The story is unique and the game play reminds me a little bit of Breath of the Wild but with more life to the world. The NPC characters wander around, fight each other and gather resources. The world feels alive and moving and you are just a small time player. Combat is light but interesting with a few combos and NPCs prefer either either melee or ranged. All the NPCs can be opponents depending on your reputation. Exploration is fun with a variety of resources you can gather. There is a very light survival aspect as you need to occasionally eat to restore your health/energy. There's also light crafting with blueprints, called ideas, scattered around the world. The island is not Witcher sized but is not small either and has nicely varied biomes. You get around by foot or later, by fast travel. Flaws: So far are minor with the 3rd person camera being janky and stuttering from time to time along with the frame drops in certain areas. So far as I can see, at least one of the factions will always consider you an enemy so it's impossible to eliminate NPC conflict and have everyone get along. Might not be a flaw to some players. Wildlife is sparse with only four creatures I've seen. One hostile, three passive. Would have been nice to have more animals.
TLDR: If you liked Subnautica, survival crafting and goofball humor- Buy This Game! You just wanted to give your Uncle a nice send off.... But then the ship exploded! Now you're floating about, not knowing which way is up and wondering if you really should eat the synthetic meat... Turns out there was a lot more going on in the dark corridors of the funerary ship before the accident and now it's spread out in the openness of space, waiting for you to find the dirty secrets as you hopefully float towards rescue. What can you expect? Childish humor ranging from fart jokes too more adult funnies. A linear story with branching side jobs (hey it kinda has to be linear, your crashed at one end and have to make your way to the other end). Lots of exploration and crafting. You can now build your own space station. Some light combat and blowing stuff up! LOTS of references to pop culture in funny ways (SpaceX, Aliens, Game of Thrones and more. Is 2001 in there? Maybe.) Some 'needs improvement' stuff: Inventory management blues. At least things auto-sort for you. Still lots of different items to manage but that can be expected from crafting/survival games (has any game gotten it perfect yet?). Need a better way to manage 'Tasks', they all seem to pile up as you explore and can make the screen busy. Some game mechanics are a bit hard to find and not explained very well. I.e. Why is my space station getting holes in it? How can I build a vehicle? Can the toilet really give me random items? Why the heck would I need a soil analyzer in space? There is some explanation in the game menus but who usually goes looking in there first? Some game goals are pointed out a little too quickly by your friendly suit AI. Overall this game has been an awesome experience despite a little space turbulence!
Beautiful game that throws back to Riven. There are other NPCs in the game, but their actions are more felt than seen. Some of the puzzles have a wired approach to logic that's sometimes difficult to figure out. The game world is huge with varied locations that seem very weird but that fit in the story. The story is pretty interesting and there are good and bad endings, depending on what you choose.
