The original X game came out in 1999. Ego soft are still updating it to run on the latest versions of Windows. Now that's commitment to your player base.

I recently fell in love with X4. The feeling you get when standing on the bridge of your very first capital ship while its turrets tear through waves of enemies is very satisfying!

The Yamiks talking about SUCCESS of a space game? Ok, i'm interested.

Despite the ups and downs with releases and archaic interface, the X series is still the best sandbox space game for single player.

I have 100.9 hours of Elite on record, I stopped playing that when the grind made my head fall off. X4 however, over 1000 hours and counting. In fact I was considering starting another new pilot before this video. That is my experience, the hours invested tell the story.

I've been a fan of the series for near 20 years, X4 is like a dream to me, it's probably my favorite space game of all time. I love having my own starfleet and walking around the command deck of my capitol ship while my empire grows. I don't care that much for stellaris to be honest, probably BECAUSE I can't fly around and stand on my command deck, it really is just pretty menus and pictures.

I bought Timelines, knowing it was content I was unlikely to interact with only because I love x4, and want the devs to continue to improve and develop it.

12:28 Yes, X4 is somewhat of a shinnying example of good game that was made to make a game, while others usually make game to make ALL the money in the world. Maybe at some point Elite started as a good game, yet was turned into a microtransaction milking machine. StarCitizen may have had noble intentions, but, road to hell is paved with those. And No mans Sky, well, just had a rough start(hot damn was that bad).

I have been an X player for longer than I want to admit. I did take a couple of year break to o7 in Elite Dangerous, but I find X4 much more rewarding. The biggest QoL mod was me spending hours getting the key binds and button mappings set for my style of play. I am a complete armchair Admiral/Trade Boss. I mean this game lets you hire a chauffer. Like a lot of these games, the learning curve is STEEP! Thanks Yamiks. Also - I enjoyed seeing the old school skins like the split and Zero G sports wear.

I love that they trolled Yamiks about the microtransaction thing XD. Good for them having a sense of humor!

I bought the most recent expansion because I want Egosoft to keep making stuff. I actually have very little interest in the expansion itself. I think Egosoft and the "X" games are worth keeping around. In my opinion, easily worth the cost of a very reasonable asking price.

I have played all the X games since the very 1st one decades ago, Egosoft is the only developer that I can say i 100% trust not to abandon their games. I must have racked up several years worth of game time playing x3 and x4 alone. When you control large fleets and station complexes, you can create your own empire, basically. Massive self self-sustaining shipyards making hundreds of ships constantly and not just for you, the in game factions will buy ships big and small from you. My shipyards have a war zone outside of them because I sell to factions that are at war, and then I salvage all the repackage and make new ships from it. Galactic war profiteering on a massive scale.

Respect for Egosoft!

One of the best parts of X4 is the sheer amount of mods. People have made mods to let you give even more different orders to the AI to go and do more stuff. There is even a full Star Wars total conversion that is an awesome mod and definitely worth looking at.

The X Universe really needs time to grow on you. At first I played it a bit but was put off by the (seemingly) complicated menus and systems. But I came back several times and once you understand the mechanics the game really opens up. Now I have like 800+ hours in the game and each Update I come back for more 😅

Trolling you was a legendary move

In the interest of transparency, Egosoft does receive a grant from the German government. That goes someway toward helping them make niche games with a user-friendly and ethical approach.

The main thing I dislike with timelines was getting the game for the first time, doing the basic tutorials, then it automatically leads into timelines without even saying it's doing that. Then the first few missions in timelines are fairly difficult combat encounters which want me to use features i haven't been told how to do yet, but are explained in the other tutorials which the game made me skip automatically. Having a blast in the normal mode though

I think that was a really good point you made, X4 gives you player agency it doesn’t fake it

I've been a gamer for decades now. X4 is in my top 5 games for sure.

X4 is a good game. Not perfect by any means but it does do the thing it's supposed to do in a way that is reasonable. Oh, and if you did play X3 or the earlier games, the UI in X4 is an upgrade despite how it looks.

Finally more (non German) youtubers covering this game

Believe me: The english voice acting is MILES better then the actual german ... and I find that much more hilarious ^^

Regarding the number of employees, I believe they were closer to about 15 when they released X4 in 2018. However, this was never going to work out in the long run, because in that skeleton team, they had NO 3D or VFX artists at all. They basically were working with "placeholder assets" and repurposed VFX from X:Rebirth. So personally, I'm glad they finally managed to expand their team a bit.

X4 is what ED was supposed to be and it pisses me off no end that a small team like egosoft can create something that shits all over ED for gameplay immersion, depth and player agency / cause and effect, while FDev have claimed to have "over 100 people working on ED" for the last 8 years to just provide scripted minigames for EVERYTHING.. Such Bullshit.

I low key hate playing this game. But I keep coming back to it because there's no other space Sim series that lets me play in as many ways as this one.

I actually feel like the controls in X4 are the most satisfying and fun i've come across in the whole genre, UI notwithstanding. And frankly, the UI isn't that bad. There's a lot of depth to the game, and you have a lot of tools at your disposal. There's a learning curve to it for sure, but not everything has to be ADHD key jangling, oversimplified nonsense.

Just bought Community of Planets (X4 complete, so to say). The UI and ship controls are a bit... original, but I can see the greatness nonetheless.

The Micro Management is so typical for us germans I mean we micromanage everything in to oblivion

I booted up a saved game from about a year ago this past weekend. I had an entire sector locked down with defense platforms that were basically attached to the local Jumpgates, either right on top of them or somewhere around them. Xenon couldn't get in without getting blown apart, and I even had owned stations that you could park in and watch the show from. It was awesome. I've got my game modded to the gills to simplify the things about it I like the least (meaning the entire "empire" sim part,) but owning your own system is pretty radical just the same. (You can create killboxes by expanding the "area" box that your structures are all built within so the area also includes the space that the Gates inhabit, allowing you to build around them. Egosoft won't patch it out because by their own admission they appreciate Player ingenuity. They're extremely based.)

That's 50 including external contractors, which means that's including Quality Assurance too. Madness. That's tiny. It's possible their actual studio in Germany is much smaller. Still, it'd be good to know a total breakdown cause I've heard ranges of 20-50 employee count.

Ficken LOVE X4 - 3,992 hours.

I only play X4 these days (just a few hours a week), but I am a menu warrior. I am in it so much that when my wife passed by when I was playing a Timeline mission she was like, "Oh, you're finally playing a new game. That looks fun!" I didn't have the heart to correct her.

I originally came from elite dangerous and then played Star Citizen religiously for five years until they dropped master modes. Now I don't play Star Citizen anymore. But I had just gotten into X4 foundations 7.0. And I gotta say even though for all of its cheesiness. It is a lot of fun... And you can see where Star Citizen got some of its ideas

The coolest part is realizing that your destroyers, battleships, carriers and combat ships are more powerful when you're not there to see the battle, if you assemble them correctly... The game becomes a battle of numbers simulator when you don't render the scene, whoever has the most shields and the most raw damage wins, the physics turn off and it becomes a fixed percentage hit chance, and you can devastate the xenon territory with few ships if you know how to play with these numbers :) edit: this was supposed to be a light criticism, but I'm having a lot of fun with the game, my focus is on collecting everything unique in the game to test at least once in combat on my own.

It's a hidden gem! Despite, yes, the terrible UI. What makes it even better is mods to improve, remove, or change some mechanics to better suit the individual playstyle. Or what the player wants from the game.

Before i even got a gaming PC back in the day, i really wanted that £3 game X2 the threat, i did get it but it didnt work well on the home pc, so i got x3 Terran conflict somewhere in 09 i think? when i built my first PC, it just kinda worked as i was playing it like a space game within a MS excel UI, i could do what i wish, i enjoyed it for what it was. Skipping rebirth, x4 released, exactly what i wanted it to be, i think it was 3.2 when it was in a nice state and knowing egosoft they enjoy building their game for the better, the same focused open area design, but within those areas, so much freedom, and the fact you can physically land on stations and walk about this time, i honestly cant think of a game that feels so alive, has such a grand scale that makes you feel smol, much easier to do space things and mess with the UI even though all these games have a learning curve, half of it is kinda eurojank but its part of the charm from such a small and loving team, it ticks the boxes you want it to, yet it knows its limits as well. And as the world actually has consequence, nothing feels a waste of time, even when you spend over 1000 hours on a save. I dont want to see the future of X be online in any sense, i get the novelty of the system they have in place, yet i do think a traditional 4 player co-op would be kinda cool if you want to see how much you can manipulate the AI

Love this game so much and love seeing so many people cover this game all of the sudden. This game deserves all the love it's getting. Also x4 is fifth mainline game.

Here's the thing. I started gaming in the late 80's. During that time and into the 90's games were flawed, but were fun games, often completing their objectives set out by the devs and were usually delivered in a good state with exceptions, of course. The X games have that vibe to it. Game play first and then shoehorn graphics and UI in after. I love that. It helps that X4 is a truly great game also. Fantastic achievement in this age of live service slop... Well done those plucky Germans for sticking to their principles.

Personally, the UI of X4 never bothered me. I love menus, I love options. If anything, I would make the X4 UI even more convoluted and bloated in order to have even more options and ways to control my empire. The biggest things I would change about X4 is to make the economy even more realistic. Such things as making it so factions have limited credits (currently they have unlimited credits so never have to worry about money). Dynamic diplomacy, rather than altering diplomatic states through storylines. More options to customize the starting universe, like randomized sector layouts. More "4X" aspects to the game, which while it may require a separate game mode which lacks campaign storylines, offers more freedom in terms of how the sandbox game develops. Finally, more and better controls for fleet management, with of course AI improvements to improve ship combat bahavior.

Dude, the bureaucracy joke was spot on. Greetings from Germany ;)

Rise of the Ossian Raider has the Battlestar Galactica and the Normandy SR2. There are mods to bring in the proper old Vipers from BSG and a Galactica sold by all factions with a custom flight deck. There is a Star Wars mod (Star Wars Interworlds) that is a total conversion that brings in tons of sectors/factions/ships from the franchise. There are early Star Trek mods that bring in a really rough NX class and a well-done Excelsior class. Finally, QoL mods really make the game more enjoyable, and a couple were even almost rendered useless as a result of Egosoft updating the game for the better. What else is there to say? X3AP mods hooked me since middle school. Be grateful they're easier to install now in X4 lmao

honestly i playd ALL x games. and now finally whit the update 7, i decided to purchase the whole x4 bundle from steam. egosoft... earned it.

I bought X4 on release, and didn't play it since that. Recently decided to give it a try, and now I can't stop. Despite all the flaws, disgusting UI and bugs, it actually grew into an amazing game.

The X-Series is a prime example how game development should work. The First Game was a Great Space Game, X2 a Masterpiece that was build on this foundation. X3 a great one who expanded on that. Than they tried something new with rebirth, failed, agnoledged it and came back to their succesful formula with X4.

X4 is my favorite space game out there.

X4 is my most played game in my library. Even with it's faults it's a game I return to over and over. The moding community is great as well with some impressive over hauls of the game(including an entire star wars over haul of the game)

The voice acting in German IS really good

3:37 You met the Kha'ak. They have powerful beam weapons that tear fighters and smaller transports to shreds. And since 7.0, they got a pair of new, and horrifically strong capital ships.

It's alright. I've gotten around jank controls, made sense of the UI, had fun with the handful of gameplay loops I've done thus far, and acquired a couple ships. My biggest gripe so far is ship AI. They float around like fish in a tank, and clip through solid objects, killing immersion. To compensate for this, physical damage on contact with surface is virtually nill so you can full boost into a station, take only a tiny bit of damage to your shields, perhaps even clip through the station yourself and still have 0 consequences. Apart from that, it's worth the asking price if you're looking for an entirely offline, "forever yours to play despite what happens to the developer", space sim.

I picked up X3 in high school, and fell in love with the game because it gives you a ship, and tells you "do whatever you want". The only thing I wish it did a little better is Player Empire building, and empires reacting to what the player is doing when you start taking over their entire economy.

To me x4 foundations is a lot like Satisfactory. i can sit back and watch world work around me. or i can get up close and personal. so on. its all up to me

The open-ended sandbox nature of the game is both a blessing and a curse. I still don't really know how to properly compose a fleet and get all the orders into the correct chain of command, and even what exactly each behavioural command means, and then to command the fleet effectively in a fight because of the unintuitive, open-ended controls. It could really use some properly documented, up-to-date tutorials/wiki entries to help explain the deeper mechanics of everything, because there has been so many small iterative updates to this game and its systems that I always feel like the stuff I try to read up about is outdated.

Ive tried it once but im now tempted to go back to it, yamiks sold me on that aspect

I know it's a spreadsheet fest for half the game(love that) but can we get a little bit of VR shaken into the ship flying/walking around/spacewalking part of it. Oh the immersion.

Here I am. Managing my mining stations, because you don't send miners as auto-miners out into the x4-universe, you set up a mining station... a dock with solid-storage basically, and attach mining ships to this station, most to actually mine one specific thing, because you don't want multiple minables mined for the same station, and a few as traders bringing those minables to your clients. Why a station and not a dozne independent miners? a) they can continously mine and don't have to look for sales themselves b) they are not competing with each other c) they have a bigger range that is independent from their own skill-rank. And later you use these mining stations as distribution centers for your other stations, so that your miners are centralized, setting your traders to only trade with your own stations, so they won't sell any ore to external clients.

Finally your doing my favorite sci fi games again. yes yes yes im mentally pouring out dopamine out my brain. I already own elite dangerous can my computer handle X4 ?

With the new Timelines (not for me, a seasoned player) Egosoft has taken a right step towards making the game more accessible to gamers new to the game. There were a few of The Timelines sections I really enjoyed. Races not my cup of tea. What I like about X4 is the space combat part, modding my ships, capping big ships like an Asgard, a Raptor, a Zeus, destroying Xenon and so on. I still have to build a Wharf to be able to equip my Xenon ships. So much to do really, you'll be playing it for a long time. A good return on the investment.

Great video! I haven't thought about this series since I had to use 6 separate discs to install X3. Glad to know they're still doing well! I don't know if you take suggestions, but there's a game in this style you might be interested in, called Starsector. It's shaping up to be one of the best immersive space games out there, and it's made by a tiny team. Be interested to hear your thoughts on it!

Id love to see alot more X4 content. its always been a facinating game to me id like to learn more about!

X4 has a hard learning curve. But if you beat it, the game is a blast.

I've played this series since X: Beyond the Frontier and will likely keep buying their X-series, then wait about a year until after release so performance is better and essential mods have come out lol. The devs are not perfect and sometimes mess up but the continued support and content updates are great. It's a lot better than most other space games which are made by much larger companies.

I love playing X4, I haven't played in ages and when I tried it was so hard to get back into, but it was the first game that made me sorta roleplay, not even BG3 gets me to RP. I did my first "successful" play through where I played optimal without any RP, but I went on to my next playthrough where I RP'd a pirate lord, I setup a space station in a neutral system and had patrol fleets going around to keep the hostile aliens away and sold whatever I could, mostly good that were prohibited in nearby systems. Then the next playthrough was as Terra's loyal soldier boy, ignored most of the galaxy and focused on fortifying our home systems. Good fun, good fun.

We need microtransactions and skins because all of our budget went toward hiring shady "consulting firms".

Im a fan since the first x game. X4 is such a good space sim, i can just recommend this one. X4 one of greatest in my opinion and with alle DLC that are all big ones, you will get a lot of fun. Even after years, i check in from time to time to play with New Updates. Also good job on explaining the journey 😂😂😂❤ vut something i have to correct, UI and stuff like that got an overhaul and not the same

I absolutely love X4, and I'm happy to support the developers whom, as you pointed out, support their game and respect their customers.

I am long-time fan of X games, playing since X3 Reunion. And... basically everything you say is true. They still release some, minor ofc but still, updates for their 20 year old games. All X games are flawed. They all show relatively small budget for the scope Egosoft decided to take. UI and AI are... eh. But it's my most played (hours-wise) series of games, and I regret none of it. The sheer amount of possibilities and meaningful, if flawed, execution just award you if you just want to look past some imperfections.

starsector next!

The voice acting started not necessarily annoying but bad and funny but now I wouldn't even want them to change it. I actively like the voice acting after dealing with it for so long

This video made my whole day. So entertaining. You have talent Yamiks.

cuirous, I never ever had any trouble with controls. It just fits as it is.

Worth a watch for the many times you had me laugh out loud alone.

I'm a bit late to the party, but just wanted to leave a "Thank You" for this video :) Much appreciated. /Greg

When he said "Oh, for f**k's sake!", i felt that.

I wish I could get into it but I bounce off it every time I try. I cant even really say why.

If you fall into the niche in which this type of space fleet/economy building game appeals to you, X4 is a great game by default because there is really no other single-player game like it. Eve Online is probably the closest comparison in that respect, but without all the MMO timesinks and drama, and The Yamiks does a really nice job here of highlighting how the respectful relationship between Egosoft and the players really shines.

Now take a look at X4: Foundations Star Wars Interworld mod, it is even more impressive, and some of the mod developers became actual developers at Egosoft.

Hey Yamiks. When you drunk and bored and dont really know what better things to do. Can you try playing and making video on Space Rangers 2? Absolute banger

It should also be mentioned that there are a tonne of mods available for the game. One of them is a Star Wars mod that completely changes the game to Star Wars. Empire vs Rebels. With X-Wing and Star Destroyer.

X4 is a flawed game. Does it it feel archaic? Yes. Does it have performance issues? Depends (truly an issue if you build mega stations). Is the voice acting mediocre in quite a few cases? Yes. Do I mind any of the above issues? No. X4 is not a game for everyone, but everyone can come and play it. Unlike other modern space simulation games, player's choice does matter and Egosoft stayed true to their promise. 9.5/10 would happily purchase again.

Any mod recommendations? Regards

honestly, I much prefer Egosoft's DLC strategy with X4 than the one from Stellaris. Stellaris releases far too many tiny packs that add almost nothing yet are critical for a complete experience while X4 adds massive swaths of space to the universe alongside several ships and storyline missions with each sizable and slightly more expensive DLC which feels more like an Expansion Pack from the days of early PC gaming. The important part is that X4 DLC does NOT feel mandatory while Stellaris DLC does. Both games have been out for about the same time and yet you can still get the complete X4 package for like 1/3 the price of the same thing for Stellaris. Sure the game might be solid, but it still feels like the publisher is nickel and diming which is what turns a ton of people off, myself included. I got Stellaris from humble way back in 2018 and have steadily watched the total DLC price balloon to well over $150 to reach it's current rate of close to $250 at full price. They even now have a subscription access service for it all... if that isn't making a game purely for profit I don't know what is. The less greedy move would be to take some of the oldest expansions and start bundling them into the base game to reduce the end cost to the customer because of depreciation, but that isn't what happened is it? Instead they're saying "we know our stuff is expensive and we're just going to keep releasing more so to save you the frustration of having to buy it and by extension have endless access to the product, you can just hand over a bit each month and we'll let you access it, just keep giving us cash no matter how long it takes us to push out a product that costs $5-10 to buy on it's own and we won't even make the early stuff easy to access so we can convince you that this is a better deal instead." Stellaris is in my honest opinion, a great game held back by greedy business practices.

This game would become a must buy for me if it had VR integration. That’s the only reason why i play elite dangerous. I wouldn’t mind the excel sheets if the controls were done correctly and user friendly.

Only just discovered the series and really enjoying it! It's flawed but I'd rather play something janky that's fun and rewarding than pretty and shallow. My go to right now.

Ah X4. Janky, borderline broken at some points, excessively complicated, and a game that has stolen more hours from my life than I feel comfortable admitting

ED lost me to the grind No Man's Sky was drawn by a kid with a box of crayons and has no player agency Am just 40 hours into X4 ,so still a baby and filled with wonder about where this game will lead There is no perfect space game yet but X4 seems to have nailed it with gameplay and well done TheYamiks for pointing out how others could do better

Is no-one going to mention the "oligarchs out of the window" joke? Bwahahaha, Yamiks is ruthless as always.

I have brought every single x game since i first found them back when x3 was about to release and yes the ui has always been spreadsheet simulator but the game is more relaxed and you can actually navigate around and learn what sits where without learning that everything has a hotkey already mapped out, for example in x4 you can get almost everything done with left and right click, f and m for navigation around every menu. So i find myself even after 4k+ hours still just pressing the m key(for map) then going to profile in order to check my reputation instead of the hotkey for it Meanwhile in elite i feel like i play a piano in order to navigate and i keep wanting to just have an ui that has everything combined in it infront of me with mouse support at all times Is x4's ui overwhelming? At first yes but you learn how to use it quickly and its easy once you do Elite's ui? If i spend as much time learning how to navigate that thing i can probably play a piano on a professional level

Noice game, working on a modpack rn.

There has been a huge amount of "bug fixing" but until you get a fleet and/or test it again and ignore "last time it all went belly up so I gave up on this dumb AI clusterfudge and did it all myself", you will never find it out. Try for example ragnos28 or Captain Snuggles who have how there are changes, not necessarily all net benefits but lots of improvements where the AI chose ... poorly, to AI combat and how easy it can be to just let the AI do battles without you doing anything other than watching the lightshow. IMO a better AI battle AI means the NPC races are also more challenging.

I love x4! It does what it does well, and I agree so much about your points on "true sandbox"! Love it❤

i hope egosoft dont hate me after spain sent germany out of the euro cup. 😂 for me my most enjoyment of playing this game is when i treat it like an RTS game with AI management. for example, i would just be spectator in one of my capital ship when a few of my capital ships in a battle group facing the opposite factions in a sector battle. after directing fleets on each their vectors and just overseeing the battle unfolds, like being a manager in a soccer team. and watch the battle from multiple camera angles, jumping views from some of my ships's anchor points. almost like watching a space movie. epic. and i normally wont let small spacefighters go out during capital ships battles. dont want to lose any of them. i would however sent out fast medium fighters with heavy weapons to target the opposition's capital ship's engines and main shields. and pull them out immediately when i see them taking hits. im a "manager" type. 😁

I like the contorls though. And I don't see an issue with ArmA 2 controls. I do find it funny how they changed the inventory key into the grenade key in ArmA 3.

There's just nothing quite else like the X universe games out there, the closest you can really find is stuff like Elite but even that's not the same.

Beanhop is such a peak name for a character

its in sale btw ^^

Came across X4 just in time to prepare and buy it on its sale for the new DLC and update. It is EXACTLY what i wanted in these dark ages of elite and star citizen not providing what i wanted in a game.

For me, X4 is like that lady friend with weird mental issues but at the same time is kinda pretty and incredibly clever, witty even sometimes, and I want to love her but there’s always something that prevents a true connection from being made, causing no end of frustration both ways. But I still stick around because I hope that one day it might click and we’ll at least gain a mutual understanding.

yeah, timelines has some nice missions but i was so glad when i was finally finished with it and, contrary to the plots available in the sandbox, i don't wanna play it again. the additions that playing through timelines adds to the sandbox are worth the suffering though

I agree with your assessment. I never got addicted to X4 like I did with many other games before. It might just be because I am older, or it might be because as you say, X4 is not a great game. Still it is a fun game I enjoy playing. And it doesn't leave me feeling ripped off and disatisfied like EVE online. For those who like space games where you have a lot of agency. I would also recommend Starsector.