The X series has been around since 1999 when the first in the series was released, which was X: Beyond the Frontier. After that came X2: The Threat, X3: Reunion, X Rebirth (X veterans do not talk about this one) and then finally X4: Foundations.
Gamers that are curious about this series, just know that the plot has never been the main attraction in this series. The main draw has always been the open-ended gameplay. You can be and do what you want in this galaxy. Do you want to be a trader? Go get a freighter and knock yourself out. Want to be a bounty hunter? Get a Fighter and start hunting. Want to take over the galaxy with your fleets of ships? Build your factories and wharfs to build said fleet and take over the galaxy.
That freedom has always been the centre point of the series: Trade, Fight, Build, Think. X4: Foundations was released in 2018 and the DLC Cradle of Humanity was released 16th of March 2021. X4 was the first game in the series for nearly a decade, X Rebirth came out in 2013 and streamlined the gameplay loop, trying to simplify the interface and other aspects to reduce the initial complexity for new players and focusing more on the story, which has always taken the back seat in the series and was not the driving force of the experience.
Most gamers did not like the shift and the game scored pretty badly. Previous X games are around 7/10 but X Rebirth was around 3/10 and nearly destroyed the franchise. Thankfully Egosoft went back to basics with X4: Foundations. Do you dream of flying your own spaceship with a crew?
X4 lets you do that, whereas the previous games let you do that as well but without the crew. You'd have to buy programs/A.I. to control everything you did not control directly, which was fun but made the game feel very empty sometimes.
Especially when you stood in the bridge of your carrier and all stations are empty but in X4 they replaced the programs with actual crew. You can now run around stations looking for Captains, crew and marines. Captains to fly the ships, crew to take care of loading/unloading of the ships and man the turrets, and then the marines are there to protect the ships from boarders and to board enemy ships. Walking around your ship now feels great with all the crew running around doing their work. The immersion factor is pretty high.
Now the main point of this review is to review the new DLC: Cradle of Humanity and the new endgame content: Terraforming. This was a monumental task since this is endgame content and I had to start from the beginning and I barely scratched the surface. I had to cheat a bit to get my stations up and running to have the resources needed for terraforming. Once you´ve researched all the teleportation technologies you get access to the terraforming feature, which opens up the endgame. Be warned that you will not be landing on any planets but it will change the look of the planet you are terraforming and you gain some great perks and rewards for terraforming. This is only for those with massive abundances of resources. But the rewards seem to be worth it. In some cases, you´ll gain access to training for your crew, making it easier to get highly rated captains and marines, making your fleet that much better and preparing you for the inevitable galactic dominance. The new DLC also adds 14 new sectors, 3 new factions, a whole new separate Terran economy and more plotlines than the base game had. With the new factions you get new ships, and if you have some Star Trek fantasy then rejoice, the Terran faction is heavily inspired by Star Trek aesthetics.
The Terran ships are sleek and reminiscent of Star Trek´s United Federation of Planets ships. It will take some grind to get into the Terrans good graces to be able to buy their ships and well worth it for anyone wanting that look.
In conclusion: X4: Foundations was a great game when it came out, but feels incomplete today without all the new DLC. The collector´s edition with all the DLC is the ultimate experience but feels too expensive. The X series is the only series that let´s you build your own empire, be it trading, manufacturing or warmongering and X4 with all DLC is the best game in the series and will give you hundreds of hours of fun as long as you like these kinds of games.
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