I bought this god knows how long ago hoping it would be a "cheaper and easier" Elite Dangerous game. Even though I enjoy Elite Dangerous and wanna play it more and do a review for it sometime I just end up rarely playing it so I was hoping something like this could scratch that flying a space ship itch I've been having recently. Smaller download size, easier to run, probably a lot more easier to understand as well... Or so I was hoping. Almost 5 hours and I can tell I'd rather not continue. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the game, its what I expected it to be. Its just that I'm 5 hours in, the very few combat I've seen has been incredibly boring, the trading is fun mainly because I enjoy trading not because the game does it in a fun way, the ships look cool and stuff but its not enough. I can tell that if I really wanted to squeeze fun out of this game I'd have to commit a lot more hours into it and currently I don't really see why I should.

+The menus while very confusing at first can be fun to use once you figure out how they work. That just applies for the controls in general very confusing at first but once you get used to it its not bad at all. A few keys on your keyboard and your mouse is all you need to navigate through the entire game both in space and in the UI.
+Many different ships, they all look nice some even come with turrets. Big stuff, small stuff all the fun things you'd hope to see in space.
+The voice acting can be surprisingly good at times. There were a few lines I really liked. There were times where it was meh as well, some things got annoying too quickly. You do get some dialogue options they're nothing big but they exist.
+The trading in the game is fun but thats mainly because I enjoy trading in games like this, the game doesn't really make it interesting on its own. Yeah prices change for the goods you're trying to sell and each station needs different resources and produces different goods thats all cool but thats what I'd expect in a game like this so I'm not giving it too much praise. Maybe it was super impressive in 2003 but thats the price you pay with older games I guess.

+/- Wtf is a mizura? And all the other weird words they keep using? Mizura, Jizura, This-ura, That-ura. Just say years, hours, minutes. You can get missions from stations they'll just be there for you to look at, read through and accept if you think you can do it and like lets say a mission says "we need 180 of this thing but it has to be delivered to us in 3 mizuras" like sure it sounds different and unique but you're just making my job harder to keep track of time. Maybe its because I didn't play the earlier games but a lot of terminology is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird and its never explained to you, just figure it out yourself.

-I usually don't mind older graphics that much and with some games I even find it charming but in here it just looks bad. I like the design of the ships, I don't like their textures.
-The fighting in the game is very very very boring.
-Its an incredibly slow burning game and you can tell early on that you're gonna need to invest a lot of time to get things really rolling or you need to follow a guide to try and min-max everything. I didn't wanna do either.
-Its a space game, it takes place in space. Now thats wonderful, exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately that means things can turn anywhere they want, anytime they want and things turn a lot. What the hell do I mean? Imagine docking into a station and trying to find a parking spot for your ship. There are several in front of you, some occupied and one or two empty spots for you to park into. They're all stationary. But the walls of the station? They're rotating. It ♥♥♥♥♥ with my brain to look at it I've seen similar stuff in other games but they didn't ♥♥♥♥ with my brain as much as this game did. I think this is the first space game where my brain got messed up while I was trying to park into a stationary location while all the walls were rotating around me. Oh and another thing about that as far as I know there isn't a "free look" camera mode. Not being able to look left or right inside of your own cockpit makes things hard.

You can do a lot of stuff in game and even though there is a story you don't really have to do the missions and follow it. Its not that its an awful, unplayable game. Its just that it clearly needs a lot of time and effort which I'm not willing to give. I do not want to suffer slowly for god knows how long before things get really off the ground. I came here because its an older game, smaller download size, easier to run on any PC. Had I been using my older, worse computer maybe I would have liked it more but now that I have a stronger PC I don't really have a need, a reason to commit to this game. If you are going to buy a game where you drive space ships and trade and fight... There's better options I believe. If you really want something from the X series go for the latest one, X4, the screenshots look great and its probably improved in a lot of ways too. If you really do want X2 The Threat I assume you have some nostalgia with this game or you were in a situation like me where you didn't have a great PC but you really wanted to play a simulator type of game that took place in space. If you are in those situations, sure. If not then I don't think you should buy this game.