1: The single most important point: You are expected to lose, and die. A lot. Money and upgrades are lost when you die, but perks are not, so every time you complete a section or earn money, spend it all, mostly on perks, and then when you next die, you'll begin with a higher spec ship, and survive further. Death is not the end of the adventure in this game - there's a cloning mechanic which even fits this into the storyline. 2: Also, every level is different. Always. The individual levels are randomly generated from a large palette of event and object types, but the overall storyline and progress of perks and upgrades are not. These factors, especially the first, are the causes of some of the negative reviews here: Some people don't realise that you're expected to fail at first, and to do so /is part of the progress/. Some people feel that inclusion of randomness means there's no meaningful progress. Both are mistaken. The game is fast, frenetic, and exciting. Graphics are rich, colourful, and beautiful, and sound is thumping and adrenaline-inducing. An injection of humour comes from the snarky interplay between the ship AI and the pilot, which is often triggered by external events, and therefore often comes up with surprises, though these will dwindle over time. The storyline isn't as rich as, say, the Wing Commander games, but there's more than enough to hold it together as long as you enjoy the central gameplay. I use WC as a comparison, because the space combat in this game bears a strong resemblance to that in those games. It's arcadey, not a physics simulation like Elite:Dangerous. I don't have the reaction speed of a teenager (I'm nearly 50) but I was still able to play and make progress. I suspect I'll have to earn more upgrades than a caffeinated teenager would, but I can still enjoy the game despite my incipient decrepitude. On a fairly high-end rig (i9 9900K, RTX 2080 Ti) it ran in 4K with temporal AA at >60fps. I have yet to try VR. Great game!
