I'm Lohan, an Argon merchant trying to become the next millionaire station owner in Argon Prime, a goal made difficult by the constant Khaak attacks destroying my trade fleet and thousands of dollars of my money with each ship. The Argon Navy are always too slow to retaliate and are completely incapable of preventing the attacks, even in their attempt to find the Khaak homeworld they turned up nothing other than more wasted lives and now there are rumours of another threat, that when mixed with the Split and Paranid races, means we're almost constantly on the verge of being attacked.

Of course, my trade life would be much simpler if my docking procedure didn't involve trying to fit a freighter into the fighter hold and subsequently blowing up. Apparently the docking methods have changed somewhat since X2: The Threat, so I now let the computer get on with this job. In fact, everything in X3: Reunion has changed from X2. The universe is darker, much like X: Beyond The Frontier, but this time everything is set against giant almost photo-real planets. As you fly between stations you can watch the clouds sweep across the surface of a planet, a simply mind blowing sight.

The style of the game is very similar to the previous games, which in turn are the nearest thing to Elite since, well, Elite. You can trade with stations, be a pirate or vigilante, explore, or build up either an economic or military empire. The best thing in the game is that it's incredibly open ended, but once you find your footing it isn't boring like most open ended games tend to be, as in a weird twist of human nature, you're driven to succeed by whatever means you choose. For me personally, this generally means building up a mega trade centre in a heavily defended sector, such as Argon Prime, to make a massive profit.

The stations span for several kilometres and are filled with negative space, but now they actually look like they do what's on the label. Solar power plants are giant assemblies of parabolic mirrors and the shipyards span tens of kilometres and actually look like they're capable of producing the largest of the ships and stations. That said, everything is extremely destructible and although I haven't got to the point of destroying any power stations, or stations whatsoever for that matter, from the explosions on the smaller craft they'll be amazing. How amazing you ask? Well, the explosions in X: Beyond The Frontier were extremely, well, lame to put it frankly and in X2: The Threat they were a bit over the top and extremely bright. This time the explosions actually look realistic. But then there's also no sound in space, so I'm not sure if realistic actually matters or not.

Music in the game is typically X, that being X-tremely grandiose and for the distances involved this is possibly the only game in which the phrase 'over the top' loses all meaning. Some music tracks appear to be the same as the ones in X2; but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The sound similarly has been improved where it was lacking in the previous versions, and with the addition of new weapons, there's a lot of great new effects still to be heard. The voice acting isn't lip-synced but isn't meant to be, because if you read the back story you will realise they're supposed to be talking Japanese, or whatever alien languages the non-Argon races speak. However, there is good voice acting for almost everything from station announcements to the main characters, but strangely most main story characters do seem to be lip-synced!

Before I can get into gameplay two things need to be covered. Firstly, the controls have changed and now the mouse is an incredibly efficient tool; it can control your flight but most importantly a right click allows you to manipulate the HUD (Heads Up Display). You can click a target and get a selection of what you'd like to do, everything from dock to communicate. Or you can open up the in-game menu system and work everything without having to even touch the keyboard. The mouse is so useful to a trader now that my joystick has been collecting dust; the mouse flight isn't as ergonomic as in Freelancer but if you're a trader then you tend to run away from fights or buy a heavily armed escort.

The second point I need to cover is the story. Unlike X2: The Threat, the story in X3 is as deep as the scale of the game, as well as the stories you can create yourself, like conquering the universe. You reprise the role of Julian Gardna to uncover the truth of a new enemy emerging and a mysterious machine left behind by an ancient species, but this is only a drop in a very, very huge ocean.

The gameplay is split into the story and non-story games, which can put you deep into the story of a type of character or jump start you in the main story, depending on the choices you make. There's also an option to make the single player story difficult, to entertain the more advanced combatants from X2, or just for the people who actually think the easy mode won't own them by the end of the game.

The first non-story role is of an explorer and in such a large universe, gate jumping is one of the best ways to find a tidy profit or a Xenon battle fleet. Your choice of gate can quite often be the decision between space gold and space dust. The amount of systems to explore is massive and in the hundreds, but if the expansion of the gate networks is repeated again like between X: Beyond the Frontier to X2: The Threat then it could well be over three hundred and being a coward at heart, I praise anyone daring enough to risk exploring every sector!

The advantage of an explorer's life is the ability to find amazing trade routes and great technology; once these are mapped it's an easy move into the trading side of life and you'll no doubt be making more than ten times the profit of everyone else. It also gives you a keener insight into what stations would benefit most from being put into a certain sector. For example, transporting a Boron Plankton Farm halfway across the galaxy into Argon space will cost a lot to start off with, but the profit you'll make from exporting to the stations around you will easily make it back for buying cheap energy.

One certain way of making good money in this career is watching the bulletin boards. Like X2: The Threat, there are missions for transporting people or items from station A to station B in another sector. The items generally come with time limits, which once you have enough money to buy a jump system from the Goners means you'll easily be making a hefty profit in no time, assuming you remember the energy cells.

The second role is as a merchant already established with a freighter and a light fighter escort; however you'll have to run a profit quickly to arm and shield your craft, or the next time a pirate comes into range he might be shooting for your cargo. When you start off you'll have barely enough credits to even quarter fill your cargo bay with energy cells, so I'd recommend selling off your escort (mine flew into a solar power plant and blew up) and buying a trading system extension, as you're going to need it. This can make the difference between getting a high profit or flying around every station looking for someone to buy your wares.

Once you amass enough credits, you've got the choice between extending your cargo hold with space time compression or buying a bigger freighter. You start off with the smallest Argon class freighter, the Mercury, and depending on your willingness to explore you may have to cough up a lot of credits to get the next ship upgrade. However, if you are up for exploring (and this is when the speedy escort ship would come in handy) you can find ships with better cargo bays. For example, Boron ships are the fastest and most agile generally but at the cost of weapons or armour, whereas the Teladi ships are always equipped for trade and even their heavy fighters can still run a profit.

There's also a new system of trade. The old method still works and you can travel between stations, buying low and selling high, but there's also a barter system built into the trade stations. This can only be used at higher levels, but if you're high enough then you can haggle the price that the buyer or seller wants.

The final role is as a bankrupt bounty hunter; you can't trade, so you'll just have to warm up those laser cannons and fight your way to fame and fortune. However, in the bounty game there are always dogs with more bite than bark. The aim is to get the bigger, better equipped ships, but there are advantages and disadvantages to making the jump up in ship class, such as the fact that higher classes are slower and less responsive, so the battles you fight could well end up like the Spanish Armada; you might be heavily armed but if the opponent is faster you're going to end up toasted.

Of course, there is a point when the armada becomes a battle fleet and you're pretty well protected. The combat ships range from light fighters to corvettes and carriers to battleships; depending on your place in the game and your money situation, it's always best to have a small flotilla of lighter ships than one battleship. But if you've got the money then a battle fleet is your best bet; taking a joyride in a carrier with hundreds of fighters as your escort is sure to stir up trouble and possibly one of the only ways to deal with trouble fairly.

One of my personal favourites of this type of play is the pirate; sometimes if you fight down a freighter to a high enough hull damage then the pilot surrenders their ship and the cargo, or you might have to just blow them up and salvage what you can. This is where the weapons come in - the standard are the pulse emitters that vary in energy levels. If you want to get straight to business then there's the mass driver, which while costing to buy ammo will end a battle quickly, as they negate shields. There's also a new weapon that is an area effect, meaning that it's excellent against fighters and missiles, so when you're going up against the heavier class ships watch out for this. Finally there are missiles that range from the dumb-dumb (my name for them) rockets that don't pack much in the way of anything to the heavy calibre nuclear missiles, which are nice for making battleships or stations all toasty.

Although these set roles don't have to be stuck to, anything that can run a profit is a viable career in the game, be it smuggling or finding a way to buy a station. But once you start amassing your empire, you enter into a whole new game. Politics actually happen in this game; the Argon and Boron races have always been good allies but have always sat on the opposite side of the fence to the Split and Paranid, leaving the Teladi on the border ready to make a profit out of any fight.

Galactic wars can break out, meaning that the next time you drop by Argon Prime for a new ship it could well be in the hands of the Split, or even be transformed into a Teladi profit project. However, if you've amassed your own empire then you could actually claim part of the galaxy for yourself, either the outer systems owned by pirates or a system controlled by one of the major races. But once you've established yourself as a hearty businessman, the choice of conflicts may no longer be up to you, as undercutting another station's prices is now a risky manoeuvre.

Everything in this game is interactive, which is a scary prospect when you're dealing with governments! For example, I always work in Argon space, as they have the beast weapons and ships, thus are the best defence, so when I start undercutting prices of exports from Boron space (which I often do) you're going to start ruining their economy and your reputation will go down with them, to the point that they will openly declare war on you. Similarly, if you run a pirate empire then the same thing will happen if you target their ships and even if you can beat a hasty retreat, they may well come to your home sector - they're helpful like that.

The only thing that distances this from Elite is that you can't land on the planets and that does seem kind of appropriate, as now they've gone more for full realism, as the ships look like they'd really fly and the stations look like they'd really work, so fitting in with that, anything that could land on a planet had better damn sure look like it could land on a planet and take off again. Possibly X4 will have that, but in the meantime there's not much point in landing on a planet, as everything's done in space.

X3: Reunion is by far the most engrossing game released so far this millennium. The prospect of advocating Pep Pills had never crossed my mind, but any gamer thinking they may have enough spare time for such an epic adventure game is likely to end up giving away numerous hours of their sleep time. Still, whether you're an Argon explorer, Teladi trader or a Xenon warrior, X3 is certain to keep you playing until you run the universe - quite literally!

Reviewed by Nik Gregory for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).