An hour or so into the game, I'm given a transporter ship and a mission to ferry some civilians from one sector to another. Accompanying me is my employer's daughter, Saya (who bears an uncanny likeness to Alyx Vance). Just as I'm approaching the last jump gate separating me and my destination, Saya's voice crackles over comms: "...I think we're being followed...I swear I saw a pirate ship." We pass through the gate and my heart sinks. A dozen pirate ships were waiting for me. I hand the controls over to the ship's computer and hop in the aft turret to lay down some desperate cover fire. The intelligent auto-pilot system gracefully and effectively dodges the brightly colored emmisions from the enemies' gamma impulse rays as I fire wildly into space.

This is a transport vessel; unequipped for a sustained firefight, and woefully ineffective against a sorty of pirate ships. We aren't going to make it. But then, I remember that I have a ship docked in this sector: an M5 class Argon Discoverer light reconnaissance fighter craft. I call up my shipboard computer and access the ship to ship command console. I order my fighter to fly out into space, then I retake manual control of the transport. This plan might just work. I close the distance between my two craft to about 400 meters, rolling and weaving all the while to avoid the enemy projectiles.

Commanding the transporter to dock at the TerraCorp HQ, I eject into space. Saya's voice on comms again: "W-what are you...where are you going? You can't just leave us here!" I ignore it, my plan already seeming foolish enough without her to remind me. I jetpack over to the Discoverer and enter the ship. Payback time. Locking onto the nearest pirate ship, I engage the ship's thrusters and begin pursuit. My M5 has the weakest weapons and shielding available, but I don't care. I have to protect the civilians; I have to protect Saya.

The majority of the pirate ships turn to face this new threat. Two still chase the transporter. I throw my ship back and forth, narrowly dodging would-be kill shots, but still sustaining heavy damage. Shields critical. Hull at 43%. This plan was suicide. I lock on to the transport to track its progress. 200 meters out from docking. A few seconds away. With renewed hope, I turn my craft around and fly towards TerraCorp HQ and the transport. I just might pull this off.

Suddenly, one of the pirates tailing the transport increases its speed and positions itself between the station and the transport. I'm 2 kilometers out, just out of effective firing range. I can only watch as the pirate ship fires a volley of lasers directly into the cockpit of the transport ship. The transport erupts in flames, spirals out of control. "No," I hear myself utter, "no no no..." The transport ship careens into the station and explodes, and with it, my passengers. My ship's computer makes an announcement: "Attention, your Argon Express has been destroyed by a pirate Orinoco in sector Home of Light."

Saya, my employer's daughter and my character's potential love interest, dead. The pirates break formation and scatter, their mission accomplished. My M5 is crippled, my S.E.T.A. booster, one of the alpha impulse ray emmiters, and my duplex scanner all destroyed. I haven't the time to mourn, however, as I'm already receiving a message from my other employer: the Argon Secret Service. "Welcome to X2," I think to myself, as I fly my busted ship back to TerraCorp HQ.

X2 improves upon Beyond the Frontier in almost every way. You can now fly any ship, leave your ship in a space suit, and trade and command stations remotely. Combat has been heavily refined, the story line improved, graphics modernized, and the universe expanded. This is the one of the few times I've ever seen a sequel outshine its predecessor, and I know that I'll enjoy every second of my journey across the X-universe.

X2: The Threat is the continuation of the X saga and is, for it's time, the quintessential space game. That is not to say it starts off that great. Most people will quit after a few hours of gameplay and label it a mediocre experience and they'd be right to do so, X2 is not a game that impresses in the beginning, it is a game that requires tremendous investment in time and effort before you start to understand and appreciate the scope of the game.

As the game starts up you're treated to some low quality cut-scene with poorly modeled people trying to cover up their lack of animation, you're then booted into the game with little instruction on how to do anything and a tutorial that is so completely useless at actually teaching you anything it might as well be a deterrent to keep new players from learning the game.

You will spend your first few hours struggling with your flight controls and trying to figure out how trading works stopping every once in a while to curse at the unintuitive HUD and the lazy save game system.

But then, at some point between frustration and throwing your PC out the window you will discover something. This game is awesome once you figure it out. X2 like it's predecessors doesn't want to tell you want to do, it simply wants you to do. Want to be a pirate? Go do it. Want to be a trader? Go do it. Want to be bounty hunter or a mining mogul? Go do it. Change your ship, create a fleet, manage vast networks of trade ships and mining complexes, you are free to do as you please in this vast and open universe.

There is a storyline hidden somewhere out there between the stars. The game starts you off in the classic role as a prisoner getting one last chance at redemption and as you progress through the game a story will unfold, if you want it to. The storyline is entirely optional and most people will probably end up ignoring it most of the time in favor of the open-ended gameplay that is at the core of X2.

The game is quite beautiful as you float between the stars and watch the myriad of anomalies, space stations and ships that make up the various star systems you visit. The character models and the cut-scenes however are of a much lower quality and will often make you dread having to speak to somebody aboard a space station.

All in all X2:The Threat is a great game, if you can get past the insanely steep learning curve.

X Games are a genre unique unto themselves. The game is basically a sandbox universe made up of multiple sectors or solar systems connected by jump gates.
The main objects in the sectors are factories which consume and produce products; and different kinds of space ships flying about doing different tasks; such as freighters collecting or delivering products, military ships defending the sector, pirates doing their business (they don’t bother you too much), and a mysterious enemy called the Khaak (that will bother you relentlessly).
You can choose the role you want to play. Be a pirate hunter; steal their ships and sell them for profitsss. Become a pirate yourself if you want. Or become a business magnate; build a commercial empire with factories in multiple sectors and your own fleet of freighters. Get rich so you can buy the high-end ships and equipment and go and conquer the universe. It’s really up to you.
There is a storyline you can follow if you want. It’s not great really; but you can drop in and out of it as you like.
X2 is not an arcade dog-fighting game. If that is what you want you will be disappointed. The game requires a lot of time & patience to learn and play. For those who like sandbox simulation games, with an emphasis on building an empire from scratch X2 The Threat is excellent. Although that said the subsequent iterations have improved the gameplay and graphics. So if you want to play just one X game this might not be the one to choose. The whole series is available here on Steam, so do a little research and decide which one you want to jump into.
(ps I have the game on Steam but I played a retail copy)

Economic simulator IN SPACE! You will HATE this game if you expect to fly around blowing stuff up like a bad Wing Commander clone and I will laugh at you for it. This game is for people who extract joy from maximzing profits as they dominate the market on space weed and use their illicit drug money to build an armada to destroy entire races because a transporter from a neighboring sector bought all the energy cells for their worthless wheat farm.

Do you like spending long hours establishing your empire?
Do you like big learning curves?
Do you like working a second/third job?
Do you want to wreck the economy?

If you answered yes to those questions you will enjoy this game, otherwise just go away before you become another one of those people who just doesn't get it and hates the X series without really knowing why. Unless you hate Rebirth, that's different.

First Impression Only.

After trying for weeks to get comfortable with X3, I thought I would step back and try X2. Much better pace! I would highly suggest anyone trying to get the hang of X3 to do X2: The Threat first. It is not so much the story line, but the overall feel of the game. While the controls differ sleightly from game to game, as they are approached differently, what you NEED to do is still the same.
With that said, the game is VERY reminisance of FREELANCER in many ways, and not X3. For starters, X3 has no player/NPC 3rd person visuals and comes across more as a serious EVE ONLINE style, where X2 seems to be more story oriented.

The voice acting is great (above par for the year it came out), however, it can seem diminished by the horrid NPC artwork. - So bad in fact, I did not have difficulty staring at the close-caption in order to avoid looking at them - YUP they are that bad.

But that does not take away from the game. X3 takes some of the soundtrack as well. So when completed with X2, and you decide to move to X3, it will still feel familiar, albeit more mature feeling. You 'll have a better understanding of the controls and how to move about as well.

If you're like me, and want to be an X fan, try this one first. It helps a lot to go into X3

X2 is very complex, and overwhelming when you start to play. The learning curve from X:btf to X2 is huge.
(Xbtf wasn't exactly easy to play at the start)

It'll take several hours and lots of time in the training menu before you feel confident and start to really enjoy it.
This was the first X game i played when it was released, I accidently ejected from my ship, couldn't get back in it, then put X2 down and was scared away from the series.

However 13 or so years later i tried again. And the verdict is............. I LOVE IT.
freelancer held a special place to me, but after learning X, freelancer seems rubbish.

I would seriously recommend playing X:btf first!
Also this game looks so amazing after playing the first one.
The biggest bonus is all the information i wrote down on the first game (like a universe map) meant i was able to find the places X2 was trying to send me really quickly, and i knew what the factories required and where to find it instantly, which was a god send.
Not having to learn all the tradable resources and factory requirements, aswell as controlling the ship was a huge weight off my shoulders.

A straight-up upgraded version of the original X games. There is a plot that is easy to follow, unlike the first game, and there is a sense of progression. After that, the main core of the game is better, in terms of graphics, ships, mechanics, and especially the interface, which was painstaking to go through in previous games. Although it is still as complex and frustrating as its predecessors, it certainly is more new player-friendly, with less confusing graphics, and some text-based descriptions. Overall, the modern version of the series where new players can enjoy the game without having to understand what the old graphics or mechanics were supposed to be.

I've only played for a short amount of time, can't give a solid opinion yet

Before getting into the review, this game is good and can be entertaining to a select audience out there. I personally am a huge fan of ship games, be it space, modern, or age of sail. It is hard not to draw parallels with this game to others in the genre that I really enjoy like any of the Escape Velocity, Freelancer/Starlancer, or Freespace series. In fact my first experience in the X universe was hoping to relive some of these fond memories. If you are looking for an experience like any of those, this game is not it. This is not a space expoloration game, but a space job simulator.

TLDR: This game is slow for all career paths and requires an immense time sink to make enough money to do anything. Trading is deep, but broken. Fighting is unrewarding and loses you money more often than not. Unless you are into this niche simulation genre, this game is not worth your time. Play a better game in another series (there are plenty out there now) or play this on SETA (fast forward) while binge watching several seasons of TV.

The game has a lot going for it: Like the other series, you can be a trader, mercenary, or pirate as you like. There are various races each with their own ship classes you can pilot. The trading system can be incredibly deep, to the point that you may need a notebook to remember where all the production stations are and which resources they require. As you progress, you can own multiple ships and run a factory trading empire, or even own your own capitol ship as a carrier, destroyer, or corvette. The game world is pretty, even for the age of the game. Thankfully the autopilot is functional and normally a more efficient pilot than I am.

Now onto the problems: The trading system is inherently broken. Most resources have such a small profit margin, if any at all. If you check some of the decade old forums, most will recommend trading silicon because it is one of the few resources you can actually make money with. Unfortunately, after fixing up the busted Mercury you get early in the game, upgrading your trading software, and dropping satellites in a few systems, the ship is so slow that by the time you get from the station supplying to the station demanding, the price will have changed and your profits gone too. This leaves you stuck with short trade runs in the same or adjacent sectors. I spent most of my time as a trader hauling argnu beef, silicon, or warheads, with the occasional job board request thrown in. Now the economy does not work if the suppliers are selling the resource for higher than the customer is buying at every single station. It also does not work when the stations you can buy yourself make so little profit that the time to return your investment is way too long. The universe is [too] big, satellites rare, and prices unreliable; trading just is a grind. After getting a good attack ship and trying some ship captures, enemies only bail out about 1 in 10 and unless killing pirates in a sector where you are the law, you get almost nothing for a kill. Finally, the game graphics are fine, but dated. The cut scenes however are painfully bad. The Thunderbirds or Team America puppets are more natural than the creepy 3d models here. This was an unfortunate time in gaming history where programmers could do 3d, but should not have.

My experience: Get a Discovery, cringe at the cut scene. Get a rental personnel transport, cringe at the cut scene. Get chased by pirates, try my hand at the Star Wars style aft turret but cannot target or hit ANYTHING. Cringe at another cut scene before getting a free Mercury transport. Spend all my money to fix said Mercury, find out can only afford to trade energy cells for 5 credit profit each. Spend hours on end repeating the following: map (./,), target (t), autopilot (u), fast forward (j), wait, make a tiny profit. After not firing a shot, I find out two races 90%+ hate me for no reason and won't let me trade or even land and actively try to ram my unarmed transport. After finally making enough to get the Nova L I have been eyeing (looks like the Last Starfighter) they are no longer for sale anywhere in the known universe. I buy a Nova S, only to find out it apparently was the lemon on a used ship lot; engines broken, hull broken, no guns, no shields, no software. After limping my busted "new" ship along for a while I luckily "inherited" a million credits from my Uncle Cheatcode to be able to afford fixing it up and stocking weapons and crappy shields. I try my hand at ship captures of Slip transporters since the racist potato heads hate humans. Over the course of several hours slowly wearing down transports only two ships get captured, but many Slips are killed netting me 1 missile of loot each and half a million in repair costs for my ship. Take a few hours to limp my ship and the two captures back to the nearest dock to spend all of my remaining inheritance to repair the damage just so the ships can move at normal speed again. Contemplate calling Uncle Cheatcode again to finish the story, but then think about watching those awful cut scenes. Maybe someday.

I actually just bought the steam version since Gamespy has failed to authenticate my old copy of the game. I hate DRM. I probably have more hours in this game than any other, although I may have more time in another franchise, like Elder Scrolls, that's over three games with . I have just never gotten into X3. It is prettier, but the mechanics do not work for me. This is the only game I have ever played that I can set it up and let it go, for days sometimes. Things happen when I am away, I loose ships, but if I set it up well I can minimize that. It is also useful to set this up efficiently since you don't want to have to handle a ship under attack somewhere else while you are playing a storyline mission.

This game is a bit dated now. The graphics could have been better when it was launched, but this game is more about building a space empire than it is about wiz-bang graphics. You do have to fly and fight some, but you can avoid most fighting and just be an industrialist. The story is rather short, which is my only real complaint.

This game does take a while to learn, both the economy, and the mechanics of space flight to get the edge you need to succeed. Many people complain about not having a mouse. That's like saying you want a spoon to eat spaghetti! Seriously, the mouse is just not as efficient here. You need a keyboard to navigate the menus and a joystick to fly. I chain my commands together so fast now I don't even have time to see what the options are anymore, I've memorized them. Anyone with a mouse would be much slower navigating the menus. Take a ship, "C" for command, "1" for navigation, "2" for dock, "enter" to select the current system, arrow down a certain number of times to select the destination, and hit enter to submit the command. That is five different screens you need to select an option from for this one command. And you may need to do this ten times in a row. A mouse does not work with this interface well, but if you wanted to completely redesign the interface I am sure you could make a mouse just as efficient. X3 has tried it, but it doesn't work for me.