It doesn’t help that the control scheme is rather unwieldy. The game can either be played with a joystick or, failing that, the mouse and keyboard, but even with a joystick, players still need to make use of the mouse and keyboard to control various functions such as activating the autopilot, docking and communicating with other vessels. In battle, most of these controls aren’t that much of an obstruction, as aiming and shooting are very simple, but beyond that there’s a lot of juggling that’s needed to use all the controls properly. For a lot of players, that can be a difficult arrangement.

On the bright side, X3: Terran Conflict is a high-caliber visual experience. The initial in-game trailer is a potent display of X3’s graphics engine, and the most of the game looks equally stellar. The detail of both the planetary systems -- Saturn is particularly breathtaking -- and the man-made objects found within them are very fine indeed. The details in ship design, such as the firing of retro rockets as you move your ship about, or the bright glow of ship engines and laser cannon fire show that X3: Terran Conflict has a grasp of both the big and the small when it comes to graphics. Still, the character animations are less impressive, using recycled body types between different NPCs, in both appearance and voice. The times you interact with NPCs are few and far between and, even when you do see them, the interactions are brief.

X3: Terran Conflict wouldn’t be such a bad game if it weren’t for its unnecessarily slow plot and awkward control scheme. That the game looks simply wonderful gives it that beautiful woman complex -- nice to look at, but inflexible and difficult to deal with.