Microsoft didn't change the gameplay or anything like that. If you have read interviews before the release and then listened to the interviews on bonus DVD you'd probably knew that Freelancer was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the classic Elite and Privateer. Quite frankly I can't even find out where you got that impression it was going to be like Starlancer when in fact it was spoken and written all around effectively the opposite. Pretty much Freelancer was supposed to be a sandbox type of game, inheriting open world structure and free roaming gameplay. It is actually Freelancer became, albeit with a quite limited set of features compared to those they initially wanted to put in there, and mainly that is the difference from what it was intended to be and what actually got released, and hence the reason why it got mixed reviews - because people were promised lot more than came out.
