This is a nostalgia filled review but not with a rose tinted glasses, why am I even telling you this, you'll understand after reading it.

This is NOT a space sim game, this game is more appropriately classified as an open world looter shooter game with spaceships as your controllable avatar, but having said that this game :

Is the closest thing to a 2020s made sequel to the 2003 Freelancer game, a game that regarded by many as a space sim game.

So, in this game you play as a pilot and you'll follow a rather by now the usual story driven space adventures that spans multiple star systems in which are explorable with your spaceship, and also including several planet based locations that are explorable. (This doesn't mean you can explore them on foot, everything in this game is being done with your ship or on occasional circumstances you'd control a space bot)

Now, aside from visitable planets the other difference from Freelancer is that in this game you'll find many environmental puzzles to unlock loot or progress through certain parts of the story and it's all solved with your spaceship hence why this game also in a lot of times feels like a contemporary action RPG, you solve those puzzles by grabbing things, placing things into specific places and sometimes rotating objects etc... and in many of the explorable places usually there are specific location challenges that you can solve to unlock the rewards.

Speaking of exploration, this game is like Freelancer where there are explorable sectors that you have to get to other star systems by the way of Gates also very much similar to the X series, and then in the systems itself you just have to use "jump drives" to explore the system and jumping in and out from and to the explorable spots, the main spots in the systems are ether static locations, but there are also randomly generated locations like in Elite Dangerous, usually contained random locations with space wrecks and mining opportunities, or distress call from random friendly needing your help, but can also be random enemy "bases" with enemy spaceships that you can try to destroy for the XP and loot.

Now talking about rewards, as I said the game can be described as a looter shooter game, because that's also true, and this has some similarities with some space sims in the past where you can loot stuffs from destroyed ships in space but in this game this aspect has been much more intensified to the point that it resembles Diablo kind of games where you practically has to hunt for better equipments (guns, engines, armors etc) for your ship by actively seeking combat in the hopes that your defeated enemies dropped something valuable and worthwhile...

Aside from looting you can also buy and sells them in certain space stations that you would encounter throughout the game, and in fact if you want to acquire new ships you practically has to buy them from select space stations where they would only has a few of randomized selections that you can buy amongst the broader list of buyable ships in the game.

Speaking of buying, in this game you can also do space trade like in many open world other spaceship games, you'd need to buy cheap and sell expensive from and to specific stations to generate profit or you can also acquire the goods from spaceships that you destroy but there's no any dynamics to the trading system unlike in say the X games or Elite Dangerous where supply and demands would react to your trading related actions (including disrupting other traders ships), AFAIK there's no such complexity in this game, the focus is more on the looter shooter RPG thing.

So now I'm going to talk about the other aspect of the looter shooter RPG thing in this game, where like Freelancer (if my memory isn't failing me), in this game you start from a level 1 rookie and climb it up in a very RPG system, by destroying enemies and completing missions, your spaceships get bonus whenever you (the pilot, the main character) level up but there are still like 8 levels of spaceships where the only way you can level up is by buying better level ships, and for that you need to grind a bit, the grind isn't really too bad though unlike in some of the other space games that I mentioned.

What's rather unlike in other space games is that in this game your ship equipments are transferable between all other ships that you acquire and they can also be levelled up, so your level one guns can be upgraded into level maximum, and this equipment levelling is following your main character levels, not the 8 levels of ships that I talked about...

And that is provided that you have the right materials to upgrade them, which brings me to the crafting system, which follows standard contemporary >2010s open world games where you gather stuffs to craft your equipments where equipments and materials have levels of rarity and yada yada etc, materials are gathered by the looting system or you can buy them from stations.

Another RPG aspect of the game is that ships can have special weapons (abilities) and special devices that sort of letting you cast RPG esque various time and refillable energy (just like mana system in traditional RPG) constrained "spells" be it like super boost, AoE EMP jamming etc... the special devices are transferable between your ships, but the super wrapons are tied to the type of the ships, in this game there are only 3 types (or classes) of ships, each one of them has specific super wrapons and whenever you buy them they'd also has randomized "perks" that is tied to that ship, so buying 2 exact type of a ship will still gets you different "perks" and for this one aspect you're at the mercy of the RNG.

In this game you'd meet "companions" that you only see in texts and limited hand drawn conic style cutscenes (on the plus side they're all voice acted) but the companions provide you with their unique perks where you have to provide them with materials to unlock the benefits for you, further gamefying those type of "interaction" that's usually absent in space games.

I haven't finished any of the main storylines at the time of this review but so far it has been serviceable, the main story related gameplay has some variations in them in line with the location based puzzles and challenges that I mentioned previously, so it has more variability than the older games like Freelancer, the story itself is nothing to really write home about at this point of video gaming history.

Now, this game supports practically every controller hardware that usually being used to play space sims, including HOTAS and HOSAS controller system or even comboing a stuck on one hand and a mouse (or a keyboard for that matter) on the other hand... I tried to use my HOTAS for this game but I quickly conclude that while it's doable, I don't think the control system fit such config, some people said that the HOSAS is much better fit but I disagree, mainly on the basis that the game is too fast paced to be used with most modern higher end HOTAS/SAS hardware, you can do that, especially given the game also has options for auto aiming regardless of the controller, but still I feel in a game this fast paced using such expensive controller would only causing more wear and tear to them at no benefits for gameplay or immersion.

A cheap console controller is preferable IMP for this game, but even that in the default keybindings is quite limiting and has some problems (the default spaceship roll system is one of the problem with the keybinding, but I also saw that they have some preset that you can choose), long story short I conclude the game is best controlled with a mouse and keyboard control setup.

Visually the game is nice, it was using Unreal 4 which has been upgraded into Unreal 5 with modern bells and whistles including DLSS4, you can also choose to use software Lumen to enhance the Global Illumination effect on this game but as with many other games using Unreal 5 it would cost your frames.

Have you ever played a game where you're not really having fun, but you keep thinking that you just haven't gotten far enough yet to unlock the fun stuff? But then eventually you find yourself at the end and realize it never will got fun?
That's this game.

I feel bad because there's a lot of interesting systems the devs put in here. I hope they find success. But the game overall just had too many constant nagging problems that made me more and more frustrated than excited to play.

Issues:
- The controls are awful. I like that it's mouse-based like War Thunder, but it has this weird ship or camera momentum thing so you never actually feel like you're controlling your ship properly. I thought I would get used to it, but it just gets worse and worse when you're trying to get better at leading enemies and such. It's extremely telling when all the veteran players use a drone carrier where minions do all the work for you.

- The sensation of flying around is lackluster at best, and clunky at worst. Even when flying on planets and are low to the ground it never feels like a thrill like other games do. Not sure what captures that magic. But what this game has in spades is awkwardly bouncing off of walls and objects. This is made even worse with all the puzzles, timed challenges, etc. Each one just felt more and more infuriating than the last.

- How about the combat? Meh. Maybe it's a biproduct that you can fully stop or even fly and shoot backwards, but you really just feel like a floating turret. Which is fine I guess, but it just gets old.

- This game wants to be a looter shooter, and I guess it succeeded, but it means you frequently end up having to hunt for equipment pieces that you've over-leveled.

- Then to add insult to injury, you have an RNG loot and vendor system. I think they tried to put crafting into the game to mitigate this some, but the "blueprint" unlock system just utterly holds it back. And the fact that you can't upgrade or up-level crafted equipment.

- By the end game, you have Diablo. Do Rifts, get random rewards, hope what you're looking for drops. Then you finally get that thing, and realize it didn't make the game better, and you just wasted all that time.

My advice is to check out the base game when it goes on sale, see if you like it, but if you start getting annoyed with all the fetching of power cells and energy orbs to slot into keyholes before it dissipates, then close the game for good and spend your life on something more rewarding.

The set designers really nailed it, but pretty much every other part of this game falls flat. This is a looter shooter with a sadly thin veneer of sci-fi spread over it. Voice actors doing their best but the direction is so lacking it STILL feels like AI voices talking at each other. In a time where seamless play is better than ever, it feels like this game has put in MORE seams wherever it could.

That could all be forgiven, if not for the bigger issues. This game is BORING. A looter shooter can still be fun, but the items are so boring even ten hours in that I regret spending the time reading their effects. Outside of ults (which are unique and fun!), combat is mostly just fly forward and hold click on thing x13 times. Puzzles always amount to 'find little bit/bob and put it in bit/bob slot'.

And the performance issues are real, persistent, and not being fixed. Many players are plagued by a memory leak that runs the OS out of RAM swiftly, but the studio seems more concerned with their third tiny expansion in a year than they are with basic playability. Less critical but still quite important: if your video card cost less than $750, you're probably going to have vram swap stuttering within an hour of play regardless of how low you tune the graphics.

Don't walk, RUN away from this title. There are plenty of games that are more fun, better performing, cheaper, and made with love instead of whatever the heck ROCKFISH is doing here.