Last month I've had an itch to play something space-y, so I just went and tried NMS, X4 and Elite Dangerous.
Here's my two cents on each of them:
NMS has great music and that cool 80's scifi vibe. Everything else out there is atrocious, since the game has literally nothing to offer beside bad procgen planets and endless multilevel grind. The game gives you a digging tool to grind for resources, but this tool itself requires fuel, so while you grind for building resources or sellable resources you also have to grind for resources to power the digging tool, and there's also your oxygen generator that requires resources too, and suit's environmental protection eats up some other resources, that you also have to gather. I've gathered all my patience and slogged throuh the initial stranded-on-some-planet tutorial only to boldly go into the space and discover that there's literally no "space". The planets are glued to the skybox with not even a hint of orbital movement or "realistic" distances. The X3/X4 with its sectors are leaps and bounds ahead of this in terms of "realism". Dammit, the Outer Wilds, being a walking simulator set in tiny system with tiny planets where you can travel from moon to your home planet just in your spacesuit, provides you with better sense of space travel.
X4 is both good and bad. thesheep has already provided a great recap of of its strengths and weaknesses here
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/elite-dangerous-yay-or-nay.127242/page-9#post-6685637 that pretty much sums up my own experience.
I'd like to add that everything ui-wise is a huge pain in the ass in X4 - from moving your crew between the ships to building your station in the station editor.
Another thing would be that the game is totally unbalanced in its current state - in some games Xenons are brain dead, being easily mopped up by AI factions, in others Xenons are dominationg every sector, and somewhere both Xenons and factions are braindead resulting in player having to pour tons of money into the economy to make it work somehow.
In my 20-hours playthrough I've started as Argon Young Gun and got Xenon invasion in Hatico's choice around first 8 hours, led by a fucking Xenon I. It totally wrecked that sector and then proceeded to rape Argon prime, destroying the wharf and all sector's security including capital ships, complete witl all 3 of my miners and my fledgling station.
I've consulted each and every guide on how to destriy this monstrocity while having only a bunch of M-class ships, and, well, there was no way to do so. I've tried approaching it in a fighter, destroying its turrets and engines, only to find that some brilliant mind at Egosoft decided to make its shield modules impenetrable to fighters in order to counter this specific tactic. I've tried rescuing that Paranid Odysseus in Faulty Logic only to find that it has no guns and I've got nowhere to install them since Argon Prime is in ruins, and buying capital-class weapons requires faction rep of 20. So, I've resorted to cheating - changing the ownership of this Xenon I and sending it wreck Xenon sectors. An hour later, and another Xenon I showed up in Hatico choice and started another campaign of deep dicking. Well, that was enough of X4 for me, at least until they make this shit a bit more enjoyable.
Also, the optimisation is horrible atm, managing a fleet of 30 ships in map mode makes the game run at, like 5 fps.
And finally,
ED.
I've came to it expecting Euro Truck Simulator / MudRunner /SnowRunner in space, so I was not disappointed by lack of the "game" in here.
Well, it has really good ship designs and sound. Like, excellent ship models and interiors, I really liked my AspX and made a ton of screenshots with it and some space features in background, be it twin stars or gas giants, or astroids.
The space is fine - its realistic enough in terms of being a, well, vast empty space, with things far and between, planets are rotating and have 'honest' day/night cycles, stations are moving on planets orbits - I dunno, if planets move around their orbits themselves. At same time it is arcade'y enough so that you don't bother with real orbital mechanics.
There's a certain zen-like value in its activites, which mostly consist of flying through nothing and trying to enjoy the view.
I've yet to undertake some deep space expedition, so I've got nothing to tell about the exploration - that is, aside from space refueling being tedious and that exploration pays bad.
My biggest gripe with elite would be not its presumed lack of depth, but its totally unbalanced economy and FD's incompetence at managing the game.
Missions are boring as fuck, as in any other space game, and pay atrociously. Combat and bounty-hunting are fun, but also bad in terms of profit. Piracy is pure charity atm, like, it will never pay off the amount of spacebucks you are gonna pay for a proper pirate ship and its maintenance.
Exploration is a bit better - you get to enjoy the views and also net up good sums of money, but its not nearly as profitable as top activities. Look at this post for example
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...afely_back_from_the_black_my_trip_around_the/ The guy has spent 160 hours of his time, travelled around the galaxy, and all he's got was, like, 1/5 or 1/10th of properly equipped carrier.
The most lucrative activities at the moment are very specific sorts of mining and trading, and by specific I mean "flying to some exact asteroid using exact directions to find it in a fucking asteroid belt and then resetting it using abuse that FDev can't patch" or "getting a biggest cargo ship out there and hauling tritium from low-selling station to high-buying station in 5 minutes of flight". I definitely don't say that these things are bad - finding the astroids using only screenshots and directions like "fly in the middle hotspot, level your ship, align it withnthe planet'right edge, find a specific-looking astroid, fly in that direction for 20km, than turn to the right and fly some more" was genuinely fun, hauling tritium was also fun ... in a way... , selling my haul to real players in carriers with bargaining, finding best deals, advertising and all that was fun too.
So, how did FD approach this situation? Maybe it made other activities more profitable? Or I dont know, encoured further player interaction, and all this player-run economy things? Maybe announce a free update to allow players buy and manage stations and control systems, like they do in Eve?
Fuck no, they just nerf everything that doesnt fit in their presumably, very narrow, vision of how this game should be played. Sorry, player, you can't make billions in several days and buy that oh-so-expensive Carrier with proper equip, and have fun, you have to
earn it. It's not some stupid game you can play at your leisure, it's a serious thing. You can't just have supercruise and/or docking assist on your ship to make life easier for you - they should eat precious internal slots. Because having it easy is Bad.
To sum it up, Elite is much like every other niche game out there - it's shit, we know it's shit, but there's no real alternative.
