Definitely a good sandbox game.
However please be ready to spend a lot of time (or real money instead) if you want to fully enjoy it. Losing a ship is probably devastating (no matter in PvE or PvP) because you will loose the ship, together with most of the gears and cargos in it permanently. In that way the price of gears will never drop, since they are continuously in the midway of manufactured/looted/explored and blew up. Thus PvP is both profitable (if you have the skill and patiently) and costly (if you lose your ship and pod, well, you need to buy a fresh new one).
The control is a little bit complex and you need to study a lot: angular velocity, missile damage formula, sensor strength and resolution, warp scrambler distance, CPU and Power Grid distribution, etc. The in-game skill (increase according to the real life time) is important but not omnipotent. A veteran player can easily solo L2 mission in a frigate (notably Tristan or Kestrel) with only days of training time on a new toon, because he knows the NPC's damage dealt type, vulnerability, attack range and who is the key mob (which will call new wave of reinforcement when damaged).
Also, don't let the subscription fee scare you. You can buy it in in-game market with in-game currency (called ISK). By playing it for two months in hi-sec, doing L4 missions, I can already afford one. Maybe I will invest the money into a more efficient battleship to further my farming speed, but you really won't need to pay 15 bucks each month, you see.
BTW, remember the terms: Pyfa, EVEMon and EVEMarketer if you plan to start EVE, and be patient for the first half month. Soon you will love the game and start to Google the terms I provided above. They will make your life a lot easier. :)

PS. The advertising image on Store page is simply some model showing. If you want to see real in-game screenshots, feel free to check mine. (mostly took in hi-sec)