I was playing some Everspace 2 and while it sure is pretty and feels pretty good there was something lacking that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I’m only 20 hours or so into it but I just felt like it wasn’t quite living up to my memories of Freelancer.
Now I last played Freelancer over 15 years ago so I was sure that I was just seeing this through a heavy mist of nostalgia, so I reinstalled the old game, installed the HD mod and a few other user made tweaks and loaded it up. The opening scenes were definitely nostalgic but once I started to fly missions properly again it became crystal clear, nope Freelancer still kicks the shit out of every other space game I’ve ever played since.
Elite Dangerous, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Everspace 2, Spacebourne 2, EVE Online, (edit adding more I’ve played here: Chorus, Star Citizen, No Mans Sky) they all have strengths but nothing feels as good as the grand daddy Freelancer.
Can I offer you some Star Sector (https://fractalsoftworks.com) in these trying times? It's a top-down view with more real-time strategy and RPG to it than first person space sim, but the exploration component is there in spades and scavenging ships to add them to your fleet is pretty fun and satisfying. I've been playing it obsessively the last few weeks.
I didn't know about the secret exploration stuff in Freelancer, I never found wormholes or what have you. Might have to load it back up! Or the FOSS version "LibreLancer", thanks to all who commented so far for mentioning that 😊
Eh, Starsector is a very different kind of game. And I don't just mean the fact that it's top-down 2D, it's much more of a management game. Freelancer is very aptly named - you're just one guy in one space fighter doing your thing. It's a space shooter first and foremost. If you try to play Starsector that way, you're going to hit an impenetrable wall very quickly. You need a fleet, and the larger your fleet, the less significant your own personal contributions in battle. But the game also limits your ability to command your fleet pretty severely, so the further you progress, the more your agency shrinks to just moving around on the map between combat encounters that mostly play themselves. I can't recommend Starsector to Freelancer fans or, well, anyone at all, to be honest.
The player ship is by far the most effective ship in combat - trying to go full hands of doesn't work either. It's basically Mount and Blade in space. The end result is you get to take part in large space battles pretty consistently where you're the star.
Kinda but not really. M&B gives you a lot more freedom in how you play, from soloing entire armies as a horse archer to standing back and commanding your army without lifting a finger yourself. Starsector has mechanics specifically designed to make both of those playstyles non-viable (combat readiness, which is effectively a time limit on the battle that prevents you from endlessly kiting, and command points, which limit the number of commands you can give to your ships). The dev has a very specific playstyle in mind, which he enforces rather rigidly. You have to fight and you have to command, but there are hard limits that prevent you from being too effective at either of those roles. If you happen to like the exact balance the dev enforces between the roles, the game's great. If you'd prefer to veer a bit more to one side or the other, too bad, the game's just an endless series of frustrations specifically designed to prevent you from doing that. And you'd better hope you love piloting the slowest and most boring ships in the game (i.e. those with the longest duration of combat readiness), because you need those in your fleet, and leaving them in the hands of the AI means it'll just suicide them straight into the enemy fleet (just like it does smaller ships, but those are easier to replace).
Luckily, anyone who might be interested can try it for free and buy it if they like it.
https://youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo
"Freelancer 2" C_C