Its basically a space shooter with an open world there is a main goal that unlocks basic content and gives a vague idea of what you should be doing. After a while you can enter an open galaxy and pretty well do as your hearts content. salvage, piracy, trade, mercenary and I am sure there are more options. The space structures are absolutely huge and you can fly down into them and there are bonuses for exploring the outside of the bases making it quite rewarding. The galaxy looks nice there are plenty of nebulas and the stars are visually attractive. The combat is quite good for a first person space shooter you have a selection of weapons although not as many or as colourful as the original version of the X series. You are restricted to one craft, but its explorable and full of your crew which i felt was a nice quality and kind of distracts from the idea of trying to pilot every ship in the game. Walking around the space stations is a little bit of 3rd person immersion and optional. You can do everything from your ship or choose not too. I have the game on steam, and i got it on its release as a pre-order. I enjoyed my first few hours really doing nothing more than exploring. The learning curve is quite steep and the game requires some commitment, it can be frustrating not knowing how to do certain things. The game tries to be a lot and in my opinion it is a great 1st person space exploration and combat game it deserves more credit than it has had and anyone interested in a first person space simulator should give it a spin. Deep down when not compared against its predecessors it is a decent game and would have been much better on release with a different name. Having said all that to the wrong kind of person this game might seem dull as if there is constantly something better you could be doing with your time. I dunno I guess its not everyones cup of tea and Im sure this is due to its complexity and the frustration of not knowing how to do what you want to do.
