Recent reviews by Genuine Talking Cat

Actually just better than JSR/F and I deem it a perfect game.

This is the most game of all time.

Oh no the devs are braindead. Adding all this trash to the game so they could curb certain things. But the methods they chose will not curb those problems whatsoever. Genius. GENIUS.

This isn't a game. It's a shish-post and an art project.
That said, it's wonderful to experience. Especially if you have "plant."

I had a blast. Took me around 20 hours of actual gameplay to beat. You could probably beat it much faster but I tend to take my time with these kinds of strategy games.

The game doesn't offer too much replayability as the progression is relatively linear, though with the amount of customization and items to search for, it's probably a good 2-3 playthrough game if you enjoyed the first one enough.
I will say though, that the default Phosphor pistol they give you becomes the strongest gun in the game if you build your Tech Priests specifically for it. (Doing 12-13 damage a turn before Canticles)
The fancier guns that require Cognition are more powerful raw, but them costing CP makes them an inconsistent damage source when you factor in that the Phosphor pistol gets its strength from being able to get Machine Spirit after only 1 shot.

I beat the game on Very Hard and would recommend that as the default difficulty as it became relatively easy after about the 40% Awakening mark, the only losses to Troops I had were of my own mistakes.

The "f2p" is the same as WoW or Runescape. It's not F2P. It's a trial.

That said, game good.

Update: Negative reviews implying they haven't released any updates since the games initial release which is a lie, there's been two major content updates.
There hasn't, however, been any major progression updates. There was supposed to be 4 major updates including 2 major progression updates within year 1 but they scrapped their roadmap very quickly and slowed progress.

I keep my positive review, as it's still 100% worth the cost of entry. However myself and my friends are still a little disappointed with how slow progress has been, and how little information we receive from the developers on progress outside of a couple of screenshots of models; which isn't really much given the last proper content drop was February. They do release an armor set or some other small thing here and there, but not much else.

Not only was this not the game they pitched, this is more or less only a single aspect of the game at large.
The PvP shooter element was only initially put into the game as a testing ground for weapons and mechanics, and then they kinda just forgot about the rest of the game they pitched and left that in as the primary game.
At least they kept roughly to the aesthetic that was pitched, but that's not saying too much praise there.

Review 2.0

If you made Eve and Elite have a child, and then made that child single player, you have this game. The game starts focused on you flying your personal ship or ships to do specific tasks, but over time that changes, however.


The game becomes primarily focused on empire and fleet management, with the first stretch of the game being mostly merc jobs for the factions to gain their trust so you can buy military equipment and blueprints. Once you get a station up and running, making money, you can focus more on maxing out profits, slowly grinding out the cash to spend on your next profit gear. A little spreadsheety at time and there's large stretches of time that you spend just micromanaging your stations and trading routes.
All things I personally enjoy. It's not a game for everyone, it's not fast paced and actiony. It's a slow grind sandbox.

The game has a mostly friendly environment to fly around in, with wars largely being made only if the player themself engages them. The hostile factions will for the most part do their own thing but occasionally try and shoot you down, but they are flies to a swatter unless they somehow amass a large fleet in your area, which doesn't really happen all that often.
Even the pirates, who will occasionally harass your traders, will not engage if you just order the trader to flee.
(I would try and get some mods to make the galaxy more hostile if you don't want it to be so heavily focused on grinding profits out, and more about making sure your empire can survive)

Things become a little trivial at a certain point, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just means all that money should be going into generation of a war fleet to take out the hostile races, or starting your own wars so you can secure sectors, or even the whole galaxy for yourself.

Ultimately there's no goal other than do what you want. And if that's what you want, I recommend.