What turned me off from parkan 2 was the reference to "only robots!". Never dared getting that game for that reason. Perhaps I am afraid of robots?
What surprised me most about evochrone was that it was so much better polished then the first title i tried from them. Starwraith 3D.
My initial impression of the Evochrone demo might reflect the leap they made into this version. But still, since its lighter then the X games i will probably try it. I was intrigued enough to keep checking it out.
Evochron Renegades was the I bought, the more open ended, story entirely missing release. (The other current game is WC clone I believe with fixed mission series.)
Anyways, see one space station, you've seen them all, see 2 or 3 asteroids and you've seen them all, see the one "city" on the planet and you've seen them all, seen 5 or 6 planets and you've seen them all. Getting the idea? There's a reason why it's only 25MB, and there really isn't that much procedural generation.
There are about 15 or so products to trade, and a handful of various random "missions" cleaning solar panels(those are all alike as well), etc.
Small handful of ship upgrades. Really it's like Elite with 10y old 3D and the ability to enter planetary atmosphere, BUT the X series kills it on the economics and missions, AND BC3K kills them on space combat AND planetary surfaces.
It has little modding potential and is still written in DarkBasic.
X3:TC basically they hired most of the modders who made a mod for X3R (forget the name ATM) and most people say it plays almost exactly like that. So X3TC is basically X3R with a new primary story line, some new sectors, and a few other new features like AI corporations and the like plus interface and automation tweaks for the player. I still plan on picking up the import box from gogamer eventually but have passed for now as I've been playing X3 again and just plan to forge ahead to finish the story line (shouldn't take long as it's a minor point to the X series).
Never got to play the original X-BTF or X-Tension, although I read that the first game was very tedious to start since you had almost no money and no SETA (time speedup device) and had to fly between stations realtime to build up cash to get that Godsent SETA. X-Tension mainly added the ability to own/use other ships. (I started off with X2.)
X2 & X3 both have TONS of mods, so you might want to look at them just for that, sort of like how mods made Oblivious somewhat better if not saving it outright for some people. X combat is horrible though as enemies may as well not have AI and like to charge down your throat.
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X-Gold I think can be bought from the egosoft online store. Not sure if it's only in German though or if they have English as well.
Don't buy Starshatter, the dev did a walkie(i.e. no support) and the last patch which you get with the game is supposed to be ENTIRELY BROKEN! Not sure if there's a way to back down to the prior patch, so you'd have to check the forums.
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