It is strange how some games get their claws into you. It took me months to ease into X4: Foundations, and I ended up loving it for some bizarre reasons.
We’ve had a quiet summer here at SG, but I am still here! My attention is pretty divided between things at my main review job over at SteamDeckHQ and managing my health, which has worsened in the past couple of months. My current target is to keep up one review a week while I manage my health, but I have plenty of projects in the pipeline! Big thanks to those who reached out to me over the past couple of weeks, as it means a lot. It has meant that my schedule has taken a hit, and things have been slower than I would like.
Today, I’m here for X4 Foundations, a bizarre space sim game that has been growing on me since I received the base game as a surprise birthday present a couple of years back. Thanks, Lee!
How I got to X4 Foundations requires its own story. I have been working on a piece for Starfield since last December. What started as an impressions review has transformed into a big comparison project against the other big space RPGs on the market. Starfield is mired in controversy and strong criticism towards some of its strange design choices, but I still feel it is an interesting argument for the ‘AAA Space Game’. It is up there with MMOs as the most difficult genre to do well in my eyes because space is kind of big. X4 Foundations is one of the titles I will compare Starfield to, and I have 80 hours in the game now. Why not write an impressions review?
X4 Foundations is a big game, like most space sims are. It is also one of the more unique takes on the space sim genre. It is slow, bulbous, and rather janky, focusing on the economic side of extraterrestrial life more than anything else. It is a bizarre title, but it has come a long way since its release in 2018, with the developers adding more features with every update including several story DLC. In 2024, it is in a pretty good place, and it is the perfect time to get into it.
While the user interface is a little wonky, it is not too difficult to learn and the tutorials are very solid. You play in first person, both while navigating space stations and piloting the many different spaceships that inhabit the galaxy. The narratives involve the usual hard sci-fi shenanigans like warp gates, contact with strange alien civilisations, the discovery of dangerous natural threats, and the grand conspiracies between the many factions of X4. There is a lot at play, although the main game is built with sandbox in mind. You are free to pursue anything you wish, and the many scenarios add to the variety of options available. This comes at the cost of breadth because there is so much available from the start that it is easy to get overwhelmed.
While the ships are incredibly detailed with some nice interiors, I was disappointed by the space stations. There are a lot of them, but they are not great places to visit, and once you have seen one, you have seen them all. I also wish the crew interiors did more immersive things, like sandboxing with places like the crew quarters, galley or brig. It is lacking in that regard, but there are sacrifices to be made when making such a complex game.
The economy is a big focus, and it is when I found my passion. By hiring ships with crews, you can have them automate trade and mining across the galaxy through an in-depth control system. The amount of things you can have your growing fleet do is extensive, and with an economy that constantly evolves, it is worth having a few fast ships revisit stations and outposts to discover what is hot.
The flying controls in X4 Foundations are not for beginners, but they are more intricate than games like No Man’s Sky and Starfield. The flight tutorials help a lot, and you can fly on autopilot as well. Even better, you can hire a pilot and have them fly you around the cosmos, and this is when X4 Foundations shoved its big head into my routine. I have an unpaid alien taxi driver at my command, and I use him to fly me around the galaxy while my trading empire grows. This created a chill experience that is my current downtime game of choice. It has become my ‘Euro Truck Simulator’, except I sit in my spaceship and let my minions work for me.
X4 Foundations is a massive game, and covering it fully is the work of weeks. However, I hope this piece helps those who are on the fence about picking it up. You can buy it on sale fairly often, and while the DLC is mostly good, take time in the base game first before making any decisions. It has a ton of mods available and while slightly janky, it is one of the biggest transformations for me personally. I went from bouncing off the game entirely to loving it, warts and all. Sometimes that is my favorite part of video games.
