Babylon 5 - I've Found Her

Thanks for the tips, but I'm afraid I've tried 2, and 1 doesn't ..fit.

Darkstar One was the first I found after Freelancer. It was good at first, but by the 3rd system, it was getting repetitive. By the 7th system, I was bored out of my mind.

Starpoint Gemini focused on capital ships as an endpoint..and the crosshair was off when using the behind view.
Seems like a good game if that's your thing though! Looking forward to their new game about fighter ships though!

Rebel Galaxy is more like captaining a capital ship in the seas. Sure it's chase cam, but it didn't interest me enough to try it out.

I've also tried the X-games, up to X3TC. No Man's Sky and Evochron Mercenary.

There was one game that was equally good. That I didn't remember until now. Galaxy on Fire 2. Everyone who loves Freelancer should try that one.

The "Password protection remains" seems to be for the non-English versions. I tested the FrontierVerse English version (MD5 .exe checksum : 850e599d81889a79f80c77b90cad11e4) and it's exactly as described (the random "police officer check" that appears occasionally upon docking can be dismissed with any key (whether correct or not), Cemiess negative prices bug has been fixed, Imperial Courier / Trader crew sized bug has been fixed, etc).

Ahhhh, ok
Also I may have been mistaken wasnt it Elite 3 or...First Encounters was it? the worst Elite in terms of bugs? were they ever fixed?

Or is Frontier Elite II the best of the series?

It's definitely my favourite. I haven't really compared the 3 games for bug count.

First Encounters is the bug-fest... There are myriads of ports and source ports available, fixing them and upgrading visuals. But none of them finished. For me Pioneer Scout Plus is the closest thing of a working and pretty version, even if it's discontinued too. Pioneer is more like Frontier - Elite 2 in my experience.

Imperfect ports of imperfect games, I guess. Just try them them and ymmv, but good luck Commander Jameson :-)

I think Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is the closest to Freelancer. It will probably come to GOG when Epic store's exclusivity is over.

I may have mixed up Starpoint Gemini's latest game and Rebel Galaxy's..Now I need to look it up.
Thanks for the tip!

Oooh I loved both of those games!

Frontier was just a fantastic for exploration, and one of the few games even to this day that you can make a seamless transition from space to a planet's surface.

It did get quite samey after a while tho', and TBH you'd be much better off getting one of the fan-ports and playing that as trying to shoot down a pirate at range on 320x200 res screen with a 1MW pulse laser is not something I'd wish on anyone.

First Encounters (the sequel) had a lot more fluff (Jjagged Bbanner 4 evar) rather than just generic trading and generic missions, and even had something of a storyline which made the game more interesting and immersive, and you even had the opportunity to get unique ships if you stick with it (Like the Argent's Quest and it's weirdly wiggly tail).

It's main downside was the bugginess and again the 320x200 res really has not aged well.


Freelancer is a more dumbed-down version of Elite - To me it has a very good balance of freedom vs plot hooks. The flight system is more TIE Fighter/Starlancer/Freespace-esque which is waaaaay easier then the Newtonian flight model in Frontier/FE.

I currently have Freelancer working in a WinXP VM in VirtualBox with a no-CD crack and it's still fun to play.

I have to say, it does a lot of things right, like the trade lane system and cruise engines for seamless fast travel, and the seamless transition from empty space to nebulas and debris fields - I don't think any other game has done it as perfectly, and despite being old it still looks gorgeous.

Everspace has been scratching that Freelancer itch for me for a few weeks now. I, too, like the chase cam, and I think Everspace's implementation of it gives me that Freelancer feeling more than Rebel Galaxy does. Sure it's a roguelite and has no trading to speak of, but the combat part is spot-on. Hopefully Everspace 2 will be even more like Freelancer now that Rockfish is adding trading and other RPG elements.

I am putting FE2 on the back burner for a bit, but I recently discovered Oolite and I am fucking hooked.

Thanks for the tip!

I've backed Everspace 2 specifically in the hope it will scratch that Freelancer itch, however I still expect them to be very different games.

Having Freelancer & Starlancer here would be amazing, but then again a lot of MS games would be nice to haves. Let's hope GOG still has some magic left after the latest batch of good old games they've managed to procure.