X: Beyond the Frontier

X: Beyond the Frontier
67
Metacritic
76
Steam
67.746
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$4.99
Release date
8 October 2010
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
76 (244 votes)

The Human Race had advanced to the point where we could travel among the stars, we developed giant automated machines to help us colonise other worlds, but there was a fault in their programming and they turned and attacked. Forcing us to lay a trap to protect Earth and exiling the Human race to stay on Earth once again.

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X: Beyond the Frontier system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows 95 or higher
  • Processor: Pentium II 200 MHz
  • Memory: 32 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 4 MB DirectX-compliant video card
  • DirectX®: DirectX 7.0 or higher
  • Hard Drive: 360 MB hard-disk space
  • Sound: DirectX-compliant sound card

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
Updated
App type
Steam APP ID
2840
Platforms
Windows PC
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Fraytrain
Fraytrain

TL,DR: It is a product of its time, feels clunky to play, balance of different upgrades is out of whack, no ingame map with a huge playable area, space station automation feels archaic, spacecraft design is a lot of copy/paste, extremely light story, a tacked on reputation system, some settings issues with modern systems

The power level of some utility upgrades are completely out of whack:
The Docking Computer lets you dock INSTANTLY to a station as long as you can target that station. I went in thinking it'd just let you use an automatic path to fly into a station, but it is so so much stronger.
The SETA is completely mandatory, whereas the SETA booster extension is a liability at best, with no way of even reasonably holding a course with it even with 10 rudder optimisation upgrades.
The speed upgrades feel very underwhelming after the first three or so, when you are as fast as M3 fighters. The difference to even approach the destroyers is so huge, you would probably need to spend tens of millions of credits in Engine Tuning upgrades.
The shields power difference is huge. There are only 1MW, 5MW, 25MW and 125MW shields, which would be fine if you could have more than two at a time. I went from 2MW worth of shields where I felt like my ship was made of paper mache straight to 50MW where I was able to crash into Xenon M3 ships (most of the time? sometimes I just died and other times they died and I stayed at 80% health)

The game does not feature an ingame map and I do not suggest you trying to play it without one. The games size is still respectable for its time and directions you get from NPCs for objectives are mediocre at best (telling you which portal you should take next) or they are trying to kill you (sending you through enemy territory where you will be shot on sight by capital ships). Also there are only a handful of zones where you can buy space stations from, space equipment or pirate bays.

The station automation feels incredibly archaic:
For your own station you can buy M5, M4 and M3 fighters to defend itself, except I have never once lost a single station in my 40-ish hour run with none of them bought. (that might be a super late game thing where you make your own ecosystem in the enemy sectors? I didn't bother continuing after the story)
You can only order your transporters to buy ressources for a maximum price and they will look for it themselves. You can't make them get the ressources from your other stations.
Your solar power plants in particular don't have any automation for buying ressources. You cannot buy transporters for these stations, meaning you need to handfeed them.

The combat feels clunky, with the only automatic flight maneauvers you can do is fly straight at the enemy with an autopilot and then shooting it, which can only hit if you are right behind of the enemy, right in front, or the enemy isn't moving. Otherwise you need to fly manually which is really tedious in fights with multiple enemies, since you can't hold a course without the autopilot while under fire. If you use the Plasma Thrower (HEPT) as your primary weapon like me, you won't be able to hold a course while shooting either. I did not really test the other weapons, so I can't comment on them, but the HEPTs pack a real punch, destroying M2s in a single good salvo.
Your missiles are incredibly strong, killing M3 in one shot (at least 35k damage) and dealing significant damage to capital ships. As far as I know you can however only have 10 on your ship at any time with no possibility of ever upgrading that and it'll get expensive quickly since they are consumables (which is fine).

Spacecraft designs feel like copy paste between the races, because for the most part, they are. All the races have smaller fighter spacecrafts in M5, M4 and M3 versions, with the Xenon in their own sectors having upgraded versions with more health and slightly better weaponry (M3s have 35MW for example instead of 25MW). Then each race has an M2 destroyer capital ship and an M1 carrier capital ship with smaller M5s - M3s docked on it. None of them feel any different really and fighting capital ships for the most part is just hoping they don't crash into you, because even when they have no health remaining they will still instantly kill you. Other than that every race apart from the Xenon have a single type of transporter ship and for the Xenon specifically a single M0 Mothership posing as the final boss . There are also pirate ships which fly upgraded transporters. They will as far as I can tell never shoot you on sight or fly fighter crafts, so they are immobile and use pea shooters at best.

The story in this game is extremely light in story, which can be fine but you should know that you get one minor story point every five hours or so, with only three major ones after the introduction that I can recall, being
Finding out about where the ancestors of the Argon came from
Finding the ruined portal
The big battle alongside the allies you made along the way with the enemy solar power plants
The final battle against the Xenon M0 mothership

There is also a reputation system in the game that you could farm out for some of the later story "quests". But how does one increase their reputation with a faction since there is no questing system apart from the main story? You shoot down pirates and Xenon ships in their respective zones (I have also heard you can trade but I can't be bothered verifying that). To get support from every faction on the final quest, you need to max out the reputation of the Split, which is VERY tedious, it took me about 2-3 hours of farming for them alone. The idea of the other factions helping you out is cool on paper, but not well executed.

There are also some issues with game options, namely that you should ALWAYS play the game in windowed, since it does not support 16:9 resolution. Also it doesn't remember your audio settings on startup and you need to go to the audio options every time you open the game again. Also I wish there was a distinction between board computer audio and communication audio, but I can let that one slide.

One tiny nitpick I have is with the Xenon sectors. When you enter one, there are more than likely some allied transporters flying around and very soon, they will be ripped apart. It is an oversight in my books that transporters even attempt to pass enemy territory and manage to do so most of the time, unless you are in that sector as well, in which case the Xenon go active.

I have not played the other X-Series titles since the very early 2000s, but plan on doing so despite this games' flaws. If you want to get immersed in the X-Universe, you have my blessing to skip X: Beyond the Frontier and X-Tension (that one is basically a full sandbox version of X:BTF with no story anyways).
If you want to build your own space empire, you can do so here if you are willing to put up with its many many issues. Whoever may be on the same journey as I am, see you in X2: The Threat!

khalil_3
khalil_3

Currently unplayable. View is offset, everything shifted to the left. The mouse movement is set to roll, not steering. Menu options are useless. Seems to be set up more for play without a mouse. 2 minutes in and it's infuriating.

Big Shaq
Big Shaq

Basically, you got lost in space due to an accident and now you gotta be a businessman and conquer the entire universe by getting rich and buying big spaceships to destroy your enemies and protect your assets. Old game with dated graphics but still worth some time before you move on to the other games in the series.

jaguarknight2000
jaguarknight2000

This game is crap. No map, no way to know where you are going, no way to know what place is buy the cargo you have, no way to load cargo while in space. overall this game is crap and I am surprised that is spawned so many other games

dumonte
dumonte

Pros
If you liked the old School Wing Commander Privateer mixed with maybe a bit of some sort of business tycoon you will probably like this game. I really enjoyed creating an empire of factories throughout the galaxy making me money while I was off blasting away bad guys and pimping out my one and only ship.

Cons
Older game, bit cryptic... may need to Google things like a manual, keyboard shortcuts and a map. Was also a bit slow at the start until you get your first Solar Power Plant and start to see real money coming in. Graphics are of course also a bit dated, but as such on anything somewhat new it'll run fabulously at full 1080p =)

Summary
I was having too much fun in the game just flying around, setting up chains of factories that build off each other and make me profit every step of the way, that it took me 79 hours to finally "Finish" this old school game. (Though it just becomes a big open world after)

Forgot to say. I recommend using Pinnacle Game Profiler with a controller of your choice (I used an XBox 360 controller). I played the majority of the game without Pinnacle, but definitely more intuitive with the ability to map keyboard keys to the controller in a more intuitive way.

Dikk Justice
Dikk Justice

I played through this game just for the story so I could move on to the better-looking (and hopefully better all-around) sequals in the X series. I'd like to say I put about 40 hours into this game, 40 hours that I will never get back. The only other open-world space sim I've played was Freelancer back in high school and that game was a hundred times better than X: Beyond the Frontier. Let me tell you exactly what this game has in store for gamers:

Start off with almost nothing with no instructions on what to do next. Search the internet for guides and find only a couple. Fly back and forth between space stations buying x number of items to sell to another station for x amount of credits. Repeat this process about 200 times until you can eventually buy whatever stations you want to take the stupid dock-and-trade chore out of the game while they make money for you. Once you've gotten to this point in the game prepare to be further dissapointed. The rest of the game consists of flying back and forth across the universe for hours, finding specific objects and only once in a while participating in some very bland, uninspiring, and unrewarding dogfights against the simplest and easiest AI.

I know this game came out in 1999 but it's seriously bad. I wish I could get those wasted hours back. Never have I played a game where after beating it I feel like it was all a chore with no rewards.

Kedna
Kedna

I tried, I really tried to play that game, to give it a fair chance but the commands are frustratingly difficult and the fact that you can't rebind the keys is the absolute worst in a game like this, and all of that for a *single* reason, that reason being I'm french and have a french keyboard. Even playing with a joystick is a nightmare because the directions of the joystick are mapped to the keys of the keyboard. I feel sad that I'm missing on the story but I can't play that game in this state.

(NDE)D33PD15HG4M3R
(NDE)D33PD15HG4M3R

Sound upon start is just white noise. Tried everything, including updating sound driver, verifying game files, and un-installing and re-installing the game, and no change.
UPDATE: Found someone else with the problem, turned out to be caused by Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). Uninstalled CCCP, and sound goes back to normal. Game difficult to complete, fund to play.

Sola Di Ryuvia
Sola Di Ryuvia

I don't enjoy it as much as the later games in this series but its a classic and worth a few hours *thumbs up*

Mithaldu
Mithaldu

This is a slow game. 2 hours in you're still in the tutorial. The space physics feel like driving a submarine. It from from 1999 and looks like it and many corners feel like it.

But there is so much character, style and love put into this, and so much of the design was made specifically because it would make a better game.

If you're a patient person who can enjoy the little things, this game is for you.

Darth Durai
Darth Durai

As unappealing as dry toast.

It gets caught in your throat and makes you *cough* and *hack*
like and old house-cat.

However, I LOVE SPACE SIMS and this game is one.

Why not?

You may not want to go by me. I tried to remove my own appendix...
and now my spleen is missing.

BanOphobia My Struggle
BanOphobia My …

A bit limited and a bit dated for a space combat/trader. If some one is really looking for a very low spec space/trader then "X-tended" is a better choice. This has a actual story mode yeah, but the other one has more content. For that better free roam experience even if it doesn't have any story mode. This one is for X series collectors for sure.

Grimtongues
Grimtongues

Unless you're getting this for the sake of nostalgia, don't bother. It's just full of frustrations and inconveniences that you won't find in modern games. Credit is owed to the people who put this package together and I do appreciate the effort - there's even a complete guide in the game folder. It started up on Windows 10 without any problems, and I was able to get it working with my Logitech Extreme3Dpro (thrust control does not work, as with most of these older games you have to bind "A" and "Z" to the side buttons).

I played it for a little bit, but I just can't get into it. The graphics are too bad for me to tell the difference between the different types of stations. The trading system isn't too bad, and I like the system for building your own stations. I'm hoping X2 will be better.

aachenn
aachenn

Very interesting game for it's age.

vZ.R3DBACK
vZ.R3DBACK

Really good game if you like chilled out space ship games. I loved it and definately looking forward to playing the sequels to this game!
Overall 9.5/10 (-0.5 for being a bit buggy)
Pros:
-Lot of hours can be put into this game
-Very many upgrades that will constantly challenge the income that you get
-At your own pace you can choose to ruch through missions or take your time to earn a lot of income and max out your ship

Cons:
-Needs a bit of optimization before it can be run without any problems (I have Windows 7)

Space Cowboy
Space Cowboy

So I heard there was this game called... No Man's Sky? Yeah no I'll stick with this thanks.

rubyismycat
rubyismycat

I probably spent two years playing this game over and over. Its a game that literally changed my life and i will always love it despite its many strange eccentricities.If you dont mind old games and lots of learning how to do stuff this game is one that everyone should play just once.I remember the last campaign mission was so impossible i had to try it 60 times before i completed the game thats the only serious flaw.Oh and the ending made me cry.

ズルーキン木497
ズルーキン木497

I've actually put over 70hrs into X:BTF, just been offline.
With hat out of the way...

Even though this was made in the 90's, it's still a great game.
The map is really big for a game form this time, with every 'grid sector' containing multiple factories, solar refineries, you name it. What you do torwards one race/faction affects how others treat you, maybe even making them hostile torwards you.
But the highest point of X:BTF to me, is the market system.
I was really impressed with how it all works. Just like real markets, the prices & demands are always changing, which never allows one set way of making money. Add onto that, you can build your own plants & factories, to meet local demands, and rake in the money!

There is combat in X:BTF, but it's not anything ultra-fast-paced, like you'd normally find today. It's not slow, but it gives me just enough time to think about my next move before I move in to engage a group of Xenon M3's. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, ranging from little cargo ship protection weapons, to powerful flagship-destroyer weapons, along with a good ammount of missiles to choose from.

The later X games are great as well, but playing the very first one, the one that started it all, is just great.

Do I recommend it? Yes! If you want to play something that's relaxing, but still has you thinking and some combat here and there, this is the game for you!

10/10 Would love to be an X-Perimental Pilot one day.

Monkii
Monkii

Way too unintuitive and way too slow when compared to modern games or even other space sims. Might have enjoyed it when I was young but I don't have the patience for slow slow exploration in a space game that doesn't mesmerize by todays graphical standards.

tokanroe
tokanroe

For whatever reason controls are not able to be remapped under W10 and the game has proved a complete waste of money as it is unplayable via W10 keyboard and mouse. Getting a refund

hastatus
hastatus

Yes, there is a learning curve to go over.

There is none of that "5 minutes into the game and I roll in the cash or know the controls inside out"

Once you tune in, it becomes a second nature.

If you don't tune in - you complain about an old game with "inferior" graphics, controls, gameplay.

You buy yes?

jlgarrett
jlgarrett

While the game is slow to start, you eventually build up to be the dominant force in the X-Universe. this is a good starting point for x-3 series. I would reccomend the additional items like the book Farnems Legend. This game sereies starting with x-3 The Threat and Reunion has a massive mod base that i believe even Egosoft could not have foreseen. I have been a fan and will continue to be one as long as the games keep coming.

eyoung8887
eyoung8887

What a blast from the past this one is. I almost finished it too, but had a computer incident, and the save game file wouldn't transfer properly to the new computer back in the day. It was such an amazing experience. I had been taking control of entire fleets for a final sweep of the bad guys...but it was like when you thought it was already such a great game privateer-wise, it suddenly expanded in scope to become more of a strategic game with you as admiral instead of just as a pilot. I bought the rest of the X-series, but this will always be one of my favorite, even if it doesn't work quite as well as it did.

Basma
Basma

if alt tab out and then go back into it it runs like shit

Xarduvik
Xarduvik

X- Beyond the Frontier. I bought this game origianlly the year it was released. It required the CD-ROM to be inserted due to digital rights management. I lost the original game years and years ago during a move. Today, I found out it was on Steam. How could I resist?

I'm not a fanboi. You need to know this.

If you're looking for instant gratification and eye candy thrown at you because you rolled your face across the keyboard, this will not be the game for you. If you like to prove to the micro-universe inside your hard drive that you can conquer any hardship thrown at you, then this is certainly the game for you. It's about beating the odds. No, not quite. It's about ripping the arm off of the odds and beating it to death with its own appendage. Yeah, that is the kind of game this is.

I will not sugar coat this review. I've cussed at the screen as many times as I've cheered. This is a multi-layered game. First layer, trade your way to better stuff. Second layer, become a business owner and make NPC traders work for you. Third layer, catch pirates if you want, but you must deal with a growing xenon threat, which will target your NPC traders and blow them out of the sky from time to time. Yeah, you lose the cargo haul when that happens... which is all the motivation you need for going after the xenon to end them. Fourth layer to this game, follow a storyline that ends up with you ending the xenon threat once and for all.

So basically you start with 100 credits, a broken ship and owing the local militia forces 3500 credits. Don't leave the starter system without paying that off, or the offended race will Kill On Sight (KOS) you.

Nothing easy, but like real life, anything you work hard for and gain, you will better appreciate those gains.

In this game, you can go from that broken ship, a hundred in the pocket and a big bill to having a whole host of stations that you own, rocking shields, death weapons and a fleet of NPC fighters at your back. It's not handed to you. It's not gift wrapped or slid under the table in your direction. Something may seem completely ridiculous but later on, you nod and go, "Ah, so that's why I couldn't find any Stott Spice factories in Teladi space."

Most important aspect of this game, many people think the game is over once the main story line is defeated. It's NOT. You can still build an empire worthy of your greatness. After the main story is done, there are Nine Xenon Sectors to clear out. It won't be easy. Once they're all dead and completely gone, you now have nine sectors to build an empire beyond imagining... or can you survive it?

My original game owned more than 1000+ hours, my own empire was making tens of millions by the hour as I built factories in five of those cleared out xenon sectors, and those factories are defended by their own fleet of ships...

All from a broken slow ship and 100 creds. Dare you take that challenge? Can you survive the whacked alien mentailies from a handful of different races? I loved this game back in the day, and I'm loving it all over again.

I arrive, I suffer their madness, and I conquer them. What more could you want in a space simulation?

cpu
cpu

I really wanted to like this game.

But after getting past the technical issues (read: Learning to accept them) and the high learning curve, I have to admit I was just not having as much fun as I should be having.
I get why people like this game. It is just to tedious and dated for me.
Only recommended if you are interested in where the series started.

I'm skipping X-tension. Maybe X2 is more to my liking.

Amphiarus
Amphiarus

I entered the game to have a look and see where it all began. I never intended to stay. 56 hours later and I've about finished my first play through.
It's just simple, casual but interesting fun. It starts with a bit of a grind to get going, and then just keeps accelerating the pace. But it stays simple enough without playing itself.
The graphics are fine for the age; if you can handle minecraft graphics then this won't bother you.
I had to work a bit to get the sound to play (see egosoft's forum on playing in Windows 10; it needs an optional Microsoft update installed.) Also I couldn't get fullscreen.

mitchellmckain
mitchellmckain

X3: Terran Conflict was my favorite game for a while and thus it tempted me to by others in the series, but there isn't much reason to do so since it is still basically the same game. You probably just want to go with the last in the series, such as Albion Prelude.

The only reason for having this one is to see the intro to the story. The actual game play is a little clunky after the X3 experience. But it might be a good alternative if your computer is an old one and has trouble with X3.

Ysadr
Ysadr

Having bought the whole X series I decided to start at the beginning. I haven't played the later games at the time of writing this review, but I have to say while this game shows promise (and I look forward to seeing how this promise is developed, or not, in the later games), playing it is largely an exercise in masochism ...

The user interface is gratuitously unpleasant.

I think it's amazing that they developed this game to be able to be played with a 640x480 display - but while that's an impressive technical achievement it seems to have severely crippled the user interface. You can (should) play in much higher resolutions (and the space visuals mostly look pretty good even by modern standards), but it doesn't alter the user interface clunkiness that seems inherited from its 640x480 constraints.

From little things like the 5x5 pixel font letters used to indicate stations on the navigation display and the radar that are hard to read and don't necessarily convey much meaning ('N' for farms?), to serious problems like the fact the radar is coarse and becomes a complete mess with more than half a dozen things in range.

Worse than that it doesn't even adequately tell you how to use the limited user interface it does have. I spent a couple of hours playing assuming that it would tell me enough to figure out how to quit or pause the game ... but no. There was a brief tutorial (which doesn't really explain much at all beyond getting you to try to fly around a bit) but I can't recall the game ever telling me about the 'h'/'k' keys to bring up a little keyboard key help ... it did mention the tip system, and maybe if you looked at enough tips it would tell you about the keys to find out how to quit the game ... urgh. I guess it's old enough to forgive a little, but the convention of having 'escape' bring up a basic game control menu would have helped a lot.

I think a lot of the UI issues come down to a central design choice of not using a mouse cursor. I can kind of understand that choice from an immersive point of view - you always feel like you're sitting (trapped!) in the cockpit, and perhaps the lack of a mouse cursor helps in enforcing that feeling, but ... it would have made such a difference to so much of my complaints about this UI ... just being able to hover a cursor over something to get a tooltip, or target/orient using mouse clicks, or controlling factories without using basic cursor up/down/left/right all the time. It felt like being fitted with a straitjacket.

Visually the controls/displays were a mess as well. So often I found myself squinting trying to make things out and struggling to see past/through the UI. At every turn it seemed to try to want to obscure things by putting up partially transparent grids/HUD elements that I didn't want, with the added confusion of resolving UI elements against a background of dark space and frequent bright nebulas.

Flying around is slow and cumbersome and frustrating - particularly initially. You get a 10x fast forward fairly quickly which is essential to avoid dying of boredom waiting to get somewhere or for something to happen, but even that is wrapped up in choices seemingly designed to make using it unpleasant - it's very modal and explicitly made so that you cannot do anything else while it's active, they even put up an entirely non-helpful grid display slap bang in the middle of the screen that does nothing but make it harder to see what is going on. And then when you use a direction control (mostly by accident) half the time it will result in a complete 90 degree jerk ... ugh.

The 3D is confusing enough (as it should be), but there are problems there too. I think there are longstanding bugs in the way the radar display works that mean it frequently doesn't display what it really needs to display to effectively navigate in 3D - whether I could find something seemed to depend way too much on whether I was oriented correctly with respect to the official reference plane (yup, they take a bet each way on the 3D - the external view seems devoid of an absolute reference, which is fine, but then the navigation display indicates there IS a reference plane and a proper 'up' and 'down', as does the placement of factories). Being mostly aligned with the reference plane seemed to be necessary frequently to get the radar display to make sense - and I'm sure that's not just my mental limitations. A properly functioning radar would have helped, but the 3D is made more painful by the lack of visual cues and assists with the stations/factories as well, along with the arbitrary placement of the entrances that seemed to be deliberately chosen to be both hard to find/access and to result in you exiting structures in weird and unexpected ways, facing backwards/'upside down' ... just a mess, and mostly unnecessary in my opinion.

And forcing you to dock, Elite style, for the first part of the game ... what a pain. The docking system you get eventually is such a blessed relief. But these choices are all up there with the seeming philosophy of punishing the player as much and as early as the developers could. Maybe that fits in with the story, but ... wow it's just ... unpleasant.

So the UI is horrible.

The promising parts of the game are the sense of space, aliens, and making a fortune trading, and ultimatley building up a trading empire. Of a sort. There are limitations and problems but I look forward to seeing how this was developed in later installments.

As for this game ... an interesting prototype, play it if you metaphorically enjoy stabbing yourself with a fork.

Зелёный
Зелёный

If you searching for cool retro-gaming experience in this time, try the early X series games, i assure you you'll not be disappointed.

Smackm0nk3y
Smackm0nk3y

Looks interesting, but since I can't get it working properly I'll never really know. Good luck getting the resolution to play nice on Windows 10 x64 with Nvidia.

2nd Class Janitor - Wilco
2nd Class Jani…

Tags: 6DOF - Flight & Space Pilot
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Plays windowed only. Very pixelated. No FX sounds in-game. Sluggish ship rotation. Outcompeted by its successors.

It seems to be a universal consensus that the X series gets pretty much all of the core features that are liked by X2. So it is advisable to just skip the early entries in the franchise and start there.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2800/X2_The_Threat/

Bou
Bou

There is no reason to buy this one over X3: Albion Prelude. Read some back story on gamefaqs and start with X3: Albion Prelude (best X game) if you are new to the series. It's the same game but improved in every possible way. Don't play the same game twice by starting with the worst version.

IWontHitAnything
IWontHitAnything

I already owned the X game around `99, have the X-Gold version and
now on steam too.
Back in the days, I played it for a good amount of hours (meaning hundreds of hours).

If you want to play a real classic in this genre, play it.
And of course, X-T, X², read the novels of X² (by Helge Kautz) and play X³.
If you start with X-btf, you will have a good time while playing through the whole series.
Protip:
Sell your starter shield, trade Energy Cells, then Nostrop Oil.
Trade until you can have a cargo space of 100.
Then setup a 'Dream Farm'(~14k, 10k for a freighter) and trade more in your system.
Buy a 'Teladianium Foundry', bring it to the homeworld of the Borons if you have around 40-50k.
Then buy a 'Bio Gas Factory' and set it up in your home sector 'Seizewell'.
After that, do what you want, build up reputation (it's quite fast and easy) and play the rest of the story.

Negative side:
- outdated graphics(well it's from 99)
- simple mechanics (fighting, trading)
- needs tons of time at the start

Hecker Man
Hecker Man

old and has its charm
also has a broken widescreen which clips the menu off the screen

RUS_Nobi
RUS_Nobi

Egosoft Collection is fully worth its money and worth it to buy as a gift to friends.

20Below
20Below

I really wanted to like this game and maybe I'm just dumb and am trying to get into this searies a lot later then I should have. Anyway I didn't like the controls and couldn't map them to something I would like also I didn't really understat the option or what I should say is that I didn't know what they ment and how they effected the gameplay. I kept crashing into the rings in the start of the game and just gave up because I just could't get the hang of it. I guess this game is just not for me

NiceShoesBillClinton
NiceShoesBillClinton

can't beat the tutorial, plz help. Feels Weird bro.

Ninefoldrin
Ninefoldrin

Cool old game but it doesn't play well with modern computers. Sadly felt the need to refund it. If it properly supported modern resolutions (even if it just put black bars on the side of the screen) and supported standard controllers or had proper button mapping, it'd be alright. Will buy it again if there's ever updates to make it play adequately on my computer.

Sombs
Sombs

X-BTF is pretty raw. It throws you into an unknown environment, where you have to learn everything yourself. However, the game isn't unforgiving. If you like classic games that don't take you by the hand, like every single triple-A-title now does as if you don't know what arrow keys are, then you will like X-BTF. Exploring the, back then relatively, little universe, trading yourself from a literal Level 1 crooky up to an industrial Level 99 boss in around five or fifty hours, upgrade your X-Shuttle to carry 2x25 Shields and Energy Plasma Throwers. The nicest bit about X-BTF, to me, is the lack of professional streamlining. The game appears to me streamlined-by-accident. The first system you land in is optimized to be the start of your commercial journey, containing a bunch of very nice asteroids, a full set of supporting trading stations, heavy defense and a shipyard.

The story is sort of a secondary thing. It is very relaxing and the story doesn't unlock anything that prevents you from progressing without it. This is pretty cool, as many games do that wrong. X-BTF instead rewards you for playing the story, at the very end, with the best equipment you can get. However, it isn't really necessary as you can do everything with a self-supplied ship. Another neat thing are the battles. The game is super not streamlined in terms of combat system. Weapons shake your ship, making it difficult to aim. Dodging is sort of non-existent. Ramming is super deadly to the player. With the best equipment, you feel more safe, but you know that you can still die easily. If you ever fight a M2-Destroyer (Xenon, Paranid, Boron), you know what I mean.

All in all, this is a game for nostalgic people. The graphics are super dated. It doesn't work flawlessly on Windows 10 for some weird reason, but is still well playable. It is playful about some things and a nice introduction to the X-Universe. X-Tension is pretty much the same game but more polished and streamlined, a bit less playful and intransparent, which is good and bad at the same time. I sort of prefer BTF over Tension because of this.

info
info

I first bought this game when it had been released in 1999. At the time I really wanted a version of Elite which would run on 'modern' hardware. As it looked unlikely a new version of Elite would ever be developed, it was really a toss up between this and Freelancer (Microsoft). Where as Freelancer was more an action shooter with some light Elite style elements, X Beyond the frontier basically out-Elited Elite. Featuring high rez graphics and features which Elite never had, this felt the ultimate space trading game. And although more recently Elite Dangerous has taken back the crown, if you are looking for a fun and relatively simple elite style game, you would be hard pushed to find anything more satisfying and at £3.49, I would play this before paying nearly 20 times the amount for Elite Dangerous as its just as fun.

TheQuiffingtonPost
TheQuiffingtonPost

Space Capitalism: The Game, shame about the issues with resolution, but is bearable to go through for a brilliant sci fi game

prometheusaster
prometheusaster

It has not aged well, though I was not alive when it first came out in its greatness... probably

Passenger666
Passenger666

Nostalgia I played this when I was kid,and now remember how many hours I put in this...

na_csmith
na_csmith

the first X game I played, i loved it, so I bought the series. it very similar to the old Elite game on the Atari

FatalError
FatalError

better than you think

Now first off: you have to deal with the low res graphics that look like a n64 game. But let me tell you, you can get over that within a few hours.

This game is like star wars: technically the empire strikes back and return of the jedi are sequels, so they're supposed to be "better", and sure the lightsabers look like shit in a new hope.
But a new hope is the best and most complete star wars, and probably the most fun to watch.

This game doesn't have the graphics, the size, or the extra features of the later x-games, but it keeps it simple. Where X3 fails in it's complexity, this game just lets you make MONEY quickly. You just set up a station and BAM you start making cash. This game JUST WORKS tm.

You can ONLY HAVE ONE SHIP, but that means you can stop worrying about other ships and just find more upgrades and play through the story. And unlike most later X games, the story here is actually better, because it's straightfoward and enganging.

So if you want a classic retro space sim - get this!

d_s_hill
d_s_hill

elite before elite - awesome space trading sim with a deep story

Jahckalope
Jahckalope

Unplayable on Windows 10, at least for me.
Sound is fucked, so is the game window as it displays the window frame in fullscreen mode.
There are some solutions suggested but none worked for me.
As well the graphics didn't age well.
Can't recommend even thou it was an amazing game back in the day.

iteraternal
iteraternal

The game that started one of the best game series so far. x3 + litcubes universe mod is amazing! The plot story starts with this first game and is worth a play-through even today! 10/10 - would get lost in space again.

Anonymous
Anonymous

I played this years ago. Works great on high end system with windows 10.

arakan94
arakan94

Too outdated to play.. Ended up watching story "movie" on Youtube and moved on to X2.

Changolion Comics
Changolion Comics

Many years ago I bought this game for one dollar at Electronics Boutique back when they carried PC games. I was intrigued by the graphics as I had just gotten my first PC. I was impressed with this game and I have played it again and again way before steam came along. Life if kinda like this game. You start from nothing and work your way up. Give it a try!

ekcook
ekcook

The game is broken on modern systems. PSA test things when you buy them, the refund window closes faster than you would think.

AlloyCowboy
AlloyCowboy

If you like space sim/ sandbox type games and are feeling nostalgic, (and find yourself needing something truly challenging to undertake) than this is the game for you. I stumbled upon this game in a stack of discs back in 2001, at the time always wanting to have gotten my hands on a good space game after have playing Wing Commander. XBTF offered far more than I expected. Although the graphics are outdated, the game still holds as a great space adventure, with a compelling and unique story. Be warned,, this is a rather difficult title that requires quite a bit of patience and a steep learning curve.

afvasquez17
afvasquez17

its old and ancient-but if your like me its good to start from the start

Sobek
Sobek

This game is fantastic! It's bringing the nostalgic feeling of amazing games of 2000s. This one in particular is very atmospheric and cute, I love it a lot! This game brings inspiration and a lot of joy!

Nova
Nova

Good for seeing where the series started... BUT... You can't play fullscreen. Needs a patch. You have to manually fix the game. No, Thanks!

BBCXC
BBCXC

High barrier to entry.

Best if familiar with keyboard shortcuts.
Probably best to start with X2 or later, the come back to this one.

Max horizontal resolution 2048 as DX7 game by default.
Didn't have any issues running it.

Once I found dgVoodoo, and configured it correctly, I could play full screen in >4k .

HGwells628
HGwells628

The biggest problem with this game is that I cannot comment on its actual quality. I understand that older titles sometimes have problems on modern systems, but the state this game is being sold is in nothing short of disgraceful. The game does not display correctly in 16:9, despite offering this resolution in the settings. It will instead crop the top and bottom of the display. So you'll want to run it in 4:3, except even then it does not offer a setting that properly takes advantage of a 1080p monitor, even though it claims to run that high in 16:9. Worse than that, however, is the fact that even in fullscreen mode in 4:3, the game displays a window bar at the top and garbage around the other sides of the gameplay window. This issue persists after applying the Windows 10 fix offered on the developer's forum (which requires registration to download). The audio isn't free of trouble either, and will require you to download a third party audio codec whose setting you then need to tweak, or you'll hear nothing but harsh static.

No settings I set were saved, even when closing the game from the main menu and checking the box in the launcher to load the settings. And that's when the game even lets you get as far as the menu. Every time I launch this game it's a gamble as to whether or not the game will allow me to interact with it or simply minimize itself endlessly. Windows compatibility mode is of no help in these issues, the Steam community doesn't solve them all, and the forums combine technical support for the first 3 games in the series and all expansions into a single, nigh-unsearchable mess some 350+ pages of threads long.

Even worse, I've heard that the GOG version simply does not have a number of these problems. I would love to try playing this game, the way other reviews talk about it makes it sounds like a lot of fun, but even trying to meet it halfway in the technical department it falls pretty well short.

Quadinaros
Quadinaros

Excruciatingly bad, quite disappointed at spacedock for recommending this. Not updated for a modern windows 10 computer with a large screen, controls are awful and tedious. Intro tutorial is one of the worse tutorials ever. This game was 9 years after wing commander, so there's really no excuse for how bad it is. Dont' waste your 0.99

rko381
rko381

This is one of my favorite games from the early 2000s, that combines space flight sim, combat, base building, and real-time economic environment for players to enjoy. Top notch for its time.

byo13
byo13

Addictive and atmospheric. Still very much playable - even more with map companions and guides. 20 years ago. Yup, that's when all the madness started.

And yes, it works perfectly in Windows 10, even better than in 1999.

20DucksAndAnOodInATrenchcoat
20DucksAndAnOo…

I'm llama enough to admit when I'm wrong. This is a good game. If you like trading and building up a business empire, you can have loads of fun with this, though I suggest getting just far enough to learn the game then switching to X-Tension, the expansion for Beyond the Frontier, which is so much better from a UX perspective. There is a story to this game but it can be covered in a small paragraph and there are playthrough videos out there that accelerate to the important parts. The biggest issue with both games is getting them to run consistently, but it's not that bad if you know how to search and try what others have tried. I would list out exactly what you need to do but I'm honestly not sure how I finally got mine working. I fiddled with a lot of things and couldn't say which one (or ones) finally did the trick. It was worth my time messing with it, though.

The following is my initial review. Beneath that I'll explain why I was wrong.

------------------------------------------------------------

Nope.

I played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, XVT, and Wing Commander back in the day, and although all of those came out earlier, they were significantly more playable than this.

The graphics are decent for its age and there is a lot of voice acting, so that's cool. I've played so many games like this that I have zero problems with the manual docking.

The problem is that this is a game from 1999 that sees the future from the point of view of 1965. You're supposed to go from station to station, buying low and selling high, but there is no indication as to where those stations are. They're all just vague ideas of buildings that, at first anyway, can't be zoomed in on, can't be targeted until you're almost on top of them, and FSM forbid you're looking for something specific because there's no map of any kind and things aren't marked in any way even after you've visited them.

This makes all Internet help pretty much useless, too. Plenty of people say things like "buy oil from blah and sell energy at blah" but unless you want to very slowly approach each building and re-identify them, somehow memorize where things are even though you're in space, or try to draw a map, none of that means anything. Supposedly there are maps online, but I can't find any that actually load.

On top of all of this, it takes a while to get the game going correctly on a Windows 10 machine with a 1080p monitor. I ended up having to launch it outside of Steam because Steam kept changing the properties of the .EXE, making the game not load. It took hours just to figure out how it was supposed to be setup.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is where I was wrong.

The game is very playable once you get it running. It's actually fairly simple to play but you do have to take a "figure it out" approach to some of the systems (or look them up online).

Using Excel, I ended up mapping every sector (solar system) I visited, then wrote down the buy/sell values of each item at each place. That helped me to feel a lot less blind. Mapping in space isn't as bizarre as it might sound. The game uses normal cardinal directions and, although the stations might be in various places on the z-axis, mapping using a flat medium still works pretty well compared to having no map. X-Tension provides far more information for trading and very little need to make maps so I'm assuming the developers realized it was confusing to start due to sheer lack of information.

Again, not entirely sure what I did to get it to work, so I can't say much about that except that I know it is possible.

sanookdi
sanookdi

This is one of my long time favorite games. It drops you unexpectedly in the middle of an unknown part of the universe and you have to learn your way around by yourself. It is more than just a shoot up and blow up everything in sight game, which makes it more challenging and fun. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for something different from the usual space adventure games. It can be time consuming, so don't bother if you are impatient. But if you want a challenge, go for it. This is a real classic.

Vinnie Mack
Vinnie Mack

I suppose that this might be okay for fans of first person space travel simulators. Since I am not a big fan of that genre, this game would have to be a lot better than it is for me to put in the time to figure out the wanked controls. It doesn't help that the game looks ancient, and it doesn't fit my computer screen correctly.

Summary: for fans of that genre, or gamers with a lot of time on their hands.

turbo2
turbo2

Summary: Primitive & flawed; just buy X3 instead.

I've played X3 quite a bit, and while it has flaws, it's a great game. Conversely, this original foray into the X universe left me desperately wanting all of the features and revisions that came later.

Released in 1999, its visuals lie somewhere between Sega 32X and N64 level. Text and icons are broken / hard to read at 1080p. The pace is very slow (esssspeccciallly the sssssstaaaarting Telaaaaddiiii diallloooogue) and it feels like they've deliberately hamstrung you with exceedingly terrible starting stats (speed, scan range, etc) just to encourage the pursuit of upgrades. OK, but I just don't see why the ability to simply click on or know what a previously-scanned station is, needs to be locked behind a progression wall? The worst offender is the save game system, where you literally cannot save your game without spending credits. This leads to frustration early-on, weighing on whether to spend 1/5 of your paltry trading profit (which you gained blundering between obscurely shaped stations at extremely slow speeds) to save your game, or risk losing it all.

Most of the egregious problems here are fixed by time time of X3 (the Teladi are still comical but their dialogue doesn't take twice as long to speak, you start out slow but you have ways to mitigate it, you can't scan far at first but your computer remembers the stations you've scanned, you still pay for saves in space but get autosaves at the station for free...) I'm sure there's still a great game buried here if you stick it out long enough, but personally I couldn't take more than a couple hours of this slog before uninstalling.

Sky
Sky

Psst... hey... you wanna buy some spaceweed?

Game is pretty neat too, for a game made in 1999

tntavon
tntavon

This is not the most recent game, but if what you want is a combined flight sim, along with empire building game? then yes I do recommend it. Its not as graphically pretty as more recent X games, and the logistics of factories like solar power plants involve more manual hauling, but that being said it is a great game.

WONDERなパン
WONDERなパン

As of 2020, for me, this game is unplayable. Getting the resolution and window to go fullscreen was challenging alone. The next 20 minutes or so was mostly awkward, clumsy, and incredibly dated to the point of feeling abstract in controls and gameplay.

I can't recommend this to anyone. Watching some YouTube "let's plays" would provide a better, more fulfilling experience than playing it first hand. I couldn't determine if there was a storyline worth knowing before moving on to the next games in the series, but I've decided I'd rather read a summary then obtain it via gameplay.

Hard pass.

cafemachiavelli
cafemachiavelli

This is the best game that objectively isn't all that good. The story can be written on a napkin, characters are dull and replacable, the UI is a mess and you will probably die randomly due to freighters leaving the station as you do, resulting in a crash and immediate death.

But I still spent basically the entire last two week putting over 60h into this game and having a blast. Yes, it definitely has its weaknesses, but that makes it enjoyable. The balancing is weird? That means you can enjoy building a corporate empire spanning multiple sectors, end up producing your own shields and weapons for 50% of the retail price and crushing any opposition you could possibly face during the main story missions. Honestly, after playing too many games that scale enemies with you to always feel challenging enough, it's refreshing to have a game that says "You want to break the rules? Go ahead. You can be as strong as you want to be, if that's what's fun to you. Also, it's probably gonna take you 60h of juggling factories, setting prices and ensuring production chain stability, but you do you". And so I did, and it was great fun.

I should add, however, that part of the joy of this game is definitely nostalgia. I grew up playing it and having a good time, so I can still look at it today and have a good time as well. If I didn't know the game feel and wasn't able to ignore the low-res textures and polygons with handfuls of vertices, I'm not sure if I'd be able to enjoy it quite as much.

But that should be easy to solve - if you can look at the graphics without recoiling and think that building a space empire might be something you'd enjoy, give this a chance. Oh, and switch to the expansion after a while, it does come with much more content and a decent amount of polish.

Kickassa
Kickassa

Its a old game from 1999-2000 but it has a good story line and leads up to X2 and beyond which gets better game by game.

PegasusJF
PegasusJF

I have to give this game a postive rating because when it first came out I enjoyed it for hours and hours (long before Steam existed). In it's day it was the most gorgeous game around, with a beautiful soundtrack and a basic (though compelling) story to push you on (as well as getting MOAR CREDITS!).

That day has regretably passed. You may still find some enjoyment here, especially if you haven't played its successors which have successively built up, polished and greatly improved upon this old gem. There aren't many games of this type so it's worth a look and perhaps look further in X-tension, X2, X3 Reunion, X3 Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude, X Rebirth, and finally X4.

That said, X3 and especially X4 have perfected upon this gem and are most worthy of your time, but 5 buck isn't much to ask to see how it all started.

Evolve
Evolve

So did it age well?
It was my first 4x game and i enjoyed it a lot right to the point when i built my trade empire and decided to try out the combat... and it's awful in every single way possible. Ship movement is floaty as hell, weapons are not very effective, largest enemy ships are impossible to kill as they move 10x your speed (can't finish them as they fly away and regen shields and rockets are way slower than them) and use every opportunity to ram you. On top of that EVERY time you get hit, no matter how insignificant the damage is, your ship experiences a seizure of immense power.
So turns out it's exactly as terrible as when it was released, just as i remember it.

rob123stigg
rob123stigg

For its time this was the Elite fix we needed and even now for something nostalgic this is the go to game for Elite like game play along with all the others a great franchise worth getting and giving it a go

PainfulJam924
PainfulJam924

I have not played a single second of this game. It simply will not work.

savitskynikita
savitskynikita

Ох, ребятушки. Перенесемся в 2000 год, когда мне было лет 12. Батя купил какой-то пиратский диск с тремя играми про полеты в космосе. Первые две игры, естественно, не запустились, как это обычно бывало с пиратскими сборниками, поэтому я даже названий не помню. А вот X пошел, да еще как пошел! С полной локализацией, с полной озвучкой (вот в наше время пираты были! получше нынешних локализаторов)!Помню, как было сложно разбираться с управлением (ОЧЕНЬ СЛОЖНО БЛЭТ!!!), помню какой восторг был когда сделал первую стыковку, помню как первый раз вылетел в другую систему, ахах, а еще ведь как сохраняться не знал, приходилось все заново начинать. И вот, 20 лет спустя, купил игру в стиме и решил понастальгировать, а заодно поддержать Egosoft, так сказать, отдать должное. Прошел обучашку, попал в долговое рабство к телади... И сижу, реву как тряпка. Душевная игра, ребята. Спасбо Egosoft за моё космическое детство.

[TKT][2Lt]tranxalive
[TKT][2Lt]tranxalive

"This is the story of the ultimate dream, man's dream. A dream of escaping from the confines of his own planet. A dream of freedom within his own universe. A dream of reaching the stars..." These words started one of the best, if not THE best space sandbox game franchise.

X-Beyond the Frontier is a game that fans old and new can enjoy. Despite being outdated by newer games like X4: Foundations, and the ever-popular X3: Albion Prelude, X-BTF is still fun to play years after its release. However, unfortunately, it lacks some of the newer features of the X games, which makes some things a hassle to do. Though, despite it's tediousness, it still provides hours of entertainment.

Pros:
Decent sized map that allows for large scale building of stations.
Empire building. Though lacking a proper interface for asset management.
The player is overpowered and can affect the entire universe's economy.
Nice music.
Multiple species to trade with, each with their own wares and economies.
Many upgrades to install for your ship, such as the crucial Singularity Engine Time Accelerator, or SETA. Which speeds up the flow of time.
Good story.

Cons:
Lacking multiple interfaces, such as the map. Some people may actually see this as a good thing, since you are in an unknown part of space.
Weird station management. You are only restricted to a race's transporters for that race's particular station.
The main enemy is weak, and uses weak lasers and missiles.
The AI in combat is strange, and relies on ramming you to death, rather than firing lasers or missiles.
No subtitles for speech, and NPCs can be hard to understand.
VERY steep learning curve, and bland tutorial. However the game is much more enjoyable when you know the controls.
Help menu is mostly unhelpful. You'll probably have to read the manual.
Cutscenes in the game can be a bit strange sometimes.
Resolutions are a bit weird also, and you'll have to deal with white bars while playing in fullscreen mode.
Impossible to play with a controller alone, you'll also probably have to edit the controls first.

I may have listed a lot of cons, but the game IS fun. I wouldn't recommend you start with this one first because of the steep learning curve, you should try X2: The Threat first, and get familiar with the game mechanics before you try this game.

All in all, this game is worth your money and time. Plus it's relatively cheap, so even if you don't like it, you only spent $5.00.

cavscout1739
cavscout1739

This game is really old - but it's still fun to play. Go back to a time when it was incumbent on the gamer to figure out how to play a game (with suitable prompts), and then let them loose to go have fun, build a nation and destroy another (or - heck - destroy all of them; you can do that). The sandbox element of this 4X is very nice, and there's no overwhelming need to advance the story faster than your own pace. You will need to upgrade your equipment and cargo storage, though - otherwise you're needlessly spending hundreds of hours going from station to station like an overloaded bee. If you like the other X games, you should get this one as well to complete your set.

dotWDR
dotWDR

If you really want to see how the series started, go ahead and play it, it is not a bad game, but my overall experience was a letdown. Future games in the series are better in every way, be it controls, UI or stability, not even mentioning the content and features, so if you want to enjoy what was enjoyable about this game, pick any other game in the series.
The only two things that are unique to this installment are its own plot and its difficulty. The plot is very simple and linear and is not that interesting, and is provided in scraps, but it is paced in a way that will allow you to touch upon most of the features in the game and provides an end goal and a conclusion (unlike arguably all the other games in the series). Though the plot can be retold in like five sentences, and you'll not miss out anything important if you play any other game, because they will be sure to retell it to you once more.
About the difficulty - the game is quite easy. At the beginning, you'll have to spend a few hours like a complete hobo, but after you build your first factory, IF you place it in an economically-viable spot, you'll see how rigged in your favor the economy is and how fast you'll be able to buy all the toys you need. The combat is also not hard, early on, fighting is easily avoidable and the opponents are weak, and when you eventually decide to pick fights with stronger enemies, your top-notch equipment will be no match for them. Overall, what little features this game has (compared to other installments), you'll be able to experience all of them and complete the game in maybe 20 hours.
The main reason why I am not recommending this game is that it is buggy as hell. Sometimes the enemies get their collision disabled so you're unable to hit them until you restart the game, sometimes when you undock, it launches your ship right at the wall and to your doom. On modern machines, mouse controls are practically unusable, and there are a couple other things you'd have to configure to make the game run to your satisfaction.

✠DFSpecter
✠DFSpecter

Great game, but it has it's issues.

Edit: Never mind. The devs fixed the issues I was complaining about.
ABSOLUTE CHADS!!

Anyways;
Tl;Dr
It's a flawed game that has it's awesome moments, but desperately needs some help getting to the better parts of itself.

The introduction into the universe is... a great tutorial but ends with a BAAAAAAD taste in the mouth with you needing to pay a debt and you got literally 0.0001 hp. If you sneeze in the first couple hours of the game, you explode, but that's actually forgivable once you get past that and the software technical difficulties.

The core gameplay is solid and it's universe is extremely interesting! I want to keep exploring and finding new stuff, but it feels like the game actively fights against me every step of the way and doesn't want me to play it.

I'm recommend this, NOT because I got it cheap and able to see past it's many MANY glaring flaws, but mostly because of the universe present here.

Other than that, just read a wiki/TV-tropes page on x:BtF and get X2 or X3 instead, because this installment (with exception to X3: Rebirth) is arguably the WORST introduction to a nice series.

Edit: Now that the Devs updated the game, I absolutely hope to fully explore the X universe without being repetitively bogged down with software limitations, coding shenanigans and bad luck.

IT FEELS GOOD TO BE BACK!

Dyamashiro1998
Dyamashiro1998

X: beyond the frontier maybe difficult and it has it's flaws but with Outstanding Graphics, Open-Ended Gameplay, Dynamic Economy etc makes X: Beyond The Frontier, a underrated Space Trading and Combat Simulator that we remember.

CopperHead
CopperHead

I like it.

Get Terran Conflict, Albion Prelude and Farnham's Legacy though, if you have to choose.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Ok Here it goes. I keep playing it!! It is fun to develop character into a Buck Rogers type person. Takes a bit of learning but the longer you play the fun grows.

Sascha
Sascha

Great Game! Played it 20 years ago for the first time. If you like exploring star systems, trading and some fighting and dont mind the >20 years old graphic (which was phantastic by then) then you should take a look at it!

Cutelittlepoop
Cutelittlepoop

I have no prior nostalgia to fall back on. I did enjoy this game even the audio would cut out occassionally. For the story, I just watched youtube because of this. It's just a Windows 10 issue considering this game is from the 90s. It's basically a sandbox with an optional story. You can build a trade empire which is pretty sweet. The start is slow but as things pick up, you start gaining some good momentum. For it's time, this game was 10 years ahead in term of mechanics. I really enjoyed playing it. Now on to the next game in the series.

lordbuh
lordbuh

The whole setting and atmosphere is unique. Tens of hours went by...
Play the debut game from Egosoft that started the series!

Link to my Story Movie:
https://youtu.be/eky6CjWVUAc

swinzer
swinzer

A little slow to start out, but a fun trading game in the early game mode

Mackace
Mackace

Horrible controls, obnoxious npcs

Le Hearse
Le Hearse

They updated it. It's a great space sim. And it's $5. This is a must play for space sim enthusiasts.

Hana ✿
Hana ✿

IMPORTANT: If you end up buying the game, read the manual - as you always should with any game released before 2004. There's two guides at the game's main folder: EN_Manual and EN_Walkthrough. The first is the original manual released in 1999, while the second is a .txt guide released in 2000.

X: Beyond the Frontier (X:BtF) is a game released in 1999, and as such it's definitely dated, both in graphics and in it's UX/UI. From a gameplay perspective, although X:BtF was very innovative for it's time, it falls short compared to modern titles. It's gameplay is actually very similar to Euro/American Truck Simulator in parts (excluding the pve).

You start of with a small hybrid vessel and have to earn money. You can earn money by either moving trade between factories, destroying ships, or by building factories yourself to automate your trading. When you get enough money, you buy stuff to make more money. That gameplay loop can be fun, as we can see that even modern games still uses this - clicker games especially are built entirely on this concept. Even though getting cash is the core loop of this game, there's also an exploration side to it, which is the thing that makes the game relatively dated.

Exploration in this game is a drag. It's fun to manage your factories and solve the "puzzle" of where's the place to make the most profit out of them, but traveling to one place to another is VERY boring. You're traveling through space just doing nothing (even with S.E.T.A - an equipment you can buy to speed up time - it's still a drag; you can't even move while in S.E.T.A). Games like Euro/American Truck Simulator at least make you worry about traffic, staying on the road and - probably the most important - gives you different scenery to look at while traveling. Exploring in this game is just looking into nothing most of the time.

If you want to buy this to see how the games of the X's series evolved over time or if you just want to explore historic games by their intrinsic cultural value (or you're a game design student), then you could certainly try this game out, but even still I would recommend going directly to X-Tension, which is basically a DLC for X:BtF, adding a massive amount of content and also has an UNBELIEVABLY better UI/UX. The only thing X:BtF has that X-Tension doesn't is it's story, but the story is pretty rubbish, so I'd recommend just skipping it anyways. If you really want to know the lore to play other Xs's, you're be better off just watching a video on youtube about it (there's actually a very good one out there).

You can check out my review of the standlone DLC X-Tension clicking here

X: Beyond the Frontier: 3/10 - MEDIOCRE

Untamed Rose
Untamed Rose

Super slow game. Played when I was young. Really relaxing. But slooow pace. So not for those that are impatient or want a lot of action (at least not til the very end of the game).

Prefer the first person cockpit view, to the x3 games where its more like a management sim. Anyways, its nice to be able to go back and play these games once again.

Lost Latios
Lost Latios

An old style sci-fi trading sim with a mysterious aura combined with a fresh experience of the unknown. If you are into data dumps, creating profit, and exploring a vast universe then you'll enjoy X:BTF.

Mourgan447
Mourgan447

Old, yes. Monotonous grinding, check. Fun factor, heck yeah! I grind and grind to get a new shield so I can survive a battle with even the most basic of Xeons only to find out I need a better weapon or it's a stalemate battle! I knew it! I knew I was gonna need that PAC! Sorry, no time to write I gotta go get my new weapons.

Gear Girl Liker
Gear Girl Liker

X: Beyond the Frontier's main flaw is that it's really really fun, until it's suddenly just not. The game is tedious all around, but at the beginning of the game, the tedium is actually pretty engaging. But by the end of the game I found myself just wanting it to be over already. I never bothered to really finish the game, because I learned that the final mission requires waiting for a very slow ship to fly through like 8 sectors, and that was the point were I just got sick of it and quit for good.

The fun: the game is essentially about flying a spaceship, trading, and building a profitable trade empire. There was a really powerful sense of enjoyment and pride in going from repeatedly failing the tutorial because I wasn't able to fly, to being able to manually dock with one hand behind my back over the course of 50 hours or so in this game. I have a weakness for games that make you feel like an Expert like that. Even just flying back and forth to trade nostrop oil was really enjoyable. I would play through the first part of the game 1000 times. Even if its tedious, sometimes its nice to just mindlessly fly back and forth making trades, or flying back and forth to collect money from your factories, etc.

The boring: I managed to buy all the best equipment in the game from the profits of my trading empire before really bothering with any of the "plot" missions. The plot in this game is pretty sparse and doesn't really feel like the main focus, but I decided I wanted to try and finish it anyway, and without anything else to do in the game it was just... boring. The missions have you repeatedly flying back and forth across the universe, and even with a ton of engine upgrades, I found myself just looking at memes on my phone and waiting for the trip to end. All that was for very little payoff, since as mentioned above, I got so bored of it that I just quit before completing it. Everything happens sooooo slooooooooowly that I found myself wishing the game had some type of fast travel mechanic, which... really defeats the purpose of a space flight sim, I think.

All in all, the reason I recommend this game is because you can totally just ignore the main missions. There are no side missions in this game, mind, but still, I found building a trade empire and exploring new sectors pretty enjoyable. I would, and maybe will, play that part of the game a thousand times.