Impressions from a Freelancer fan's perspective. X4: Foundations has been substantially updated since its 2018 release and this covers the 2023 state of the game.
Freelancer's dynamic economy was a cut feature. The original design had prices responding to player behavior at a sector level — you flooded a route with ore, the prices dropped; you cleared pirates from a trade corridor, the goods flowed and availability changed. What shipped was static trade routes with fixed margins. Functional, but not what Roberts had in mind.
X4: Foundations shipped the dynamic economy.
This is not an exaggeration. X4 has a fully simulated sector economy where every good has a supply chain, every factory has production inputs and outputs, and player actions genuinely affect sector-level economics. Buy enough ore from one station and that station's stock depletes. Build your own factory and start competing with NPC suppliers. Commission trade ships to run routes on your behalf and watch your personal empire affect the economy around it. The simulation runs all the time, whether you're watching it or not.
For a specific type of Freelancer fan — the one who was always more interested in the trading and the universe than in the combat — X4 is worth serious time.
Here's the honest part: the first ten hours are rough. X4 assumes you will learn its systems through play, and its systems are numerous and interlinked. The UI is functional but not intuitive. The early game gives you a small ship, very few credits, and a sector that mostly ignores you while you figure out how things work. There's no handholding. Compared to Freelancer's gentle on-ramp — undock from Manhattan, follow the trade lane, the game teaches through doing — X4's learning curve is steep even by simulation standards.
Combat is serviceable. You can fly your own ship in combat, and it's fine. It is clearly not the focus. If dogfighting is what you want, this isn't it.
The narrative is emergent rather than handcrafted. There's a main story, and it's reasonable, but X4 doesn't have Freelancer's campaign structure — a voiced story you play through with scripted missions. What it has is faction politics, territorial conflicts, and systems that generate their own stories through the simulation. Different design philosophy, not a failure.
Verdict for Freelancer fans: if you ever looked at Freelancer's trade routes and thought "I want this but deeper, more complex, with actual economic consequences" — X4 is the game. If what you loved was the mouse-flight combat and the narrative campaign, it will be a harder sell.