After getting past the initial learning curve I'm quite enjoying the game. I'm not convinced yet about the long term playability as so far most of the fun has been in learing how to do stuff and experiencing things for the first time. How much fun it will be after the first 100 times remains to be seen.
So many of the sound effects are
truly superb, and combined with one-screen cues give the greatest sense of being in a
machine in space that I've ever experienced (crank up the volume for full effect). Every time I jump into a system I feel like I just took part in a scene from one of the latest Star Trek movies. They've also done a good job of making flying challenging and skillful without being frustrating (after the initial learning curve and once you've set your controls up properly and not as per the default). I've had some real 'moments' in combat, punching the air after a hard fought victory, or just admiring the grace of an Imperial Clipper (big mofo ship) manouvering against me elegantly in battle.
Having to balance your power distribution in combat (shields, engines, weapons, with insufficient power to have them all at full power) along with varying abilities to turn, boost etc gives combat some real nuances, including switching off assists to perform some truly advanced manouvers. A bit like movement in TFC, it takes a long time to become a master, which is one of the draws of the game for me.
They've massively improved combat from Frontier Elite where it was basically two ships travelling at ludicrous speed sweeping past each other in an almost untargettable fashion. To get around this there are now 3 types of travel. The first is system to system travel (Hyperspeed). This is near instantaneous and can't be interrupted once you jump. Then there's normal cruising/flight. This is where all combat takes place and is much more in the Freespace / Tie Fighter / Freelancer territory. Then there's Supercruise, which is the middle tier of flying used for moving astronomical distrances between stars and space stations within systems. No combat takes place here but you can be 'interdicted' which drops you out of supercruise and straight into a fight at normal speed (though there is a microgame which means you can attempt to resist the interdiction). This single change removes the attrocious Frontier battle problem.
I also appreciate that they've made landing challenging, none of this 'press 1 key to land' nonsense. For years I've yearned for a game like Elite that properly challenges you to land, and punishes you for fucking it up. They've done this again here though the punishment is far less severe than the original game. Landing is complicated and hard to start with, but after a number of attempts you'll realise it's not that bad at all, but you still have to pay attention. As far as I've seen so far there is no 'auto-landing' module you can buy.
Everything is hard won, you earn everything you get and it gives a much greater feeling of achievement and reward than most other games that just throw money and epic gear at you. Survival is a constant struggle, not a given assurance. Indeed if you leave a space station with less money than it costs to replace your ship (insurance cost), if you die you've lost everything, absolutely everything.
Play styles are optional, primarily centered around trade, combat and exploration, with different ships and ship configurations favouring each. In my limited experience it feels like you need to go the combat route initially to get some capital so you can do the other game play types, but you need to know how to fight and when to run so it's a recommended way to start that way anyway.
This is how I got started in the game, it's a good method but you may prefer the fun of working this stuff out for yourself. I was helped massively by this thread.
To get started I went to a system nav point (the jump-in point for all ships) in a non-anarchy system, scanned arriving ships to check the wanted status, and killed all with a wanted status. You can earn very decent early money doing this. As soon as I could afford it I got gimballed weapons.Elite status now consists of 3 types - combat, trade and exploration. I've played for about 15 hours now purely in bounty hunting, and have only ranked up once. I can't imagine the time investment required for just one Elite status let alone 3.
I love the 'make your own destiny' approach of this sandbox game, but it's clearly not going to be to everyone's taste. There's no story and no particular aim, it's purely sandbox. It requires a fair time investment up front to get to grips with the mechanics.
While there is multiplayer it's very limited in scope. I'm still getting my head aroudn what is and isn't possible. With 400 billion stars, the players are spread pretty thin.
Really what you've got is a true remake of Elite, unfortunately therefore it's devoid of modern gaming breadth and depth. Trade with NPCs, explore a entire galaxy, or fight with NPCs (as a pirate or bounty hunter), there is nothing more to this game, so if that's not to your liking then you have been warned. Also, Frontier Elite had planetary landing, there's none of that here which is a shame.
17.5k reward, though I would have happily paid them that 