Reasons to love and hate Freelancer in 2022

[Groshyr]

I am not enjoyer of fancy, long and purposely meaningless texts so I'll be brief: I decided to make this small research to understand why people still being attracted by Freelancer 19 years after its release.

For me it's simple:

1) Freelancer modding is easy, although primitiveness makes me hate it often. Editing multiple files to do simple things (like editing extra .ini just to edit nebulae appearance in the system) is something I really wish never happened to Freelancer.

2) Gameplay. It's very simple yet enjoyable enough. I don't like that Disco's gameplay went toward tryharding and getting sweat during fights, but I understand it was unavoidable with some players playing the game for years or even decades now. I still value enjoyable fights with people of average skill, where I don't have to roll my head over the keyboard to WASD, EK, and other fancy stuff just to survive for longer than 10 seconds.

3) Aesthetics. Game is still beautiful and despite being DirectX 8 game can offer eyecandy stuff, although it requires skill, materials, taste and time. Yet, it's possible.