I've heard a lot about these three games, but I know little about them besides the fact that they share/make up a genre unto themselves - "open galaxy" sandbox space sims.

For anyone who has played any two of them... What distinguishes them from each other? Which was your favorite? And what separates them from other genres of sandbox games?

Mild tangent:
I've been sitting on a GOG copy of Privateer for a while, a little afraid to pick it up because, as much as I enjoy them, I'm not very good at space sims. I greatly enjoyed Freespace and Freespace 2, but I had a rough time getting through both of them. I could only finish Wing Commander 3 with liberal amounts of cheating. Also, the graphics look poor enough to really mess with my sense of depth perception, which I've found is really important in shooters of all kinds. From what I read about it, it has a rough plotline to follow, but the real draw is supposed to be how you can just wander around, making money and blowing stuff up. I'm not sure if WC:P is a kind of game I'd enjoy, so I hope this discussion will enlighten me.

Privateer is my favourite Elite-style game even with its coarse spacecombat the atmosphere and the feeling of roaming a rather big system is great, this game is probably the closest thing to becoming Han Solo, you can even become a smuggler or spacepirate yourself if you want to which makes it truly great.
The only thing is that this game is rather long and the X-Com syndrome might crawl up by becoming a bit tedious over time as you have to grind for new ships and equipement. "Dump your cargo before you blow will ya!" =P

Privateer 2 is not as good as the first IMO, it was also never intended to be a Wing Commander game too, which explains the Doctor Who like feel of it all and has no ties with the Kilrathi or even Earth. All in all it isn't as bad as a lot of people say it is or maybe it is I don't know, I still liked it for what it was, though it has some annoyances like enemies that repeat the same line over and over and less stellar space combat and they dropped cocpit views in favour of more ships which I found taking away of the feeling of being there and the space locations you can visit aren't as memorable as in the original Privateer.

Freelancer beats the previous games in terms of graphics and is close in atmosphere to the first Privateer, Freelancer still is a pretty game and the spacecombat is very smooth but not as difficult as in Privateer where you had to keep investing in tech to keep up.
Also I found it not very rewarding to play much outside the main story which defeated the purpose of free roam gameplay a bit which is also my main critisism of Freelancer.

Another game worth considering is Independence War 2: Edge Of Chaos, it is more a spacepirate game though.
The emphasis is on spacecombat tactics and equiping your craft to make it as efficiently as possible, it requires a bit of out of the box thinking which can be overwhelming at first but in the end there is nothing quite like it.

The way you describe it, it seems like I'd enjoy Freelancer the most. Did you play Elite too?

I did play Elite 2 a lot.

Freelancer would have been a perfect successor to Privateer except for one detail: the establishment of a level system where the player ranks up according to the amount of money they earn. Okay, so it sounds more "RPG like" in that credits act as experience points and as you level up you gain access to bigger and more advanced ships. The problems is that the systems are scaled according to the level you visit them in the main storyline. This means that if you decide to backtrack to a previous system the enemies there are going to become progressively weaker the further you are along in the story. Enemies that were nigh impossible to beat at the start of the game are swatted down like flies at the end.

While Privateer does scale the difficulty of encounters according to your total worth, it does so universally. Also, the ships in the game are balanced so that while some might be better than others, they all have a fair chance in a match up. The player ships, with exception of the Tarsus, each has characteristics attractive to the player depending on what kind of role they want to play.

Never played Privateer 2 but I've put in a lot of hours into both Privateer and Freelancer. At the end of the day, I always go back to Privateer as it's all-around a good package in terms of design and game play. Freelancer has a clear advantage, though, in terms of graphics, multiplayer, and mods.

Privateer uses the Wing Commander engine (sprites). It was the best open end universe game at it's time, where the combat is fun. I played Elite I, II and Frontier, and hated the combat in that. It allowed you to customise you ship to suit your role in the game, i.e. Trader/Mercenary. I think it has digitized speech, but cannot remember for certain. It has been a few years since I last played. It offers agent missions, which progress through a story line, the only downside you need to fully upgrade to the best ship and weapons to make good progress through the story.

Privateer 2 has FMV cutscenes and has true 3D models. Again it had similar mechanics to the first game, but a heavier emphasis on space combat. While you could upgrade your ship, for trading you had to hire cargo ships to ferry the goods for you. It offered various types of missiles, such as virus attacks, and mods to protect your ship against such attacks.

In Freelancer you could trade and combat in your ship. It offered a large universe to explore with interesting environments, i.e. ice fields, to explore and find artifacts and wormholes for shortcuts around the universe. The story cutscenes were made entirely in engine as opposed to FMV in privateer 2. This game was 7 years in the making and offered a solid experience. I have found it difficult to play the story missions again. It also offered multiplayer in the same universe in player hosted servers, like a semi-MMO (With something like 24 max players per sever IIRC).

All 3 games have been my favourite at one point, but Privateer 1 is the one I have got most play though hours out of.

I know this is an older thread, but wanted to pop in a clarification or two for others who may have similar questions... (these searches are coming around again thanks to the development of Freelancer's spiritual successor, Star Citizen, now heading towards an Alpha early next year).

First off, I agree that Freelancer would best meet your stated purposes. It's precursor, Starlancer, was a highly thought of game in 2000, but is a pure combat sim. FL shifted focus to easier, more arcade-like combat, and added an open world with trading and exploration. While it did not meet all expectations of its' stated ambitions, Freelancer was still applauded for most of what it did implement: a vast, sprawling - though not truly dynamic - universe in which to get your Han Solo on.

FL is still around at a community level and has many available mods. I feel I should also point out here: if you have a system that can run it, Chris Roberts' Star Citizen (now officially the most expensive space flight sim ever developed @ +$54m funded) can be yours with alpha/beta access for only $30. It will take a beefy pc though...

Also want to echo the recommendation for Independence War 2.

I played a demo years ago, enjoyed it, but more importantly I played the heck out of the original Independence War. It was engrossing, gorgeous for its' time, frustrating, and utterly addictive. However, I think our tastes are closer together rather then further apart... The advanced mechanics of flying and combat eventually wore me down. I found that I prefer something a bit more "arcadey" and less demanding; I want to go exploring, not feel like an octopus on a ice rink as I flip and shimmy my way across a star system.

Specifically, one of the main selling points of IW's framework - Newtonian Physics - made it really difficult to travel, especially during dogfights. It was fine early in the game when there wasn't much combat and you could generally autopilot to your next way-point. But once combat became more frequent, I found it increasingly difficult to progress.

At any rate... fun game. Difficult. And I understand that the flight model was tweaked for IW-2, or at least that toggle-able aides can make things more enjoyable and less of flipping grind (no pun intended :).

Best.