I'm not really familiar with this genre but remember fondly my time with this game. Is there anything that's like Freelancer? Something that's not super hardcore and friendly towards casual players like me?

I havn't played a lot of this game but, Rebel Galaxy is pretty good. You drive a big freighter or a battle ship later in the game instead of a fighter like in Freelance.

I only played Rebel Galaxy for a few hours, the story is not as intense as Freelancers story, theres no alien conspiracy as far as I can tell. It's still a good game though

Recent space sims have gotten away from what made Freelancer great. The more popular ones like Elite:Dangerous and Star Citizen cater more towards people who want to get as "real" as possible. The closest game I can think of is Rebel Galaxy. I didn't really care too much for it because of how hokey it felt and the overly country/western inspiration was a horrible attempt to make it feel like that Firefly show. It's pretty close to Freelancer, maybe with less attention to detail though? To be honest, it might be worth it to load up Freelancer with some mods to make it seem "fresh" again.

I'll throw another more whole hearted vote for Rebel Galaxy in. There are definitely big differences, and if the fast twitch combat is what you liked about freelancer Rebel Galaxy won't do it for you. If you don't mind replacing that with slightly more deliberate broadside naval ship combat (Depending on the ship, some are turret only) in 2D planes RG is likely what you're looking for. You can be a vigilante, a pirate, a shipping magnate, miner, or pretty much anything. I've gotten very very little into the story because it seemed pretty generic but I've got maybe 20 hours or more in just making money and shooting things. It definitely does lean on the acid country / swamp rock music for setting the mood but if you're into that it's a good time.

Thanks for suggestions.

I don't have much to contribute but I thought I'd mention

• Starpoint Gemini 2 (bought but haven't installed it yet)
• Rodina has a demo I might try some day :)

You might want to look into Everspace. It's not story based at all, from what I understand, but the gameplay reminds me of Freelancer.

I played some Strike Suit Zero. It controls very similar. I've not played too much of it to say too much about it. I think they added some mechs to it now?

I'd say Starpoint Gemini 2 is very similar, it even has the same sort of travel system of the speed boost

@an_ancient: hold on a second. There's a freelancer like game with mechs?

@slasktotten: yeah it wasn't initially, but I think i remember Austin mentioning it had mechs now which makes sense because of the "Suit" part in Strike Suite Zero

I just checked myself to make sure I wasn't talking about of my ass