*crosses several appendages and circles Q1 2019 in his calendar*

Also massive kudos to Egosoft for the D1 gog release!

I've never played any of these types of games. They look so daunting to take on. Looks super cool though.

I did the same thing but what I ended up putting it off and picked up the X bundle later on. I then ended up playing the games in order. I've finished X:BtF and X2: The Threat and I'm playing X3: Reunion now. In my experience, the X games get pretty complex and they are quite different from each other.

X:BtF can be a hit or a miss in places and there are some flaws with can make this game irritating at times. However, it likely the game you'll be finished with sooner as I didn't think there was much point in continuing after your ship (the only one you can fly) was fully upgraded. Give it a go by all means but if you don't care about finishing it, I wouldn't blame you.

I still recommend you try X2: The threat though if you want to ease yourself into the series as it is a simpler game to get into but not too simple like X:BtF was. For factories, you'll probably only be building solar power plants. The economy is a little wonky in that regard but I liked that X2 had unique pirate ships and mining was done much better in X2 then X3 (not sure about X:AP or X:TC though). Even though I'm enjoying X3:R a lot, I still want to go back to X2 sometime in the future.

Oh, and some people couldn't get into X2 because "your starting ship sucks". Regardless of what you hear people say, the M5 Discoverer you start the game with doesn't suck provided you use it correctly. I thought it was really good and found a use for it throughout the game. The people who say "Wahhh!!! The starting ship sucks, I can't kill anything in it" are doing it wrong. You would probably laugh at someone who said "Wahhh!!!! Screwdrivers suck cos I can't hammer in nails with it". Your starter ship does need to be fully upgraded though and when it is, it shines in what it can do. You can capture similar ships (one of which is a pirate ship that's even better for capturing), do escort missions, small trade runs (late game, I kept my starting ship and used it for equipment runs) scout sectors or use it as a mobile satelite. For combat, you can take on isolated scout ships and light fighters without using missiles, anything you can't fight, you can outrun,including missiles. Just something to keep in mind if you ever start playing X2 ;)

But will it have space grannies?

Scary system requirements, I'm barely within the minimum in terms of CPU and RAM, and just above in terms of GPU. We'll see the benchmarks on day 1, but thanks Egosoft for the release :)

I was planning on getting another game off Steam, but this being quite expensive, but DRM free has made me decide to save my cash for this.

Wishlisted.

Perhaps I should clarify.

I consider a day one release to be just that. Released in full on the day.

This is a pre-order release.

Apart from the fact that pre-ordering is probably one of the worst forms of anti-consumer tactics that for some reason is still embraced by gamers, Egosoft have a track record going back years of releasing games in an unfinished state. Pre-ordering only encourages this.

Yeah I was considering a pruchase to support the choice of a day one release but a 7% discount plus an exclusive (don't really like fully exclusive game content even if I have it) paint mod which is DRM'ed kind of puts a damper on my desire to spend nearly $80 USD sight unseen.

Can anyone speak to the quality and consistancy of updates and support for their other titiles on GOG?
If they provide actual support for the GOG version that's a solid mark in their favor but if they're one of the groups and treats GOG like an abandonware sight I may just have to pass entirely.

It is getting harder and harder for me to trust that a new release will be retained or maintained on the gog store.

If GOG doesn't start to seriously enforce its "updates" clause, I can't blame you.

Once X rebirth came to GoG in 2016, it got the same updates that Steam did on the same day. There have been a lot of updates in the last 2 years on that game. Egosoft is very good supporting thier games for years to come.

I can speak, up to an extent.

Whilst I haven't purchased any of Egos Gog releases, I did purchase from Ego before they chose Steam Exclusivity.

Ego used to release fairly continuous patches and additional content.

Can't guarantee this will happen here though as by the time Egos releases came here, they were finished projects.

They were most certainly not finished projects on release however.

I can only advise extreme caution. They may come good but I would wait for reviews and feedback on the game after it is released.

Last patch according to the changelog: 11 December 2017