Tons of areas to explore, lots of supplies to buy, plenty of ships to find and upgrade, and a very intense storyline...
"X - Beyond The Frontier"
"X2 - The Threat"
"X3 - Terran Conflict"
Ever since I first played "Master Of Orion", I always wondered what it would be like to be able to actually make a game where you fly in space playing a kind of space rogue, going on missions or transporting goods from one place to another using jump gates, worm holes, or hyper drives. Plus, be able to buy bigger and better ships as wel as better weapons later on. Well, the above mentioned games let you do that, but only to a certain degree. The "X" series did allow you a lot of freedom, but it just lacked a lot of things. Plus, there were a lot of limitations. I did like the complexity of having to find your way around on your own without having to know the navagation system, but it did get rather troublesome once you got yourself lost. Overall though, the concept of the space flight is more 2D concept than 3D. (Everything was pretty much straight in front of you most of the time.)
But, that all changed when I played "Freelancer". This game alone covers a lot of things the "X" series just didn't have. When I first heard about this game, I figured it was just another rip off of the "X" series. I am so glad I was wrong about that. This game uses more ideas that the "X" series just didn't think of.
GRAPHICS
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Although because this is a space-flight sim, it's not really that hard to make well designed ships. (Look at how well they made X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and those games ran under DOS mode.) Even Space Stations are pretty standard looking, but the look alone is very eye-candy. It's not like ever station is sphere shaped or cone shaped. Every station is actually designed differently. Some stations are built on asteroids, some stations are on a battleship, and some stations are very well detailed in that it's not perfect looking (Perfect square, perfect rectangle) Each station is designed with different looks and designs. Plus, the fact that not all ships look like yours as well as concepts of what certain ships looks like is different from each other (Bounty hunter ships, transports, fighters, etc.) There is also weapon colors that differ from each other based on strangth, power, and level of weapon. There are a vast array of weapons that fire different colors per weapon. So they did use a lot of originality when they put the graphics together for this game. My personal fav graphic view are the different areas that you fly into such as gas clouds, radiation asteroids, even electrical fields. (Wait til you see what the "Bad Lands" looks like, then you will see what I mean.)
CONTROL
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A lot of the control is pretty simple. Either using your auto nav to go from place to place, or you can control your ship using the mouse. (I used to have to use an actual analog controller back in the day, but now that I have a track-ball, those days are over with ^_^ ) Overall, not a lot of commands to remember, and the learnign curve is super easy. I was able to master most of the commands in less than a day. Even if you have not played a lot of space sims, this game is actually good for beginner of future space-flight sims.
OVERALL
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First off, the storyline is actually pretty good. Althought not very original, it is interesting to get into. Because there is so much that goes into this game and that there is so much to do, it's hard not to get caught up with the story line, you almost want to find out what happens later.
SOME FLAWS
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One of the flaws I see in this game is that you start out not being able to go anywhere at the beginning, and worse off, even as you progress, you can't go very far, as far as locations are concerned. It's not until you reach Lv 7 or 8 that you manage to get beyond the locations you previously reached.
Some other flaws I have seen in this game is that it's still not totally Ideal 3D. Most of the areas you go to are pretty much straight in front of you, beside you or behind you. It's not totally hard to lose your way or direction. (Which can actually be a good thing in most cases.) The only real 3D concept is when you get into space battle with an enemy. or if you are doing general travelling.
One other flaw I have seen is that, although you do have a lot of freedom, you can't really progress much, unless you follow the story line and let the game evolve on it's own. Although more often than not, your sorta forced to progress into the story line until near the end of the game. You do have a lot of freedom to go to areas and even find a few secret areas (Such as secret warp areas, hidden outposts long abandoned, scattered ships that may still have cargo, etc.) But overall there is not much you can really do outside the storyline except to trade, upgrade your ship, make some friends, hitch a ride once in a while, check out areas not previously explored, take on jobs at the bar, gain info from patrons at the bar, even help increase your reputation with certain factions so you don't get attacked as much. Other than that, there is not really much in the way of freedom unless you progress through the storyline.
I will say there is a lot more going on than the "X" series.