The game was patched to version 1.1 while I was in the process of reviewing it, and the patch fixed one major hole in the dynamic trading system. In the earlier version it was practically pointless to trade any commodity other than energy cells (a resource needed by almost all factories) in the early part of the game, leading to a rather dry trading experience. While energy cells remain important post-patch, there is a wider variety of options now for the low-end trader.

System Requirements and Performance:

The minimum system requirements for X2 are a not-too-ambitious Pentium III 800 with 128MB memory and a 32MB 3D card. Of course, as with all minimum required specs, this is a bit of a joke, unless you plan to play the game purely from the menus as a strategic trading sim (which is actually almost feasible). As we mentioned above, X2 has some pretty graphics; the game's graphics have a cost, however.

On an AMD XP 3000+ system with an Nvidia FX5600 card and 512MB DDR, the game was unacceptably slow in crowded sectors using the default 1024x768 resolution with all the bells and whistles enabled.

Turning off the real-time shadows (which actually increases the image quality in my opinion) and disabling anti-aliasing made it playable, but I missed the AA as it is very well implemented within this game and greatly increases the eye candy factor. It's worth noting that frame rates within the game vary wildly depending on how populous your current sector of space is. Dropping to 800x600 allowed tolerable play in all conditions except major space battles with the bump mapping and AA enabled.

The real-time shadows have the most effect on frame rate, and this is a good thing, because while they may occasionally add a nice atmosphere, they just as often ruin one with poor shading effects. Turning off this graphic option is a painless performance boost.

To get the most out of X2 at a decent resolution, I'd recommend around a 2GHz Intel or AMD processor and an ATI or Nvidia DirectX 9 capable video card to enjoy the eye-candy. It really depends on what you want out of the game though.

If you are not likely to place much emphasis on combat, you can easily get away with a lesser system, and the eye-candy is not crucial to the game experience.