game, but fairly complex, but i love the complexities.

This is not a game for everyone, but if you like space, and want to do whatever you want, and have a TON of patience, it's for you.

Holy moly does it need a new UI and some optimization though. And better AI... despite these gripes, I love this game. It's a real labour of love.

Devs… please fix experience gain.

I’ve done hours of testing and bottom line is it’s unclear, inconsistent, doesn’t scale with the state of the game, doesn’t add anything except frustration and BS like shopping for seminars to my play time, and overall is waaaaaaay too big of a focus on my play time… it’s awful.

Good game otherwise tho.

Go into the weighting factor for cues and multiply them all by 10, it still won’t be fun. It’s wildly off mark tight now.

Love this game! It's the immersive space game I've been looking for.

Pros: Piloting, watching my NPC pilot for me, combat, automation, commanding my various ships remotely, sense of aliveness in a single player game (voice acting, radio comms, NPC voice interaction), empire building, missions, station building, opening up new sectors, gaining rep with new factions. Nice ship graphics. I love the ability to watch my other ships in action via 'live stream' or external view.

Cons: Very map and menu intensive. The upside is you can order your ship to do pretty much anything you can do personally.

Learning curve: I think I bought it a year after the initial launch. Tried to 'just play it' without tutorials. Got frustrated and quit. DO the tutorials and watch a few youtube video tutorials for new players and the learning curve will quickly start evaporating. Got back into it a few weeks ago and really like it now.

Super fun sandbox where I had this awesome experience within my first 3 hours: Accidentally flew into an enemy sector and just barely made it to the jump gate back to safety . . . only to have those enemies follow me and cripple my engines before destroying my ship. So now I'm floating in space with no ships, limited oxygen, not enough money to buy a ship and the nearest station is 26km away. With my oxygen at 50% I manage to hail a cargo ship that then proceeds to rescue me. But as I make my way to the hatch, the same enemy fighters that destroyed my ship attack my rescuer, forcing the captain to break off and deal with them. I watch helplessly as the enemy ships destroy my rescuer. Now with oxygen at 30% I make one last feeble attempt to hail a passing gas miner. And with literally 1 last sliver of oxygen (probably a few seconds worth) I manage to get inside. But I still have no ship, so I talk the Captain into dropping me off at the nearest Wharf where I sell a bomb module on my spacesuit for just enough money to buy a basic ship and get back in the game. Loss of your ship is not the end!

Best Space Sim I've ever played. Can steal ships by forcing the pilot to eject or boarding them with marines. 10/10

has a steep learning curve but is a vast sim...less for combat and more empire with economy building

Now Granted I've really only scratched the surface of this game but I could only imagine the low rating due to bugs, bad AI, and a UI that could be better, but truth be told these have had a minor impact in how much fun I've had. This game is the exact kind of game I love, the universe is truly alive with how dynamic it is and how much you can do and it's not just factions existing as there is a universal threat that CAN wipe everyone out.

This game is fun don't get me wrong. If you love flying space ships while building a trading empire this is a great game 10/10. but if you want to have any other sort of combat on the ground this isn't the game for you. Imagine no mans sky with great ship control and variety, but without any sort of land combat, or really any reason to get boots on the ground.

After playing the game longer I have decided to redact my previous review. Turns out I just needed to get gud so to speak. There are still some major flaws but you learn to work around them. In the future I would love to see fleet combat revised and more intuitive. On top of that the ui sucks (we all know that)
I can't recommend this game for everyone but it certainly scratched a deep itch for me.

This is a very conditional thumbs up. I really enjoyed the first 3/4 of my playtime, but you'll quickly reach a point where you spend more time fighting the artificial stupidity of your subordinates than you do actually playing the game. There's just no reason for things to still be this rough on version 7.1

"ooh we're really concerned about our game running on a potato"
"but you see your pilots are supposed to be morons because that way you have an incentive to get involved - low investment should be low reward"
"low skill pilot issue"

That's all the support you'll get too, when you're already running 4 star pilots and are spending all your time reloading to undo them suiciding their 30M credit destroyer *again.* There are QOL mods out there, but they don't/can't do nearly enough.

Very steep learning curve, which is a huge plus for me. Plenty of depth and complexity to the game.

Start from nothing and end up running an empire of thousands of people and ships! This has a long story and resource sink's that will keep you entertained for many months.

I played 16 hours. 14 of those were just trying to figure out the controls with at least 4 hours of that time looking up better layouts or guides/tips from community members. The answer from veterans is always, "you'll get used to it," or "The game offers extensive layout customization." What everyone fails to mention is that the terrible controls are baked in. You can change the inputs, but the switching from strafing to piloting is god awful trash. If there is a way to not have to do that, I couldn't be bothered to find it in the menus.

Whatever depth or 'amazing' gameplay that lurks if I had only just bit the bullet and stuck it out with the controls, can sit where its at. If a developer is keenly aware that their product is going to have a steep learning curve to deal with the UI alone, make that known. Start small. Build a tutorrial that actually teaches you each individual mechanic, otherwise whatever amazing game you built is going to be glossed over by people with too little time, too little patience, and too much choice.

The best space sim on the market when it comes to an open-ended, sandbox experience.

I have started playing with update 7.10 and enjoying it a lot. Still, a few caveats to avoid frustration, especially if you dislike spoilers and like figuring out on your own:

1. Play the (still somewhat new) tutorials. Maybe not all at once, but it do yourself the favor. It will give you insights into the many game mechanics and, more importantly, how these mechanics interact with the UI. Coming to grips with the UI is the single biggest hurdle when starting out with X4.
2. Your chosen start scenario is not super critical, just take one which appeals to you. The "guided" ones will still allow you to do whatever you want, but give you some additional introduction to certain aspects of the game (say, fighting or trading).
3. You already know that, I will still say it: this game is huge and it takes time, both to figure out and to play (also, these are not separate things). That might be a Pro or a Con depending on your situation.

I actually decided to give this game a go during the winter sale.

Here is what I learned in almost 9 hours of game play.

1. The Mouse/Keyboard controls are abysmal. This game almost requires you to play with a Hotas set-up.
2. There is 0 learning curve, you either understand or you don't. What is even worse is this game doesn't teach you anything. Yea sure, their short little 5 minute tutorials are okay, but huge parts of the game are just downright not explained.
3. Lack of Direction. Aside from the base quest, which I did the first 3 parts and hit a wall of "Go do other things" I didn't do anything. I spend 3 hours of my 9 hours playtime watching videos TRYING to learn the game that should have explained itself. When you have to doomscroll videos of the developer and other players teaching you core game mechanics because the game doesnt teach you, there is a problem.
4. AI content. The voice overs are either AI or translated from the native German, as they mispronounce words quite easily. "freighter" and "fighter" being swapped is a big giveaway.


In true German engineering faction, the game is far too complex, far too complicated, and far too engineering to be fun for the general populous. Can the game be fun based on what I've seen? Absolutely, it looks incredible, and some of the gameplay aspects look insanely cool, WHEN YOU GET THERE and after you spend hundreds of hours learning.

What most people want from a video game like this is simple, show me the controls, show me the directions I can take "space pirate, trade guru, entrepreneur, etc." and then explain how I can do certain things to further my goals. But the quest lines being fetch quests, with no guidance on how to fetch the certain things, has to be the biggest oversight by a developer I've seen in a long time.

I will compare this game like the initial release of No Man's Sky. Where NMS had its issues was the overly grindy, annoyingly so, no multiplayer, bland apect, this game has the overly complex, no direction, lost in space problem. You just sit there and spin your wheels with no direction at all and it leads to a very unpleasant gaming experience where you feel like you wasted your time.

I may eventually come back to X4, after I get HOTAS set up where I can actually control the space craft, and after I watch another 100 hours of videos on it, but until that day comes, I am going to be playing other space games that actually have a decent learning experience for the player.

If you are looking to have a MASSIVE learning curve along with a complete lack of direction, go for it, if you want anything substantive, go elsewhere.

This game is not a space sim. This game is THE space sim! I am late to this game only buying it in 2024 but holy cow.. I was watching a random youtube video and someone called the game "Bannerlord in Space." ..Bannerlord is my most played game of all time on steam, so I bought it, and it has not disappointed. Its not perfect, small things like needing more NPC models and voice lines are a weird choice, but dont cut into the overall fun. The space battles are great, the command system is great, the star wars overhaul is meh.. overall I have enjoyed my time!

---{ Graphics }--- Space looks good, ships look good, NPCs look like PS4.
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS


---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't


---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf


---{ Audience }--- Space Grind.
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma


---{ PC Requirements }--- Had Zero Frame drops on the highest settings.
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer


---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls


---{ Grind }--- There is alot to do, some things take a long time to do, but thats not a bad thing.
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☑ You'll need a second life for grinding


---{ Story }--- You make your own story.
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life


---{ Game Time }--- I plan to be here for a while.
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond


---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }--- Didn't notice any.
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{Rating ?/10}--- Its not Bannerlord in space, but it is a good game.
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

After playing a single Terra Invicta play-through over the course of 3 months, I was not expecting to be able to get really blown away by another game for some time.

Wrong. So, so wrong.

Been off work for a week so far, and I am suffering severe sleep deprivation.

I just can't tear myself away from this thing. I was expecting a game like Privateer. Shoot down bots, grab the ejected pilot, sell him into slavery. Offload some goods. Done.

It's so much more. So much deeper. At this point, I can't imagine it would be possible for Star Citizen to stand up to this thing, even single player as it is.

Wandering around first person in a Space Sim/RTS is just such wild fun.

Wow.

My first hour in this game:


Play the basic tutorials and the map tutorial

I know enough to play this game now, I am an expert

Create my own custom scenario because I know what im gonna do

Human, no starting ship, no currency, just me and the pilots seat because I am a boss

Get spawned in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of space with a jetpack

See a giant earth like planet, that must have been where I came from

See a giant ass ship 40 km in the distance, unknown structures, smaller ships flying by.

No idea what to do so I start flying to the big ship at 4 m/s

Thisisgonnatakeallday.jpg

Take a look at my map and realise I can call the ship

A pretty lady is on the other line

"HELP! HEEEELP MEEEEEE HELLP!"

"On my way"

No way shes actually coming to save me

5 mins later this giant freighter the size of a city has stopped beside me and has granted me docking access

Board the ship and meet the captain

Try to get her to take me to a station but I dont know any locations

She starts flying again toward a big portal

As she flies through the portal we are transported to a completely different sector. Its all creepy with a barren looking planet

14 fps incoming as there are ships and lasers flying everywhere

Can hear a battle but cannot see anything from the captains quarters

I go up to a docking bay

There is an entire god damn war going on with massive ships shooting lasers and smaller ships buzzing around dog fighting

Holy fugg this is amazing

Notice our ship is shooting at some kinda massive luxurious ship, were taking fire too

All the sudden the docking bay beside me opens and a smaller ship emerges and takes off to join the fight, a crew member rushes past me and goes on a terminal beside me.

Completely taken in at what im witnessing... total warfare, hundreds of ships, crew buzzing around the ship performing duties, and little ol me right in the middle of it all.

Before i know it, I am ejected from the ship as the entire freighter explodes before my eyes

I am the sole survivor, the entire ship is gone what the hell

I look on the map and find the nearest ship and call them

its an alien

"HELP HELLLLP MEE HELP!"

He comes and picks me up in a tiny one man ship, hardly enough room for the both of us.

He is zipping around at high speeds, shooting and evading attacks.

Before we know it, were taking massive amounts of fire

The ship explodes again lmao as im sent into space again, somehow surviving.

The war is still raging on, there are ships everywhere

Most of the icons on my map are greyed out, including stations and structures, so im guessing they are destroyed

As im writing this review the games running in the background and everything has settled down

No more shooting, no more fighting, just skeletons of ships all around me

The original ship that saved me is 14 km away just a burning pile of scrap

Im in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of space with a jetpack... more lost than ever

Im going to find a way to survive this

Nope my oxygen ran out. Game Over lol

10/10 it was like watching a movie i wish i recorded it.


I did the same thing on a new save where I knew the locations of stations so I could tell pilots where to take me this time and was dropped off at a food ration factory so we will see where my adventures take me from here...

I used to play also the old ones, but I was always annoyed an put off from the whole UI, Interfaces and the weak usasbility. Now I can truly say after years of updates and DLC's, this game can offer the joy one wishes from a fully simulated world.

The scope is just crazy, you sink time and time in it, but everything is so rewarding, from the first pirated ship to the first station built and in the end a huge empire. All is possible.

Just found my game to wander a few years in :)

Sure it has it squirks, but overall a good polished game which is totally fun.

PS: The game is pretty Ressource-Intensive in later stages, check the specs!

Thx egosoft!

I bought the base game + all DLCs when I discovered it had a native linux client, and will continue to buy expansions since it is the best linux native option. That said, I cannot yet recommend to others. Playing this game is like debugging software without a debugger. e.g. when you try to setup a station for mining/trading, you get zero feedback about why it does not work. This is unworkable when there are a myriad of Byzantine requirements. You will waste countless hours searching the internet for suggestions and checking over every detail again and again. It is absurdly painful. This problem is very easy for the devs to fix. We dont need anything fancy. We just need specific text messages instead of "no trades found in allowed sectors" when the problem is a manager's skill level, etc. There are many things in the UI which should be improved some day, but the lack of sufficient feedback for all of the 'empire management' tasks makes the game almost unplayable. When this is fixed I will gladly recommend as the most engaging space game available.

Gave it a solid shot but just can't get into it.

Its been out for many years and bugs are still present. The grind seems a bit too harsh (mods can fix this but still). The game isn't at all too complex (compared to say EVE online) however several UI choices and such make it annoying to manage your various stations and units. The station build UI sucks too.

The worst part is eventually you have hundreds of ships all to manage and your game performance starts to suffer...but the game is designed for you to need hundreds of ships later on for all the trading and combat stuff. What particularly annoyed me is that auto-combat is calculated differently when you are outside of a sector vs inside it resulting in my ships getting annihilated when outside sectors, but doing amazing when I am inside the sector...this means I have to micromanage every darn engagement or pirate, or completely rebuild my ships to abuse the out of system combat calculations.

Take my opinion with a pinch of salt though, a lot of people love this game so maybe its just not for me. Watch some gameplay videos and make up your own mind.

Great sandbox experience in space, the ability to see everything from first-person perspective and walk around ships and stations adds to the immersion, the list of things you can do and how you can approach the game is pretty long and I love it. There's also a story line that's pretty OK written (so far - didn't finish it yet).

So much micro-management,
You think, if i just do this, then finally I will be able to enjoy the game, but nope, the problem just keep compounding.
For example, say you have a fleet containing 50 ships, and after a battle 30 ships are damaged and need repair.
Now normally, you would hope you could just mass select or tell the entire fleet to get repaired.

But nope, you have to individually click every single FUCKING SHIP, 1 BY 1 BY 1, AND ORDER IT TO REPAIR....
WHAT THE FUCK!!!

this process exists for every other thing in this game.

You wanna modify a station which has 10 mining ships? click through each one, one by one
wanna change the behavior of a fleet of ships? click through one by one
wanna modify a list of station to have thesame behavior, click through each one one by one...

This is only one of the nuissances in the game, they are many more like it.

I really tried to enjoy this game, but unless you have no life and huge amounts of time.
Don't play this..

Frustrating and clunky ui. AI is buggy as can be. You can spend 6 million on a trade ship that refuses to do anything but 3k trades every 15 mins.

Game is basically a buggy idle simulator where you have to micromanage dozens of ships to get anything done.

Been playing these games off and on since high school and it's good to see the series still going strong after all these years. The trading and business sim side of the game is as good as ever, the combat is decent (and about to get a major overhaul to the flight model), and the faction conflict/mission system is a lot of fun and gives you tons of stuff to do even if you've exhausted a lot of the story content.

Also as a longtime Elite player, it's so nice to just walk around my ships, see the interiors, stand on the flight deck, have the CPU pilot fly for me while I act as passenger, and be able to hop in a ship-launched fighter and have it be able to actually do something worthwhile. You won't get the same Elite experience of exploring a 1:1 scale galaxy, but while the world is smaller in X4, the player is so, so much bigger and more capable here. Being able to change and influence the world without constant grinding on a casually-achievable timescale is so refreshing compared to dumping 10 hours of combat zone grinding in Elite to move the system influence 1% in the direction of your preferred faction.

In short, If you want a malleable, manageable galaxy where you get to matter, X4 is your game.

They ruined my favorite game of all time for me IMO, trying to do too much with all the updates timelines is junk, clunky controls, cluttered map etc. If you are new to the game than you might like it and it is worth the learning curve. My 2 cents. It used to run so smooth the controller layout used to be great after the massive update it wasn't a small thing they changed the entire look and feel so much it became unplayable for me.
After 2,000 hours its time to move on anyway. Have a nice day!

Great game, fantastic actually. Provides a great focus on fields that SC and Elite do as well, but nowhere near as well as this game does.

I have Played more X4 than all my other games Combined..
If you enjoy going from a small fighter to being to overlord of the whole universe then making all commodities illegal therefor spiriting the universe into a massive recession, this is the game for you!

This game is amazingly deep. Part strategy, base building, and ship flying, you can pretty much do anything you want in this game. If you need a break from flying around stealing ships and blowing enemies up, you can step back and spend time designing/building space stations, setting up an entire economy, and making 100's of millions in credits to build multiple fleets that you can send out to fight.

Or you could just be a cargo runner doing trade missions and avoiding pirates :)

SPAAAAACE!. No but seriously, I don't know of any other game like X. Strategy, action, economy, space sim, all in one game. Also, the soundtracks are amazing.

I'm an RTS gamer and I'm hoping my review talks about this game from a different angle for people interested in the game.

TLDR: This game is amazing, it is part Mount and Blade, part (but VERY LIGHT) Starfield and basebuilding. It is jam packed with features and systems that might turn away a lot of casual or semi-hardcore gamers, but if you give it the time it needs, it is freaking amazing.

The Fun stuff:
- You start small, but then you CAN decide what you want from it. Get a bigger ship, command a fleet, create a base or multiple bases, create a Galactic Empire with fleets, stations etc.
- It has dynamic missions so factions will always look to enlist your help which can improve your relations with them granting you access to their technology (ships, weapons, etc.)
- The scale is insane. You can walk on foot in your ship and stations. Once you start to buy or earn bigger ships, you start to see how small you fighters are in comparison to destroyers and capital class ships.
- You can have a fleet and almost all, if not, all ships can be controlled by you personally OR buy the crews you hire when you are in stations.
- The economic systems in game is crazy...a good SMALL example is building ships. ALL ships require resources (Silicon, ore, etc.) which trade vessels (From different factions or yours) will deliver them to a station to be turned into chips, electronic parts, etc. WHICH IN THEN is delivered again to the WHARF (small ships) or SHIPYARD (Big ships) to finally build your ship. IF ANY OF THESE SYSTEMS ARE INTERRUPTED, it affects your ship building (or your allies and enemies), your other supplies like weapons manufacturing, food, medical supplies etc.
- You can steal ships and be a pirate.

The NOT SO FUN stuff:
- It may feel janky. NO, not the bad janky, but the noticable janky. Because there's so much systems, something is bound to jank up.
- Takes TIME. The game isn't hard to learn, but it's not for people who are impatient. There's so much menus, you need time to know where stuff is and what stuff does, other than that, you basically learn the game like any other game.
- The larger your fleet or empire the more time you'll be spending in the "spead sheet" because at that point, you're just commanding ships. Early game you're basically piloting the ship itself, later when you own a bigger ship or fleet or stations, you're practically the boss. You'll be driven around (you can always fly yourself, but your crew will drive you anywhere you want) and all actions you used to do in early game can be done for you but the crews you begin to amass so you're just in the menu commanding everything, unless you just automate everything and drive yourself if you trust the AI that way.

and that's it, hope this review helps you.

not a single system in this game works as it should. everything requires some kind of tweaking. 13 hours played, 10 of which was spent trying to google how to fix whatever broke, be it the controls,the AI pilots, pathing, or in a couple of instances being glitched into asteroids and stations. only reason I'm gonna keep playing is because I cant refund it

This is almost what I wanted from every other space game I ever played. Elite dangerous has exploration and the way systems/planets done better, but in elite one can't just buy hundreds of ships, build stations, single handedly affect the market, and conquer the universe!
This is Anno meets Elite dangerous, and I'm loving it.

One of my favourite games of all time 🌟

It sucks you right into a vast simulated world 🚀

There's so much to do and discover 🔭

The possibilities are practically endless 😏

The music by Alexei Zakharov is also amazing 🎵

I highly recommend X4: Foundations ✨

Please play it before you Argon 🙂

Over All a pretty good game. The DLC's add a lot and i recommend Terran cadet start for new players. There is a lot of controls but you can change them and more options adds a higher skill ceiling to piloting.

Kind of a space bannerlord/kenshi open endedness feel with some stalker: "you are not the main character". Or you can ever so slowly take over the universe and become the main character with every faction dependent on you. uniting or conquering everyone in order to fight its ever-growing threats. Your choice.

There are several story missions but much of the narrative is what you make it.

This is the best space based game I have played in quit awhile. It is the closest I have seen to the original freelancer games, but much bigger and more interactive.
And with a giant mod you can live out your star wars dreams of being a space cowboy(girl).

X4: Foundations is one of my favorite space games. It balances space sim gameplay with optional 4X strategy elements very well. Additionally, the game is highly moddable and has a great, active community.
I'm actively following the state of the game and its development.

I just tried the 7.50 beta, which implements DLSS and FSR 3.
But what really caught my attention is the new handling model for the spaceships. The developers partnered with John Pritchett, a former Senior Physics Programmer from Star Citizen. As a Star Citizen player, I find the new handling feels familiar to the previous Star Citizen flight model (before the introduction of Master Modes). Each ship feels unique and has a sense of mass. I am very glad I could experience it in X4!

Great game, it's certainly not for everyone as it takes a long time to get the hang of it and start to grasp all of its systems.

You can have your space fights, management, and management of ships for combat... Personally never done mining, but I love every moment in this game.
Another down side if you like it, is that it could get a hold of your life....

I don't write reviews.
However, Buy this game, buy it's DLC, buy all of their library.
If you like space games, management strategy, exploration, dog fighting, story, diplomacy, or just good old space trucking this game is for you.
I've for multiple years running nominated this for Labor of Love award because it's good, The devs still are adding and supporting this game 6 years after launch!
Looking back at their catalog you'll see they've spent decades iterating and building a rich unique space game and universe. It's just been improved over and over in hand crafted engines with fresh new stories each time.
X4: Foundations is the culmination of all of that passion and effort to be the most complete package with DLC adding on and growing the launch game to bigger and better again and again.
Can even play the same save game through all the upgrades having your empire expand without the need to build from the ground, but multiple game starts and game options are available for those who like to enjoy story archs from multiple perspectives.

Still learning, love the space and the fact that you can get up mid flight and walk around, most space sim games are not fully immersive, Eve for example, you cannot walk around stations, vendors etc. Now I will say the immersion aspect is super limited, if we use the non-released Star Citizen as the baseline for full immersion (yes I know it's more than buggy), that's how I measure space sims. I hope that No Mans Sky and X4 (maybe even X5) can get to that point, love to sleep on my ship, live the game, walk around my ship, it's my house beyond the stars and then not to mention planetary landing, exploration, and more.

One of my favorite games of all times. The difference from launch to today is night and day. Highly recommend this game. Mods are also fantastic.

Real men are not interested in flashy space battles. They are interested in logistics.

Two words: Pixel crack

This game easily has hundreds to thousands of hours of content available, and has plenty of re-play appeal. I'd suggest pulling the trigger when it's on sale. Don't forget the expansions, they add new factions, sectors, and ships. It can be overwhelming, and things happen slowly, at first. I did the tutorials and played a few short test games to get the feel before I committed to a long-term primary save. I would suggest saving a lot, and protect your assets, someone WILL come to relieve you of them. One saved game, I have billions in credits, own 13 sectors, and have almost assimilated every faction's blueprints, minus the obvious few factions.