Reviews written by JohnT

The review above was written with errors that belittle the game, sorry Undersogs :) (You write normally good reviews from what I have read so far)

X: Beyond the Frontier is actually a part of the Elite game series, a much awaited follow up to the game Frontier: Elite 2.

In the game you play a test pilot for the experimental shuttle from Earth who has been flung out to the far reaches of space by a malfunction while testing a new jump drive system. You have to build up a fortune through the trading system and build up your spaceship in order to fight your enemies. The story mode of the game is free form and involves you building a good reputation with all 5 of the races you encounter in order to fight the common enemy, the Xenon, a race of robots hell bent on destruction!

The game starts with a tutorial on how to pilot your spaceship which Underdogs obviously skipped as this tutorial also starts off the story behind the game! Your ship DOES indeed have guns at the start as you are required to 'test' them as you are, after all, a test pilot. After 'testing' the flight controls and weapons (teaching you the player how to fly and fight) the game starts into a rather long introductory sequence. Your spaceship is set to do a short jump to test the jump drive but while the countdown is progressing an engineer notices a bug but dismisses it. As soon as your ship jumps there is a malfunction sending you and your ship accross the galaxy to unknown teratory. In the malfunction your ship loses its weapons and the shields are overloading while you 'talk' to the new race of Teladi that you encounter. They notice your shields malfunctioning and fix it for you, at a price! The Teladi are like the Ferengi of Star Trek, want nothing but profit in trading. So you start the game proper owing the Teldi a large amount of money and they start you off with 1000 credits to "make profit" and replay the debt.

The story in the game is deep and takes a long time to complete but you do not have to follow the story to play the game.
Like Underdogs stated, the trading system is a bit flawed but does actually make some sense when you are playing the game.

Comunications with the races, especially with regards to the story, is very limited to preset questions and responses and does not do the game justice.

Flight is time consuming until you can buy a device that speeds up time by a factor of 10. Combat is secondary to trading in the game but can be very enjoyable if your ship has been upgraded with high powered shields and weapons.

Graphics are very good and detailed and were amazing for its time.

One major downside to the game is the save game system. You are limited to only being able to save your progress while docked in a space station and even then it costs you some of your well earned credits as you have to purchase 'salvage insurance' to save! Not good for when you have to switch off the game only to find you don't have enough credits to save the game!

I liked the game as I was a fan of Elite and Frontier. I played for many hours on end and even completed the story where I was rewarded with the best shields and weapons in the game for my ship :) All that was left was to have fun using my ultra-powerful ship to fly around and destroy all the races' space stations and ships replacing the Xenon as the scourge of the universe! Ahh what fun it is to be evil :)

Currently I am deep into the 2nd and third sequels to X... X3 - Reuinion and X3 - Teran Conflict. They have you playing as the son of the test pilot of X and in the final version, Teran Conflict, Earth has been re-united with the universe of X (Follow the full story of X to understand why Earth was alientated from the rest of the universe) and you get to visit Earth in all it's high resolution glory :)