Xia: Legends of a Drift System

After a very long delay, I finally got Xia: Legends of a Drift System to the table. It is exactly the sort of space sandbox it promises to be: exploration, trading, fights, and the feeling that there is no single “correct” way to live out your adventure. Even the notion of a sandbox roll-and-move game in the 21st century sounds a little alarming, but here it mostly works.

At its core, the game lets me choose what sort of space rogue I want to be. I can roam around exploring, deal in trade, or go looking for action. Movement has a dice element, so luck is not merely decorative; the session can genuinely reward me, or disappoint me, with things that simply happened to come up.

Interaction becomes much livelier once players decide to load up on missiles. At that point, space stops being merely a personal map of routes and gains some proper dirty fighting, with the cannon fire giving the session the tension I want from a space-action game. On the other hand, there is downtime, and when the map spreads out too far or there are more players, the waiting starts to show.

On my first outing, the overall experience was very pleasant. I can literally do whatever I feel like doing, and the game supports that well enough that I would happily play it again. I am also officially looking for the expansion. I just will not pretend it is for everyone: anyone who cannot stand randomness, or the possibility that the session serves them an epic disappointment, may come away far less enthusiastic.

Updated session

For the second session, we played with everything, including Embers, and my opinion did not change: few games deliver this sandbox feeling so beautifully. With three players, though, space felt larger than it needed to be for us to get enough cannon fire going as well. I suspect the experience would really take off with four or five, but I am not at all sure I can tolerate the matching amount of downtime. I would like an impulse system that kept everyone in the action more often. Even so, when I want a space-action sim on the table, Xia remains a rare and highly convincing option—just as Freelancer was, is, and will be for space action sims.