When comparing Freelancer vs Elite: Dangerous, the Slant community recommends Freelancer for most people. In the question“What are the best Space Sims on Steam?” Freelancer is ranked 2nd while Elite: Dangerous is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Freelancer is:
This game has very low hardware requirements. It can be played even on an old netbook with windows XP, 1 Ghz Intel Atom CPU, and 1GB RAM. Game runs with 40-60 fps without single crash.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Low system requirements
This game has very low hardware requirements. It can be played even on an old netbook with windows XP, 1 Ghz Intel Atom CPU, and 1GB RAM. Game runs with 40-60 fps without single crash.
Pro Great story
This game has a really good story with lots of twists. Very well balanced side missions, your pay is based on the type of task being completed while multiplied by distance to target place and few other factors.
Pro Easy to pickup and learn
The controls have been simplified to the point where it isn't intimidating for new players. You can't control which systems receive more/less power in tight situations, and other systems have been dummed down as well: repairing your ship can be done with the click of a button instead of needing to wait, there is no radar to track, and there's less information available making it easier to focus on a single task.
Pro Fun to replay in different ways
Pro Has fanbase made MODs and modified versions of the game
Has fanbase made MODs and modified versions of the game itself to get past the outdated graphics. There's story expansions, full remakes, and a lot more to experience!
Pro Built with future expansion in mind
When Elite Dangerous come out, development won't stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various game play elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. For example, although planetary landings aren't going to be available until a later update, the engine has been designed to be able to support going from lightyears away to meters away.
Pro Exploration at every level of detail
Full exploration of the galaxy is planned, allowing you to be able to jump from star system to star system, and fly around within a solar system from planet to planet, eventually going all the way down to a planet's surface at a 1:1 scale in a later update. Planetary landings will require a lot of details to be developed and designed, but you can still see the level of detail shift in action when flying into a planet's rings, where getting close enough show the individual asteroids within, which you can then interact with through mining, or by having a battle among them.
Pro Very realistic representation of space & star systems
Elite Dangerous uses publicly available real world star maps that we have of the Milky Way consisting of 150,000 star systems. Although in the current beta, full access to the entire galaxy is limited, in the final game, you will be able to visit any of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy on a 1:1 scale. Stars that we do know of are properly mapped in place and are of the correct type given the information we have about them. Stars we haven't collected data on are procedurally generated which allows you to explore any of the 400 billion of them.
Star systems are intelligently simulated using the "Star Forge", a generator that simulates the creation of a star system forming from its nebular cloud to determine what celestial bodies appear and what orbits they have. This feature leads to many varied and unique star systems possibly with planets that can co-orbit around each other, or with binary star systems, and infinitely more possibilities.
Pro Great Oculus Rift integration
Elite Dangerous has very good integration with the Oculus Rift thanks to its cockpit view only gameplay philosophy. All ship UIs are part of displays that appear on each side of you that appear when you turn your head, so accessing the navigation or ship menus happens seamlessly just by looking in their direction. The game also uses the direction you are looking in for targeting, so your lock on target is whatever you're head is pointing at.
By sitting in the cockpit of a ship, you are given a stationary frame of reference that helps prevent motion sickness associated with movement in game when you aren't actually moving.
Cons
Con Dated graphics
Freelancer was released in 2003, and as expected from a game that's nearly 15 years old the graphics look it.
Con Can be rather unbalanced
Some parts of the game are very hard even with the best available in-game hardware and you get killed almost instantly. In these parts it is better to launch Cruise engine.
Con Really complicated to learn
Looking up faqs and trade routes from first hand users will be the norm for figuring out many aspects of Elite: Dangerous. On top of this notes will have to be taken, which is made more difficult by the fact the game does not support in game not taking. So a pad and paper is recommended to remember all of the minutia of the game.
Con Boring
It is more a simulation than a combat game.
Con Launcher issues
I bought the game on multiple stores and were never happy how the laucher and the account linking worked.
Con "Mile Wide and an Inch Deep"
The game has a serious problem with depth and requires the user to repeat the same few fun actions over and over again. The world is massive and beautiful but feels empty. The game gets stale quickly despite being visually stunning.