X: Beyond the Frontier
Skip · Strategy · 2010
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $4.99.
- Length
- 30.9h
- Value
- $0.16/hr
- Reviews
- 75% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 31 MB of memory, 4 MB DirectX-compliant video card, 358 MB of storage. Windows only.
The Human Race had advanced to the point where we could travel among the stars, we developed giant automated machines to help us colonise other worlds, but there was a fault in their programming and they turned and attacked. Forcing us to lay a trap to protect Earth and exiling the Human race to stay on Earth once again.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $0.49. That was December 2022. It has been discounted 84 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 66 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 2 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 26 percent on value. Among the games that feel like it, X3: Terran Conflict ($15.99, scores 72) beats it on value, while it beats Cosmonautica ($9.99, scores 2).
67 from critics against 75 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
30.9 hours to finish it, 85 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.7 times the campaign.
Players
5 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Recommended for fans of the X-Universe or anyone who enjoys chill trading sims. X: Beyond the Frontier is definitely showing its age. The graphics are old, the UI is clunky, and you're stuck with a single ship for the entire game. But once you settle in, it becomes a surprisingly relaxing trading and factory building experience. You start with basically nothing and slowly trade your way up, upgrading your one ship...
Decided to just test this game to see where the X universe started as im new to the franchise and x4, what i thought was just gonna be a half hour for trying out of what i presumed was the basic formula of X but then i honestly got hooked. after 103 hours completed the main mission, and thinking about doing X tension next... it is a bit grindy but honestly not bad for a game from 1999
This was an important game. Do not get my "not recommended" wrong. I enjoyed it back in the day and even when I replayed it. The truth is, though: Every other game in the X Series: X-Tension X² x³ X³-TC X⁴ is better, And even if u want a slow and restricting game with unintuitive input, just go for x-rebirth.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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X: Beyond the Frontier scores 43/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/2840/x-beyond-the-frontierThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 3, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.