Interested but worried about difficulty (2-3 players)

[Bonaventure]

So, I mostly play with family, and we've got three players. None of us love a crushing, stressful challenge, or a game that's balanced so that expert/veteran players have a great time but casual players crumple like wet cardboard. And we're not looking for a fourth.

Thing is, any multiplayer game is a major investment when you've got to buy three $20 copies for a single family. And I don't want to play chicken with Steam's refund policy and keep an eye on the timer. So: if we're just a few average gamers, more-or-less casually playing, will we have fun and want to play more? Or will we fail to "git gud" and give up and have wasted the cost of a AAA game?

(I'd try it solo first, but I'm gathering I'd be better off sticking my hand in a blender. I'm not hardcore!)

[Dragon]

The more players you have, the more fun the game will be. 3 players should be all you need, and 1-2 is doable with some difficulty.

The game isn't exactly going to be friendly to new players, and the more skilled your crew is the farther you'll get. I enjoy the game, even with all of it's problems. It's not elden ring/dark souls levels of difficulty, but it's not super easy either. You're not gonna miss out on too many rewards for failing, although it may feel crushing if your ship gets destroyed.

There's plenty of players available in public matchmaking, so I'd recommend trying that for an hour or two to get a feel for the game, and/or checking out streams and videos of the game.

[Nitwoo]

Solo play is broken right now, don't do that. Upon release they nerfed the autoguns. Previously they did low damage but never missed... now they miss constantly and it can be hair pulling infuriating watching them wiff point blank.

The tutorial does teach you what to do in general, and if there's only two or three of you at a time stick with the frigate, it's the perfect size until you get your feet wet.

And don't sweat not getting to a boss at first, getting as far as you reasonably can then heading back to base with your ship practically falling apart is the beginning loop, you still get cosmetics for your hard work as well as upgrades for yourself.

Most importantly if you give it a try remember it's a TEAM game. You can also specialize in certain roles, but having two people run ammo, help out in the engine room, or man a spare gun is way better then just having 1 person do the job. :)

[Matrias]

They made it so you get xp/rewards after every jump mission now, my group is often missing 1-2 people and its been fun letting people randomly jump in and out when they feel like it. Had 1 new guy join in our fully upgraded in every slot t3 ship and he was laughing his butt off mowing everything down.