Compared to the other x games:
-Immersive gameworld
-Very good Graphics
-A lot of mods to customize
-Well designed stations and ships
-Interesting campaign

It still looks amazing. Atmosphere is top-notch. Stations don't look like plastic toys (sorry, X4, I love you, but still), more like huge space cities, bursting with life. Game world is diverse and beautiful with a lot of scenic vistas.
Also, I do love trading in X:R. It takes time to get accustomed to, but it's fun.
UI is great, a lot better than X4. Most of the things is accessible via keyboard. You don't need to click hardly visible buttons when you can do several keystrokes you know by heart.

Even compared to the other X games there are benefits; less mouse usage for one. It has nice keyboard navigation of menus (and menus are a gigantic portion of the gameplay).

Edit; oh. Poster above already covered that.

Capital ships look and feel awesome, I remember that there was a mod that added proper functioning bridges from which you could command the ships similarly to X4 (no direct control, though).

Being in a battle from that perspective is great. X4 took a major step backwards in every aspect regarding capital ships.

The weapons' visuals also looked better, when I first started playing X4 I thought the beginning ship's weapon effect is just some placeholder that was accidentally left in the released version.

Everything? Game is top notch in my view. Very few negatives.
Its the best looking X game, the sectors feel logical and seamless, space feels like space, its not the usual cubes connected to each other.
Best looking ships, best capital ship combat, best looking stations.
Trading is fun, combat is fun.
Its an awesome game.

The thematic direction in terms of world building that Rebirth took is a masterpiece. I think a lot of effort was put into 'grounding' the franchise, trying to make it more believable. This reaches almost every aspect of the game. Its very obvious in things like ship design, where no effort was put into making the 'races' (which means far less in Rebirth also, due to this new approach the game took) ships look homogenous. Rather there is this realistic mish-mash of styles - along with the massive amount of corporations and groups that make the world so much more diverse this approach is realistic and deep.

Then because of the reaction to the state of Rebirth at release (which was a mess, but a lot of critisism due to the game being broken leaked into other areas of the game was wernt really warranted) egosoft seem to have scrapped almost all of these new ideas and done a firm 180* back to the previous games direction - which are frankly childish in comparison.

Imagine for a second if the same attention that went into making the 'human' influenced world in Rebirth so detailed was put into all of the other races. The split in Rebirth are an after thought, but if the same effort was made later on in DLC's to flesh them out... and then to add the other races. The same attention to making the Paranid believable for example... Teladi outpost did add the Teladi, but I think that whoever was the driving force behind such a detailed world for humans was already gone by this point (conjecture yes but I think so).

Its a real shame.

The other day I was daydreaming about a story driven fps set in this world. Mind was racing and theres just too much detail that I dont even know where to begin - Rebirth started along this path, x4 just doesnt.
Its a shame the writing, voicing and other mechanics in the game act to ruin much of this work though.

Originally posted by Axeface:

The other day I was daydreaming about a story driven fps set in this world. Mind was racing and theres just too much detail that I dont even know where to begin - Rebirth started along this path, x4 just doesnt.
Its a shame the writing, voicing and other mechanics in the game act to ruin much of this work though.

Space Bourne 2 is pretty decent at injecting fps into a space game like this. Same era of gfx etc.

Also what is this about the voice acting? It was pretty solid, did folks just not like her voice or something? The accent?

Originally posted by Veeshan:

Originally posted by Axeface:

The other day I was daydreaming about a story driven fps set in this world. Mind was racing and theres just too much detail that I dont even know where to begin - Rebirth started along this path, x4 just doesnt.
Its a shame the writing, voicing and other mechanics in the game act to ruin much of this work though.

Space Bourne 2 is pretty decent at injecting fps into a space game like this. Same era of gfx etc.

Also what is this about the voice acting? It was pretty solid, did folks just not like her voice or something? The accent?

Her? You mean yisha? I was talking in general, like the npcs you have conversations with etc and ren himself (SHOW ME YOUR WARES PLEASE), but yes, yisha too. ANd no its not the accent, I love that accent (Like I was kinda bummed that they gave boron english and australian accents in X4, rather than sticking with the really unique german accent in x3).

Originally posted by Axeface:

Originally posted by Veeshan:

Space Bourne 2 is pretty decent at injecting fps into a space game like this. Same era of gfx etc.

Also what is this about the voice acting? It was pretty solid, did folks just not like her voice or something? The accent?

Her? You mean yisha? I was talking in general, like the npcs you have conversations with etc and ren himself (SHOW ME YOUR WARES PLEASE), but yes, yisha too. ANd no its not the accent, I love that accent (Like I was kinda bummed that they gave boron english and australian accents in X4, rather than sticking with the really unique german accent in x3).

Interesting. I won't claim it's the best VA ever but I specifically noted it was above the fray of games generally. Ren specifically feels perfectly natural, although I don't recall much of the story dialogue. Perhaps I'll do a video on it.

the scaling and level of detail in this game is awesome. Best of all X games IMO. Graphics as people already mentioned are also above the other X games. Everything looks/feels more real.

I know the there was a lot of hate upon release, but much of what I read were things that could have been patched. Is a lot of the early hate no longer applicable?

Also, there is always hate and anger whenever and however the X developers weave narrative elements, storylines, lore into the games. Since the X universe has always had a dynamic sandbox and narrative balance, these criticisms are not applicable and kind of annoying. Criticisms of not liking how the narrative was implemented or the writing are totally fair, but trying to eliminate a feature that has been included by some degree for decades based on personal preference is.....

Either way is their hate that does not fall under the categories of issues that have now been fixed and people angry that sandbox and storytime have been combined? I'd really like to see what the steam reviews would be on this game in that situation. I have no idea if it would still be ripped apart or if it would be in the positive/very positive range.

If you enjoy narrative integration into sandbox space games, dont mind dated graphics and missing QoL features standard today, this game might be very enjoyable now.

Originally posted by ragen311:

I know the there was a lot of hate upon release, but much of what I read were things that could have been patched. Is a lot of the early hate no longer applicable?

Some features can't really be patched out, because they're, well, features. For example, you still can't change ships. You're flying Skunk, and that's it. And honestly, this never bothered me, because most of the time you're busy with the map and empire management.

But some people like to fly different ships so they play X3 or X4.

It is mostly not so much about the game itself.
It is mostly that the comments are by x3 players who had great expectations about x4, and were disappointed by what they saw. Especially the bit about only being able to fly one ship.

If you like it, you like it, but when you come in expecting a star wars film, and you got Disney.
(Sorry Egosoft, yours wasn't that bad).
From memory, I think there were also some quality issues with the release that took a year or so to resolve.