Elite Dangerous is a beautiful looking game. Even minimum settings are quite nice looking. I primarily play in VR, so that's what I'll focus on. Odyssey does NOT work in VR, unless you have some black magic GPU...

The launcher
It's pretty straightforward. Things take a while to load up unless you have the game installed on an SSD. Although, I did have to uninstall Odyssey (I don't mind) to get it to launch Horizons from steam VR home.

The main menu
Works great in VR and flatscreen. Not too cluttered and fits with the rest of the game's style. LOTS of keybinds to configure if you're using a custom input method. The default HOTAS layout is medicore. Sometimes, for some reason, it chooses my VPN tunnel as a network adapter. Easy fix.

Starting the game
You always start in a ship. It's useful if you get stuck on a planetary surface. This is usually the point that I reconfigure my everything because I play so infrequently that my keybinds get wiped every launch. Set your power distribution and go! But where? This game has no goal, although doing missions will bring you to different places in the bubble. I'm currently on my way to Colonia, then Sagittarius A. Hyperspace jumps are probably the most genius thing done by Frontier Dev. The loading screen for each system is a fixed-length stellar lightshow that's actually really impressive in VR.

Mid-game
so. many. jumps. From my spot outside the bubble to the end of the neutron highway is 200 jumps alone. (With a 50LY jump range) IIRC, it's ~350 jumps from the bubble to Colonia. Assuming you get 15 jumps done per hour (my rate) it would take nearly a full day to run that journey. To be fair, 17,000 lightyears is a pretty far distance to travel.

You could be a bounty hunter, or a pirate, and shoot stuff. That's a lot of fun, but you still have to jump quite a few systems to get to your targets. After a while, no matter if you're mining, hauling, exploring, the jump sequence gets boring. If only it were proportionate to the distance jumped, to at least break up the monotony.

Because of the open-world nature of the game, there are a lot of different things to do. So different, in fact, that you have to equip your ship differently depending on your goal. Which, might I add, there is no guide for in-game. No handholding here! Unfortunately, none of the individual things you can do really feel cohesive, except for resource gathering and engineering. Which is a pain.

At the end of the day, ED is a spaceflight sim. It's great in that aspect. Stunning visuals too, really impressive in VR. But, much like a sandbox, there's not really much substance to the game. A lightyear wide and a mile deep. If you like other space sims, go play those instead. If you want something unique, or other sims don't fill the desire for being a space trucker, join ED!

Elite Dangerous is a beautiful looking game. Even minimum settings are quite nice looking. I primarily play in VR, so that's what I'll focus on. Odyssey does NOT work in VR, unless you have some black magic GPU... The launcher It's pretty straightforward. Things take a while to load up unless you have the game installed on an SSD. Although, I did have to uninstall Odyssey (I don't mind) to get it to launch Horizons from steam VR home. The main menu Works great in VR and flatscreen. Not too cluttered and fits with the rest of the game's style. LOTS of keybinds to configure if you're using a custom input method. The default HOTAS layout is medicore. Sometimes, for some reason, it chooses my VPN tunnel as a network adapter. Easy fix. Starting the game You always start in a ship. It's useful if you get stuck on a planetary surface. This is usually the point that I reconfigure my everything because I play so infrequently that my keybinds get wiped every launch. Set your power distribution and go! But where? This game has no goal, although doing missions will bring you to different places in the bubble. I'm currently on my way to Colonia, then Sagittarius A. Hyperspace jumps are probably the most genius thing done by Frontier Dev. The loading screen for each system is a fixed-length stellar lightshow that's actually really impressive in VR. Mid-game so. many. jumps. From my spot outside the bubble to the end of the neutron highway is 200 jumps alone. (With a 50LY jump range) IIRC, it's ~350 jumps from the bubble to Colonia. Assuming you get 15 jumps done per hour (my rate) it would take nearly a full day to run that journey. To be fair, 17,000 lightyears is a pretty far distance to travel. You could be a bounty hunter, or a pirate, and shoot stuff. That's a lot of fun, but you still have to jump quite a few systems to get to your targets. After a while, no matter if you're mining, hauling, exploring, the jump sequence gets boring. If only it were proportionate to the distance jumped, to at least break up the monotony. Because of the open-world nature of the game, there are a lot of different things to do. So different, in fact, that you have to equip your ship differently depending on your goal. Which, might I add, there is no guide for in-game. No handholding here! Unfortunately, none of the individual things you can do really feel cohesive, except for resource gathering and engineering. Which is a pain. At the end of the day, ED is a spaceflight sim. It's great in that aspect. Stunning visuals too, really impressive in VR. But, much like a sandbox, there's not really much substance to the game. A lightyear wide and a mile deep. If you like other space sims, go play those instead. If you want something unique, or other sims don't fill the desire for being a space trucker, join ED!