Regarding X-plane, my personal impression was that the flight modelling itself was indeed more "fluid" and less "puppet on strings"*) than MSFS, but that with all the blade element theory, mass and inertia of airplanes have been forgotten or almost so, even allowing for the fact that one more easily goes to full deflections with a joystick than with a real plane (even more joy)stick.
Another recommendation I can wholeheartedly make is Rise of Flight (WWI sim), if one does not insist on modern turbine and jet aircraft with all the electronic gizmos but likes old bi- and triplanes, too. Of course, it's useless for any IFR procedure and/or R/T practice and mostly useless for VFR nav training (luckily there are no shell-holed landscapes in Europe today), but even without shooting at anything (or being shot at, more likely at the outset, but one can adjust the settings and go on a peaceful and undisturbed trip), I find it the most immersive "basic flying" sim, and the flight model is IMHO excellent and very realistic. It's also the only PC sim I know that simulates ground friction well; landing a taildragger with lots of crab angle in MSFS or X-Plane is no big deal, in RoF it means a flip-over. And flying the twin-engined Gotha bomber gives an excellent illustration of adverse yaw and Vmca
. You might want to give it a try, it's completely free with no time limit. The only limitation of the freebie version is that it comes with only two airplanes (Albatros DV and Spad XIII).
*) AFAIK a description by a developer of (excellent) add-ons for MSFS, cited by Pace