Why is Freelancer considered good?

[MadMaxHellfire]

Combat is retarded. You don't manouver, you can't evade, all you have to do is keep the crosshair on the red +, while every enemy has access to ten times your speed and agility, and all it does is go round and round, sometimes with impossible superpowers.
World is retarded. There's no kind of scale or coherence, as much as the game makes no use of any real measure unit, no one with a primary school level of knowledge can keep any suspension of disbelief. Lanes are retarded, stupidly self-repairing, if you've been flying for 20 seconds you know for a fact the next one you're going to fall in an ambush.
Economy is static, once you find two opposite planets you're set. Mining is retarded, you sit somewhere and aim for unlimited infinite sprites which can or can not appear on screen.
Ships are retarded. There's three, just three, but being combat just a DPS check the transport and the light are completely useless.
Weapons are retarded. There's four or five, but considering how any, ANY enemy can zoom out of screen anytime, slower firing are penalized.
Story might be retarded. The only thing I remember was a lot of moving around for dumb reasons, then suddenly invincible aliens from outer dimensions. And then you actually beat the invincible aliens. When missions appeared to have gained a little tiny bit of variety and challenge, the game ends.

 

[catfood]

Because you don't need a joystick to play it.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Not everyone has the patience to learn a complex physics system like in IWAR or get used to the unfriendly interface of X3. Freelancer provides the Privateer experience in an easy to consume manner.

 

[cpmartins]

Diablo in space. It's good.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Because it's a retarded game for retarded people.

thank you.

 

[Camel]

Freelancer is good.
Gameplay is fun and polished. People also enjoyed PVP for some time.
Main quest is pretty solid even if it became generic in the end. Side quests/missions are repetitive and lacklustre, I'll give you that.
I liked the NPC simulation with traders, pirates.
There is a working reputation system with different factions.
Voice-acting is good with Jennifer Hale as a standout.

 

[Hellraiser]

Freelancer is good.
Gameplay is fun and polished. People also enjoyed PVP for some time.

It's a mostly bullshit/busywork free (one click docking, simple station UIs minimizing non-flying time, good enough autopilot etc.) arcadey blowing up ships in space game, where you can live the space murderhobo dream in a salvaged vaporware open world sandbox. As a game this is closer to GTA or Sid Meier's Pirates! (the remake) than to a sim, amd the game's universe is built around adventure rather than scientific accuracy (dense asteroids fields everywhere, complete ignoring of orbital mechanics in system design etc.). Could the game have been better, without going for immersive turbo-autism and thus losing the crude arcade appeal it has? Yes, in many ways it could, and it is also plain visible the project was troubled and features were axed/downscaled. Still it just works(tm).

One thing that for me stands out is the worldbuilding and faction backstories, these are quite decent unlike the rather meh writing of the campaign storyline. Discovering new pirate bases and getting lore dumps after docking with them was a nice bonus, it made the exploration quite enjoyable along with "unpredictable" equipment/ship offerings in various bases/stations/planets (only parts of faction gear pool are offered by most faction bases) making you want to check out "new" stations or planets.

 

[luj1]

butthurt: the thread

 

[True Ukrainian]

Adventure and action is more popular than turbo space autism. Who would have thought.

 

[gurugeorge]

It's arcadey light entertainment. And there's a bit more of a skill ceiling than you think too, you can juggle afterburner, strafing, cutting/reversing engines, using reverse view, etc., and if you get into some of that stuff you can punch above your weight and get juicier gear to sell/get to better ships more quickly. The lore and world building are pretty cool too.

But mainly, yeah, you can play it without a joystick

 

[Hellraiser]

Adventure and action is more popular than turbo space autism. Who would have thought.

Space autism isn't innately less popular, it's the dumb bullshit space autism can lead to and how you package it/make gameplay out of it that leads to certain "autistic" games being "less popular" (Elite: D, which is my go to example of autism gone bad, sold >3 million copies somehow, so the less popular part is debatable). Elite Dangerous' in system travel is a good example. Hooray the scale is realistic and you don't get hollywood-dense asteroid fields, just a depressing empty black void, let's have the player waste 5+ minutes starting at a black screen with some orange text on it while he gets from planet A to planet B. And then let's penalize the players for not having saint-like patience with a deceleration mechanic that has 0 gameplay impact, besides wasting more of the player's time if he fails. This is on top of it not making sense in-universe to not have some kind of automation for this kind of tedium and it forms the bulk of the gametime.

I'm not sure what Braben was thinking here, he wanted to immerse players in the boredom of long haul space flight? Yeah, well, maybe some things should just be implied rather than experienced, but hey in Elite:D you can experience the boredom in VR too! Was there a fucking GAME designer on the team? I mean FFS, arguably more autistic spaceflight titles like KSP or Orbiter acknowledge that space flight involves too much boredom/downtime where nothing happens, so you need a time acceleration button to skip past it to the actual gameplay. Hell, KSP also sold north of 3 million copies similar to Elite:D, so it shows that you can throw more autistic concepts at the player as long as you at least try to package it in some kind of gameplay that works, even if the packaging is clunky and janky and made by a gifted amateur.

 

[gurugeorge]

Adventure and action is more popular than turbo space autism. Who would have thought.

This is on top of it not making sense in-universe to not have some kind of automation for this kind of tedium and it forms the bulk of the gametime.

Yeah that's kind of the conundrum with space games. I mean, in reality, getting from A to B would mostly be automated, so ironically, it would actually be more like Freelancer, with the ship handling the tedious bits.

And ship to ship combat would be more like The Expanse (i.e. incredibly fast kind of space jousting, and over pretty quickly, and probably mostly handled by AI or by enhanced humans working in tandem with AI) but Boomers loved the idea of dogfighting in space, flying ships more or less like you'd fly aeroplanes or trucks in space, etc. because of Star Wars, so that's how space games have tended to be designed. It's quite retarded really - but on the other hand, it is fun.

I'd quibble a bit with the Elite comments though. I didn't like the tedium of having to control every damn thing, but I did like the sense of scale and the way in-system and interstellar travel was handled, it gave more of a sense of space realism than most games, and I think that's the most important thing for me, I do want to feel I'm actually out there in the vastness; and I most certainly don't want to have planets and stars feeling like beach balls in the middle distance (there has to be the appropriate perspective or parallax or whatever it is, to give a sense of massiveness).

As to visuals, there are good reasons why space is black when you're out there (the stars are there but very faint, it's atmosphere and blah de blah science that makes them appear in all their glory from the ground on Earth), but it would be a small matter to have enhanced visuals out in space, just for fun, so there's no reason why that can't be done in games too via your visual implants or on screens or whatever (if it's explained - which would be interesting anyway, for a nerd).

 

[Hellraiser]

I'd quibble a bit with the Elite comments though.

To clarify my problem with Elite: Dangerous isn't that space is empty, black and boring, with you and your ship being insignificantly tiny in the grand scheme of things, going for a realistic depiction is a perfectly fine design choice and certainly part of the appeal of the game along with the full scale galaxy.

My problem is primarily the too fucking long screen saver travel while you stare at the distance to target and ETA numbers going down. This is just wasting the player's time, it's practically a glorified too fucking long loading screen interrupting actual gameplay. And like I already mentioned even games approaching the spaceflight subject in a more realistic manner like KSP and Orbiter acknowledge the issue of travel time and don't bog down the player with AFK cruising that takes up the bulk of the gametime. Interstellar travel in Elite: D is fine, it's fairly fast (well, depends how many jumps you do) and your concerns as a player are in planning the route and not running out of fuel rather than getting your patience tested. Just the in-system flight is horrible near brainless busywork and it is what kills the game for me more so than anything else in it.

You can make long range in-system exploration challenging via other means, say through supply/resource planning etc. rather than it just taking too much fucking time for the player to bother. I would rather prefer to have very fast flight but need to scavenge for sources of fuel inside system for the in-system drive or otherwise plan out the exploration, similar to what the game already does with intestellar travel.

 

[True Ukrainian]

The older wing and strike commander games made mundane travel a simple cut scene which is triggered by a key press. You could do the same thing in a modern game but with depleting meters for supplies.

 

[Stokowski]

The bar music was very good:

 

[gurugeorge]

The bar music was very good:

Yeah I forgot to mention above, the music is a big part of the game's attraction. It's nothing groundbreaking but most of it is just really nice ambient electronica that fits the game very well. It's very cosy, sometime mysterious and vast, sometimes playful, with lots of nice little tunes here and there. The action music is serviceable and occasionally good too.

 

[Shadowfang]

I loved those lines from the random npcs.

Hi! I am with the shitposters guild, and while we don't own these forums we have an agreement with the people who do.
If you want know, i might have heard a rumor. Are you interested? Well this is what i heard...

Those little voice dialogs made from different audio files put together made the game feel quite alive at the time. Freelancer had a good vibe. I remember grinding reputation with pirates or bandits so i could get my hands on that light dagger ship. Used through the campaign until she couldn't keep up anymore.

I have good memories of it, but won't play it again and i do agree that there wasn't much depth to combat at that ships could have been better balanced and all kinds of shields should have seen similar upgrades for the sake of variety.

 

[gurugeorge]

I loved those lines from the random npcs.

Hi! I am with the shitposters guild, and while we don't own these forums we have an agreement with the people who do.
If you want know, i might have heard a rumor. Are you interested? Well this is what i heard...

Those little voice dialogs made from different audio files put together made the game feel quite alive at the time. Freelancer had a good vibe. I remember grinding reputation with pirates or bandits so i could get my hands on that light dagger ship. Used through the campaign until she couldn't keep up anymore.

I have good memories of it, but won't play it again and i do agree that there wasn't much depth to combat at that ships could have been better balanced and all kinds of shields should have seen similar upgrades for the sake of variety.

Yeah, I've just been giving it a go again recently, and while the combat's still great, I really can't muster up the energy to go through the whole game. I might explore the systems I remember the most, for a nostalgia jag, and leave it at that. It's just a bit too basic to be obsessed by at this late stage. It has revitalized an older interest in space games though. Might give Elite:D a spin, maybe even take a look at what's up with Star Citizen these days.

 

[Sunsetspawn]

Gangsta Bitch vibes

 

[True Ukrainian]

Freelancer's plot becomes incredibly rushed once you leave space Japan. You are quickly hustled through space Germany and without a chance to explore.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I spent untold hours doing random quests or trading. Then, I downloaded mods and explored a lot.

Fun game that focused on the fun parts of space sims without a bunch of simulationist baggage like the X series, where they spent more time on base-building autism than making the game fun or interesting.

 

[Optimist]

I remember being quite disappointed by it, although it was probably mainly because I headed into it after getting my socks blown off by Freespace 2, and expected a milsim campaign in line with what that game had to offer. I never tried the multiplayer, either.

I do recall each region having its tier of weaponry buyable, and some of the sidequests offering slightly improved version of those. Time spent on farming those was wasted, though, as you could just do a main quest or two and buy strictly more powerful versions in the next area.

Dunno, I think that the Space Rangers 2 done all this game wanted to do better, minus being a cinematic experience.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Having player Privateer and Freespace just before testing Freelancer, I came sorely disappointed. I expected a bit of both; I had none of any.

 

[Hellraiser]

The bar music was very good:

I'm more of a fan of the track with the sax that plays on Liberty, most notably on Planet Manhattan.

 

[El Presidente]

I loved those lines from the random npcs.

Hi! I am with the shitposters guild, and while we don't own these forums we have an agreement with the people who do.
If you want know, i might have heard a rumor. Are you interested? Well this is what i heard...

Those little voice dialogs made from different audio files put together made the game feel quite alive at the time. Freelancer had a good vibe. I remember grinding reputation with pirates or bandits so i could get my hands on that light dagger ship. Used through the campaign until she couldn't keep up anymore.

I have good memories of it, but won't play it again and i do agree that there wasn't much depth to combat at that ships could have been better balanced and all kinds of shields should have seen similar upgrades for the sake of variety.

I used to make fun of these lines with a friend all the time exactly like you just did, brought me good memories