UPDATE (Jan. 2024):

Empyrion now has paid DLC. Even better, EGS has partnered with the Tencent-owned Funcom for "marketing." The announcement thread attracted criticism and was, of course, locked.

Shills insist this unholy union can't possibly result in monetization like battle passes and microtransactions, because ... come on, guys ... Empyrion isn't even the type of game that can work with a battle pass. Neither was Conan Exiles, but uh ... never mind. Oh, and concerns about spyware from a Chinese-owned corporate arm of the CCP are, like, totally unfounded conspiracy theories.

It's funny that this new DLC features "updated melee combat" with swords (which I'm sure will be brilliantly animated and have nothing to do with Eleon's new partnership with the maker of Conan Exiles). Meanwhile, awful gunplay and movement don't even get mentioned. Instead, we're told Funcom grants the "opportunity to raise the bar for both the quality and quantity of our content."

What that means is anybody's guess, but something like Zirax Coins, a Galactic Emporium and a Galaxy Pass wouldn't surprise me.

I'm out of space, so this is probably the final update. Buyer beware.

UPDATE (July 2022, v1.8):

After not playing Empyrion since posting this review (nearly 2 years ago), I recently reinstalled and clocked just under 30 additional hours. Nothing I originally wrote here warrants revision, and I still don't recommend the game to anyone seeking "galactic survival," but I tried to give the current version a fair shake.

* Some of the graphic changes result in a game universe that's downright beautiful at times. The gas giant's rings, as visible in the skies of the starter moons, are a stunning sight, and all the terrains I've encountered so far have been interesting and plausible. Characters are still blocky abominations, but the universe itself is a looker.

* Unfortunately, performance continues to degrade, even though the PC I play on now is far superior to the one I used for Empyrion back in the day. This is further evidence to me that the "released" version of the game was just another alpha, and it arguably still is.

* Eleon has attempted to craft a story, complete with a brand new tutorial, NPCs and interactive dialogue. It's crap. The writing is trite, boring and amateurish, like it was written for kids, but with none of the charm or clarity one would expect from a competent children's author.

* Not only is the writing bad, but it is presented through a UI that is an eye-bleeding mess of colored text and exclamation marks.

* Water is now animated and looks nice, but still has no discernible physics. Drowning at the bottom of a lake? Just dig a hole.

* There are some new weapons (like a crossbow and flamethrower), but none of this matters since the combat and first-person mechanics still fall prey to all the criticism I expressed two years ago.

* The Empyrion experience remains of amateurish quality compared to many similar titles. It can still be fun in co-op, but the devs have done very little since v1.0 to actually make the game better. Making changes =/= improvement.

Original review below.

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Until today, Empyrion was in Early Access for five years, and I suspect it will remain in an EA state for years more, if not perpetually.

I've reached high-tier survival maybe a handful of times in all the years I've played this title, with most of my 600+ hours having gone into early to mid-game efforts whenever a new alpha drops. That's not to say I don't play for fun. I do, almost exclusively, and I wouldn't keep checking in if I thought Empyrion sucked completely. FWIW, the building system is engaging, and exploration can be loads of fun in co-op.

However, there's a notion going around that players are somehow unreasonable when they're critical of Eleon Game Studios or the game after X number of hours played.

A certain fanboy/moderator would apparently have everyone believe that his own 16,000 hours played is somehow reflective of the immense quality of this game, and anyone who has hundreds or thousands of hours is in fact a living testimony to Eleon Game Studios' unrivaled greatness.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Empyrion is clunky, bug-ridden, amateurish and frustrating even at its best.

I'm usually fine with that. Kenshi is one of my favorite games of all time, after all. But "You played X hours and got your money's worth, so shut up," is not an argument.

Version 1.0 is not a complete game, and shouldn't be portrayed as such through deliberately confusing manipulations of common game dev nomenclature.

However, if "shut up" is the official fanboy/moderator/developer position, then my official position is a negative review, and a strong recommendation to look elsewhere for sci-fi survival.

Few similar games do as much as Empyrion on such a massive scale, but nearly every game I can think of does what it does, within its own scope, better than Empyrion.

- The first-person mechanics are perhaps the worst I've ever seen. Playing Empyrion doesn't feel like moving around as a character, but rather gives me the sense of a camera on wheels. Animations are ugly or nonexistent for basic tasks. It would've been a damn shame twenty years ago. Today it's inexcusable.

- Characters are hideous and hideously animated. Despite the first-person woes, don't even think about playing this in third-person.

- Combat is an uninspired, impact-lacking mess. Weapons feel like BB guns, and even saying that feels like an undeserved insult to air rifles. If there's one single gameplay element that kills my Empyrion joy faster than any other, it's the awful, pea-shooter combat. This is unforgivable, because combat is central to the game unless you're only in it for creative mode.

- The AI is rock-stupid and blatantly plays by different rules. Enemies can magically "hack" (take over) your base from long range if they can't reach your core, and their base and ship weapons are superior to player weapons in almost every way. Fighting against NPCs is essentially a matter of learning how to cheese. Recent attempts to create end game content have exacerbated this problem.

- Unity Store assets are still commonplace. I mean ... whatever, I guess. I couldn't afford to make my own game assets, either.

- Physics—what physics?

- Flight model—what flight model?

(It's been brought to my attention that I should point out there technically is a so-called flight model. Sadly, there's no real sense of mass or weight. Never was, and neither the "flight model" nor atmospheric engines that were added with it changed this. The same floating camera phenomenon that applies to walking/running also applies to every class of vehicle. I say this as a flight sim fan who thinks Space Engineers and No Man's Sky both did a decent fakery job with flight, and I would have been fine with something similar in Empyrion.)

- Bugs. Everywhere. Various systems are glitchy.

- No volumetric water. Dug a hole at the bottom of a lake? Congratulations, you've made a permanent air pocket that you can build on and live in just like on dry land. This also means you can't create a Minecraft-style backyard pond, or build a Subnautica-style underwater home. I mean, you *can* build underwater, but it's just depressing.

- Canned environmental sounds, probably from the Unity Store (I can't confirm this). It's weird to be on a completely alien planet, but hear crickets and howling wolves.

This is all stuff one would expect of an ALPHA product, of course.

If you just want to build stuff or walk around on some same-y alien worlds, it's hard to say Empyrion isn't worth twenty bucks. It's huge with lots of moving parts. If you're looking for a deep game with polished (or even competent) survival and action mechanics, investing time in Empyrion might leave you some combination of irritated, bored and sad.

Review subject to change, but I wouldn't bet on it.