I was playing some Everspace 2 and while it sure is pretty and feels pretty good there was something lacking that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I’m only 20 hours or so into it but I just felt like it wasn’t quite living up to my memories of Freelancer.
Now I last played Freelancer over 15 years ago so I was sure that I was just seeing this through a heavy mist of nostalgia, so I reinstalled the old game, installed the HD mod and a few other user made tweaks and loaded it up. The opening scenes were definitely nostalgic but once I started to fly missions properly again it became crystal clear, nope Freelancer still kicks the shit out of every other space game I’ve ever played since.
Elite Dangerous, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Everspace 2, Spacebourne 2, EVE Online, (edit adding more I’ve played here: Chorus, Star Citizen, No Mans Sky) they all have strengths but nothing feels as good as the grand daddy Freelancer.
Can I offer you some Star Sector (https://fractalsoftworks.com) in these trying times? It's a top-down view with more real-time strategy and RPG to it than first person space sim, but the exploration component is there in spades and scavenging ships to add them to your fleet is pretty fun and satisfying. I've been playing it obsessively the last few weeks.
I didn't know about the secret exploration stuff in Freelancer, I never found wormholes or what have you. Might have to load it back up! Or the FOSS version "LibreLancer", thanks to all who commented so far for mentioning that 😊
"Freelancer 2" C_C