Now, I might be biased towards this game since I'm an absolute sucker for all space-based Sci-Fi games, but this game has already provided more entertainment in just over 3 hours of playtime than most AAA games do in 15. As a long-time backer of Star Citizen, playing this has been extremely refreshing. The best way to describe this in a sentence is FTL crossed with Descent. It's sort of a 6DoF space shooter with a flight model that isn't exactly realistic, but rather the best middle-ground between fun and realistic. While I generall don't mind poor visuals in games, I do appreciate good visuals, and damn, this thing looks breathtaking even on the lowest of settings. Granted, I've only played the GoG version, so some of the gripes Kickstarter backers had have been fixed since. Whenever you die (and you will. A lot) the credits you've earned can be used to upgrade your ship, however, upon restarting, any unspent credits are lost. Upgrades are permanent, so if you upgrade thing x in run 1, die, upgrade thing y in run 2, both things x and y will be upgraded in run 3. Systems are pretty varied, though some of the basic building blocks that are repeated can be noticed after some time. As you progress through sectors, new set-pieces are introduced, as are new enemies and hazards. Combat is pretty punishing, but fun and smooth. Exploration is also a pretty important part, as it is easy to miss resources if you speed through a system, however that will leave you without the gear needed to survive later on. My only gripes are that currently the sector 1 setpieces aren't too varied, and after so much death going through it does get a bit boring, and there could be more ship customization. Overall, this was money very, very well spent. Save yourself $30 by buying this instead of a crap 60 buck over-hyped unoptimized AAA release, and have more fun too!
