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Comment by bigmattystyles | Hacker News Reader

WC in the general series were all great, but the first game (edit, first space sim I played I mean) where you had to grind that I ever played was Privateer and that was the greatest for a 12 year old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer

Later on, I really enjoyed Freelancer but by then I was older and it didn't have the same effect on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)

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I remember playing the hell out of 3 when it came out, but for some reason we were disappointed with 4. If I remember right, when this came out, we had built a huge IPX network in a three story office building, and after business hours would smoke weed and play Descent, Dark Forces, and Hexen all night. Good times for sure!

Privateer was just utterly amazing to 12-year-old me. After years of playing Wing Commander games on rails, it felt incredible to finally be free to see the open universe and the perspective of the ordinary citizens. My only disappointment with it was that it only had some of the military and Kilrathi ships from the main games.

Such a good experience, hard to imagine replicating it these days - both because modern games are different, and because you only get to be 12 once.

Freelancer was pretty cool but the (pretty short IIRC) single player story felt like a prelude and when it finished there was nothing meaningful left to do.

I always suspected that the game was developed with a multiplayer first approach and the single player mode seemed like an addon. Which was a pity I would have liked to explored this universe more.

Freelancer shared a lot of the same hype cycle as Star Citizen has had (and used a lot of very similar rhetoric from Chris Roberts). I know I didn't buy into Star Citizen's hype because I certainly remembered Freelancer. Ambitions versus practical reality versus available budgets.

If you enjoyed the original Privateer game, I strongly recommend that you try Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. https://rebel-galaxy.com/

It's a nice homage to the original with improved graphics, more variety of ships and engaging space combat.

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