Gaming

I think for my money the X series of games (X3: Albion Prelude and X4: Foundations) are some of the best singleplayer space empire-building games out there. They've definitely got their faults, but they're highly moddable and people make some overhaul mods that let you have more or less the exact sort of experience you want to have in those games.

I think it comes down to exploration.

What I mean by this is that Freelancer incorporates the ring tunnel system to allow you to quickly travel between points of interest - you can easily go from one planet to another by traveling in these tunnels. What was amazing about this is that at any time you could "leave" the tunnel and go off on your own. It felt like it was something you shouldn't really do, but if you did it, and you went far enough out where there wasn't much civilization, you could encounter stuff like a wormhole by chance and suddenly end up in a completely different solar system.

That exploration is what is missing in Everspace 2 in my opinion. Everything in Everspace 2 boils down to these small areas that you fast travel in-between.

It's like if you took the original Legend of Zelda and just had fast travel between the underground dungeons without the over-world exploration. At least that's how I see it.

I love the entire game, but there's one part that stands out for me, and that I always look forward to - the flight through the asteroid field with Juni when you first arrive in Kyushu. It's just this beautiful, tranquil interlude in the middle of all the danger and drama.

To me, the thing with the game is that it's just quality all the way through - the story, the characters, the mechanics, the graphics, the controls, the gameplay, the combat, everything.

There are so many places to go and things to see snd so many different ways to approach it. And it's all balanced so well - there's a constant calculation of risk vs. reward.

The only thing I don't really like about it is that there are so many mooks. It gets tedious when I'm trying to explore or trade and some scrubby ships pick a fight that they're absolutely guaranteed to lose. There's no risk and no challenge - all it is is an interruption. But I can put up with it - all the rest of the game makes it worth it.

Freelancer just got everything right. First and foremost are the controls. Combat is just so much fun because of it. It might not be the most strategic combat system, it might not be the most realistic, but boy is it fun. It's responsive and immersive, the weapons feel great to shoot and sound amazing. The only other game that came close was Aquanox in this regard.

It's not trying to be too much, most of the game is rather simple but to the point. The UI gives you all the information you need but doesn't overload you.

The progression was spot on. You spent enough time in each area to get familiar with it but you moved on before it had a chance to get boring. Same with your ship progression. You got new ships at a decent rate. The mix between free exploration time and furthering the story was right. The spacing between points of interest was just right, big enough that you could feel the vastness of space but not too wide to spend endless time traveling. Especially the difference between traveling amongst established lines and going "offroad" was right.

Freelancer just focused on what is important and delivered on it. There are a few areas it could have been more. Especially faction diplomacy and economy is an area that in a game released today would feel too shallow. But it didn't matter for Freelancer because it delivered where it matters and that was a fun space shooter game.

Freelancer is an incredible game indeed. How it handled ship to ship combat was simply the best, as it was the first time I actually played "space combat" instead of "aerial dogfight in space". Ships were plenty of fun and their strengths/weaknesses always made sense.

Ever gave Evochron Legacy a shot? It's quite the game once you get the hang of it, though that can take a while

Can I offer you some Star Sector (https://fractalsoftworks.com) in these trying times? It's a top-down view with more real-time strategy and RPG to it than first person space sim, but the exploration component is there in spades and scavenging ships to add them to your fleet is pretty fun and satisfying. I've been playing it obsessively the last few weeks.

I didn't know about the secret exploration stuff in Freelancer, I never found wormholes or what have you. Might have to load it back up! Or the FOSS version "LibreLancer", thanks to all who commented so far for mentioning those 😊

The game creator of freelancer has built his own studio to develop the spiritual sequel of freelancer.

Have a look at Star Citizen (still in development).

Definitely try the open source version of Freespace (2)

Freelancer and Freespace 2 were also peak space sim for me.

Getting about 10 hours in before dropping it, I had two big issues with Everspace 2: experience level progression and immersion.

Once I got to a new system, everything was high level, and in ES2, the level scaling means it's more of a wall than a slaughter. There's also no experience point rubber banding to make it worth your while.

I really enjoyed the story so far, more than Freelancer (not exactly a high bar), but I'm at a point now where I have to grind levels to continue. The above already makes me not want to, and then there are immersion problems on top of that.

In Freelancer, the whole system was loading screen free as long as I wasn't docking. I don't think I realized how big a deal that was until now. The transitions in and out of "jump drive space" in ES2 are a stark reminder that you're flying from node to node, and not cruising through a star system. Other little things when off the main questline like lack of radio chatter, no consequences for looting stations, and low traffic add to the immersion problem.

I'll probably come back to it eventually as it's good enough, but that's only because virtually no one is making this kind of game anymore. It feels like it wouldn't much to surpass this game.

I really liked both Freespace games and also played FSO. 🥰 Too bad there's no FS3. 😭🤧😢

Elite Dangerous has nice graphics and fantastic sound but I find it boring. 😪

X4 is less of a space shooter and more of a economy simulator. 🤑

I don't think Everspace 2 is as expansive as Freelancer 2 was; for that time, that was a pretty big game.

E:D more than matches that but I think the problem is that its always-online massively multiplayer angle means that there's just no bones to build a strong single-player narrative and progression.

Freelancer just nailed everything. The looks, the sounds, the world, and the story/atmosphere. On top of that it was great fun in multiplayer.

It wasn't very realistic but it didn't need to be. It was fun and easy to play. It also wasn't filled with overly complicated crafting systems or complex economy simulations.

That's one thing I really dislike about many modern games, why do they always need to have a crafting system? Take Elite Dangerous, a game I really love, even that has crafting in the form of Engineering. It's just too much hassle and it takes away the fun for me. It feels like a job.