Bay 12 Games Forum

So you end up downloading more than 50 Gb of data for those cards, that amount to some cash around here 

Yeah Blue Planet is a newer campaign and it uses some of most detailed models available. Consider using the voice synthesizer(needs the latest 3.6.10 build) however as BP isn't voice acted yet and is pretty story-heavy, the plot twists during mission and Microsoft Sam is always superior to pausing and reading as that breaks the flow. Also don't get discouraged by the difficulty as BP is one of the hardest campaigns out there. I personally repeated a certain(you'll know the one) mission something like 15 time before finally skipping it.

Also a sequel to Blue Planet is in the works, currently being tested so might be coming out soonish.

I finished it and I wasn't too trilled with it. The story get weird and throw you around a lot in a deux ex machina way that feel a little out of your hands. Plus the order vs chaos thing for Shivans seem a little cliche.

And as you said some missions are quite insane. It's one thing to demand good skills to complete a mission, but when you have to rely on computer AI for some mission critical event it end up being frustrating if they make you fail. Plus some mission I only succeeded once I knew exactly what was going to happen and where I should be BEFORE anything in the game hints you to it. Add the fact that you cannot complete a mission with partial success and it's quite annoying.

The new models and weapons are well done however and everything else is very professional.

Yeah, when you can fully predict how you will get attacked and why, it's not really exciting, there is no unknown. I did not recall actual faction invasion attacking my stations unless i provoked them first from vanilla X3, but maybe it's just my memory... I did not play the game very much at all, so my opinion of it might not be very informed.

X3 is pretty much the king of these types of Elite clones, me thinks.  i dont think the moding community is as big for it as for Freelancer (or am i thinking of Freespace?) but there are still a number of them out there.

I tried X3 (no expansion) and didn't like it. The universe felt bland and nothing fun ever happened. The solo campaign was beyond dull too(and buggy). The game permit you to become the owner of vast fleet and space stations, but it is pointless since there is no active invasions or anything exciting that ever happens(again I am talking about the original vanilla X3, this might have changed). It's not that i dislike a free environment, but too often thats synonymous with a static environment.

Wow good news, i thought this was a dead project.

I'm more looking for a single player story driven game, but i might give it a try. Is there a coop mode?

What I dislike about every starwars game is they take every iconic event in the movies and make a similar one. There is just so many half assed explication i can take about why there HAD to be a rancor in that crate and how you now have to kill it. You know you are going to go to tatooine, see a sand crawler ,and kill some sand people. It's like they are forbidden to come up with some original concepts or something. KotOR was alright, but I can't say any particular event there felt like a refreshing take on the franchise.