Some of the best visuals in a game I've seen.
Never even bothered with the story, there is better stuff to do.
Agreed the manual and tutorial are atrocious, a half decent manual and a proper tutorial would of made the game more critically successful.
Wrong, just wrong. Trading, exploring, business, racing and....... tour guide.
Again agreed but after playing for large amount of time, you tend to not notice it.
It can be, at other times it can be one of the most entertaining space sims out.
Again, never bothered with the story, if you are talking about job/missions however, I've never had any problems.
Mind you while saying all this, I haven't played the vanilla X3 in a looong time, so perhaps my opinion is coloured by all the mods I have for it, which are awesome by the way. Just never get the Xenon migration one.....