This is one of those games which you say "I'll give it a go, play for 20 minutes maybe half an hour, then get back to my chores" then wake up to find yourself after 3 hours with still chores to do. If you have to cook, clean or such do not start playing this game. I don't know what exactly keeps me going; probably one or all of these: the amazing space ambiance, cool music, easy to understand, easy to use controls, (almost casual dare I say), a wide and intimidating galaxy map waiting to be explored. Though there is not much mission variety, commodity trading, pirating, smuggling while managing reputation with oodles and oodles of factions (oodles and oodles means "a lot"). It might get too repetitive too soon though and if you don't enjoy space travel for the sake of space travel you won't get much replay value out of this. Trade system and trading is not central to the game and not very detailed but that's a plus for me. It's a simple trade system, you follow the news where ever you dock, and just buy low, sell high. Smuggling with small ships is always good. It appears to have decent number of gun variety, power-ups several gizmos, gadgets etc. Factions each have their unique sets of ships of course but there is no balance between factions. So if you want the most powerful ship possible you'll eventually have to get a specific ship from a specific faction, which effects your play choices (so you don't have 100% freedom in the galaxy). Also you may get sucked in by a wormhole and pop out in the middle of a hostile zone surrounded by huge ships or get ambushed by a huge fleet which warps in on your exact location, while you're allowed to get only two mercs (which you can not control or give orders to) with you but still, escape is always an option. There are some unfair moments where you have a 99% win chance but you end up becoming space junk; yep that may happen as well.
