This feels like EvE, but worse. It's another case of a game that wants to be everything and fails at everything too. Flying a spaceship feels like you're manoeuvring around a plastic toy, the sounds are completely lacking any coherence and atmosphere. The first bit of combat outside the tutorial was against some kind of four-sided dice that just shoot lasers that always hit, make an annoying sound, and it's simply about who can soak more damage. There's apparently also a "walking around" experience that might have been a good experience in 2005, and you get to meet plastic-looking aliens with some of the absolute worst garbage "AI"-generated voices I've heard in a decade. New players do not gek any kind of "flow", you're thrown into a mess of a game; I was trying to follow the meagre choice of missions and ended up owning a huge base that can do nothing, with instructions to build stuff. How do I build stuff? Where do I get the parts for it? Map filters aren't helping. The base building process is apparently so convoluted that you need to refer to a shoddily written wiki thing on Egosoft's website. Hardware management beyond keyboard, mouse, and maybe a gamepad is technically there but also a bit of a broken and confusing mess. All of that is wrapped in a broken UI that's trying---and true to form failing---to wrap around a mess of features, the map has some weirdly broken overlays that manage to always be in the way. I should just accept that "the space genre" is dead. All that's coming out is drowning in incompetent project management, a lack of a coherent vision, and absolutely no grasp on what a studio could reasonably accomplish. Aim for the sky, fall on your face. I just want to fly a damn spaceship and shoot stuff! Is that SO HARD? Get the basics right, and THEN MAYBE tack on an extra mechanic or two.
Sadly CDPR haven't seen fit to fix the buggy input handling on PC that's been in place ever since Gwent released. If you have any HID input devices attached to your system, this game will stone cold refuse to let you use keyboard and mouse, you will not get any meaningful input hints either with only XBox pad button prompts. The only way to play the game would be to remove everything that looks remotely like a pad or joystick, and sorry, I'm not doing that. Maybe I'll up the score when CDPR fixes that stupid issue, but as it stands it's a "do not buy" from me. If they cannot even be bothered to implement industry-standard input switching (if I so much as touch the mouse, LET ME USE IT!), who knows how bad the rest is.
For a long run, this is a deeply atmospheric game practically oozing with storytelling and good pacing. But like oh so many games of its genre, it will eventually pitch the player against an obscure adversary that does not respod to anything the player has been learning up to that point, suddenly ramming the so far atmospheric experience head-on into a rock face of frustration.
A word of warning: at some (rare) points, this game shows its age in "good" old "I was supposed to click *what*?!?" moments; I am not ashamed to say that I consulted a walkthrough at some of those points, but the vast majority of the game does not require any handholding. The few "boss battles" also control rather badly by today's standards. Don't be put off by that. Apart from that, this game hardly needs to hide from better-known products of its genre like the first Gabriel Knight. It is an example of excellent, intelligent storytelling and dense atmosphere, packaged in artwork telling the story of someone on a mad journey of someone desperately trying to claw their way back into normality. Just play it.
While the scope and ambition of the game are admirable, the technology behind it is not. You are dealing with a game that always had, and always will have, massive issues with almost all technical aspects (graphics, networking, even "simple" things like saving a game), usability or discoverability. The high price adds insult to injury. Right now, the only thing keeping the clunker floating is the DayZ (read: "Daisy") mod, which is going standalone. If you want to play it, I would seriously suggest waiting for the inevitable 75% off promo on The Other Distribution Platform, DRM be damned.
Like many others I had been waiting for that game with a lot of anticipation, since I'd been looking for something to continue the tradition of Privateer, with proper stick controls, an alive universe, and a lovingly written guiding storyline. In the end, DSO managed to disappoint in every aspect. Trade is actively discouraged by having the player ship transport cargo as a dragged "box" with massively reduced ship speed and maneuverability, and pretty much no way to pass encounters. Combat is repetitive and gets old very quickly. The story is… just meh, plagued by weak writing and even weaker characters (a plot character is kidnapped at one point and missing for a while, which turned out to be relaxing since that character would otherwise molest the player with a stream of meaningless commentary). Add to that one of the worst HUDs in the history of games and badly thought out controls where joystick and mouse input are conflicting, the keyboard layout is just plain weird, and it takes a few seconds to check even shield/armor status because it's a very tiny element at the edge of the screen, and you have a game that's not even worth a $4.99 special offer price. This is the game that killed the last hope of a decent space sim. Thank you, Ascaron, you won't be missed.
