Backdrops are generically pretty displays of green and purple nebulae stretching across starfields, and space vessels lack the drama of pop culture's most iconic craft They are built for function, apparently, and not for form. Trading is a common activity in space exploration games, but the lack of visual variety squashes exploration flat. This is the steady diet of quests you feast upon if you have any hope for forward progress, unless you prefer to ferry supplies and the spoils of random enemy encounters from one system to another, seeking the highest possible prices. VoidExpanse recycles the same few missions over and over again: Mine some minerals, deliver this package, kill this pirate, rescue these survivors. The rare story-based diversion is not enough to brighten up the dreary pace that soon develops, however. You even get choices to make, potentially befriending or alienating a contact depending on how successful you are at hacking a terminal, or convincing a pesky pirate to leave his enemy alone instead of firing on him at first glance. You do odd jobs for your chosen faction so that you can join its ranks, and at least those tasks mix things up a little. Those games built adventures around these basic systems VoidExpanse, on the other hand, rarely expounds upon the fundamentals.
![x3 reunion the expanse x3 reunion the expanse](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/235920/ss_65a9bf143a5565486e045518916195dac7206130.1920x1080.jpg)
![x3 reunion the expanse x3 reunion the expanse](http://www.gameslave.co.uk/picstore/X3Reunion/gold3.jpg)
With each accomplishment, you earn not only money but experience, which you then apply to skills that improve your flight agility, open access to new weapons, and enhance your financial standing.ĢD plane aside, this is Freelancer, or DarkStar One, or X3: Reunion, a game that encourages you to find your inner Han Solo, gaining funds by performing odd jobs, aligning yourself with a faction, and destroying whatever enemies stand in your way. In VoidExpanse's case, this all occurs on a 2D plane upon which you zoom from one space station to another, mining minerals from asteroids and shooting down space pirates along the way. VoidExpanse is built from a proven foundation, recalling every space sim in which you crisscross the galaxy, buying low and selling high. It didn't have to be this way it never does. It was here that VoidExpanse and I parted ways after 25 hours of spacefaring tedium and shallow questing, and I can't say I'll miss repeating the same four side missions over and over again. I wasted precious minutes flying to a base seven systems away so that I could reload, only to return to the alien system and find the hive had gained back all of its health. Instead, my new fighter made things worse by allowing me to only equip weapon types with limited ammo reserves. After a while, I could finally afford a better hull, and I presumed my path to victory-a path without the disappearing superweapon-would be clearer.
![x3 reunion the expanse x3 reunion the expanse](https://colormatch.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/5/4/125468162/406801972.jpg)
I spent a half-dozen hours hammering away at these things, laboriously zooming back and forth between alien systems and bases where I could refuel and refill ammunition. So I was left to my own devices, slowly whittling down hives while accompanied by a useless companion that could fend off attacking aliens and space pirates, but could do no damage to the hive itself. The contact that had given it to me had nothing more to say, and none of the stations I visited sold such a weapon. I left it in my inventory for later use, but at some point in my travels, it disappeared (perhaps I sold it by mistake?), and I could not find a way to retrieve a new one. My faction's commander gave me a special weapon for destroying alien hives in a single shot, but it wouldn't fit in my ship.