Recent reviews by Solaire

I'll preface this by saying that this is not a game for everyone, it is quite grindy and while there are certainly moments of high tension/action, much of the game is quite calm and could be called boring by some. Additionally, it's not a game that will tell you what to do, you are just dropped into a simulation of our milky way galaxy and it's up to you to figure out what you want to do and how to do it. There are in game codex tabs that give you a basic overview of the activities available, but they are bare bones.

That said, I can confidently say you won't find a space sim that balances this level of technical richness with such beautiful backdrops and breadth of gameplay avenues.

Technical richness -
Everything on your ship matters, the weight, thermal efficiency, armor plating, cargo capacity, life support, etc. all makes a difference and can be modified by the modules you select for your ship. There are 36 playable ships as of writing this review, with 4 released in the last year. Some of these ships are intended for a specific role, but ultimately, you get to decide the role you want to build each ship for. Want to turn a luxury spaceliner into a sleek explorer? you can. There is so much depth here, it is hard to keep track of, but there are 3rd party tools such as edsy, which will let you prototype builds before you buy a ship.

Beautiful backdrops -
I am unaware of any other game that operates at the scale that Elite Dangerous does, save perhaps NMS. While you may be initially bummed that Elite only simulates the milky way galaxy, this simulation contains 400 billion star systems, more than enough to keep every explorer happy with uncharted systems until the end of time. Many of these systems can be unremarkable, but that is because the systems are based on real-life scientific principles, and continuously updating space data from real life telescope data. these systems are rendered in beautiful detail with water worlds and earth-like worlds a rare treat. Aside from the visuals, the audio in this game is a real treat, from the sounds of your ship thrusters boosting to the sound of your windscreen cracking as you take damage the sounds of this game are an absolute delight and really immerse you in the game.

Breadth of gameplay-
There are a lot of things to do in Elite, not all of it will make you rich, but I think there is something for anyone with a spaceship flying fantasy.
Trading - Be a space trucker, making bulk deliveries between star systems, buy low, sell high. conversely, you can buy "rare" goods that are unique to a single system, and sell them to far away systems for a tidy profit.
Mining - Equip your ship with mining lasers or precision explosive charges and find a profitable asteroid belt to mine, then sell the tons of materials to stations for a profit.
Exploration - Explore uncharted systems, scanning down every body in the system and probing particularly interesting bodies for extra credits and even landing to make biological discoveries of miscellaneous bacteria and simple plants.
Combat - Outfit your ship with weapons, shields, hull reinforcements, and all manner of combat systems and find yourself some opponents. You can work as a mercenary, bounty hunter, or pirate. Currently you can even help combat the Thargoid threat, alien invaders who fight very differently than human opponents. I will warn that PvP combat is rare in this game unless you set up adhoc matches with other commanders.
Search and Rescue - Find the aftermath of piracy/combat and gather black boxes, escape pods, and/or wreckage components and deliver them to the relevant authorities.
I am sure there is more to get into, but that's what I could remember off the top of my head.

To top it all off, after 10 years since release, Frontier has returned to making great updates to this game and I hope they continue.

If you read all that and you are interested in playing this game too, I recommend buying a throttle/joystick combo, they aren't strictly necessary to play, but I think they make the experience much better.

This game is just mediocre.
The gameplay is alright, but I didn't encounter anything that I hadn't seen in another game, I'll explain.

The quests I played felt like lost sectors in Destiny.
The gunplay was decent but not exceptional.
The movement was much worse than Warframe, but that is an unfair comparison. I would describe it as on par with the old Defiance mmo/shooter
The story felt generic and forgettable
The sound design felt stock.
Even obtaining loot felt bad, as new versions of weapons just seemed to deal more damage, no random perks to chase.
The Monetization is terrible, the game launched with ultimate versions of each character purchasable for $100 each. Nexon is calling the shots, so this is pretty expected.
I guess the game looks good, but it looks good because it uses Unreal Engine 5, not because the designs are original or interesting.
The Enemy Animations and AI felt pretty stiff and crude.

The only thing I found fun was the voice acting felt very B-list, similar to EDF, but not intentionally.

It's like a pack of saltines, decent, but I would rather have my usually lunch of Warframe and Destiny 2

Tynan is apt in naming this game a story generator. There is so much depth past plain victory and defeat. The game collaborates with you to build an comedic, tragic, and enchanting story. Sometimes your group of weary space travelers will make their way back to space under your watchful eye, other times they could be ended by AI engineered killing machine with knives for limbs. Perhaps a colonist will lose a limb, an eye, even their lives to a important battle, marking an occasion. Even their death may inspire the art of their fellow colonists and they may be grieved. Anything can happen in this game, sometimes survival isn't in the cards, but that is just part of the story.

"Through ice or fire, wind or rain
Remember laughter, forget the pain
Waiting, waiting for the sun"

I can say nothing that has not already been said before. Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Obviously, there are glitches, some things don't work out the way you expect, the game is unfinished in places, and some mechanics needed more time in the oven, but all that show's Larian Studio's extreme ambition.
The breadth of content to enjoy, characters to meet, and outstanding art & music elevate this game to a height we rarely see.

If you have any interest in CRPGs or DnD, you will find yourself intensely enamored with this game, and possibly emboldened to try some of Larian's other work.

VR Guitar Hero, where you are the guitar. What more do you want?

Edit: It has now earned a steam award, Get this game!

Fast Paced, Rogue-Like, Arena Shooter with a Redneck protagonist learning Egyptian mythology.
Somehow this all works incredibly well, Only gripe so far is that a few of the assets seem kinda "game-maker"-y

If You Like Supreme Commander you will like this game.
So much variety in the units, but could use some extra super buildings
Otherwise, for the price of free, you can't beat this deal with a stick

The Online gameplay is decent, but much of the content is too expensive to purchase without sharkcards or hackers, and they have only increased prices recently.

They have now also told the Singleplayer modding community to go ♥♥♥♥ their hat, with the cease-and-desist sent to OpenIV, an incredibly popular single player mod, that did absolutely no harm to anyone. GG Take-Two, Sodomize yourself with a retractable baton.

Bought this game after thinking liquid fueled engines were broken ( I didn't know that there was throttle ), after about 200 Hrs of gameplay I can say a few pros and cons

Pros:
1. amazingly beautiful scenery and situations
2. ultimate customizability
3. the failures are still great, even after 10+ failures
4. when everything does go right the game has a huge sense of accomplishment
5. the scale (about 1:10) is a good balance between ease of use and realism.
6. the modding community is one of the best that I have ever seen, if you want more realism theres a mod for that, if you want multiplayer theres a mod for that. (mod it til it breaks)

Cons:
1. huge learning curve
2. science mode is wayyyyy too easy
3. the owners are terrible people

10/10 would kill jeb again

P.S. If you want to get lots of mods, get CKAN, it makes it so easy!!!!