This is my second try at this review, while I am still playing and experiencing Outer Wilds.

Firstly. Please don't research the story of this game and try to go in as blind as possible as this game is one of those games you can only ever experience once in your life.

This is as true as can be.
Why is that? Because this game is based on knowledge. If you know or have found something, you will not be able to find it naturally. You can easily go to some of the most important places with zero knowledge what is before you as there is, as far as I know, no gear or skill progression in this game.

But with the preface out of the way. Why do I recommend this?

Well, this game is about emotion as much as it is about your curiousness. So when certain scenarios unfold before you, this game just hits you like a train. I had a certain moment when I used my "space ship" to get quite some distance to the sun and I looked back. This was a moment of joy and dread since I knew the innevitable outcome of what is happening before me.

And moments like this happened multiple times already. Moments I stood back and had to think about what happened.So yes, the story is an absolute beast. The world building is awsome, I love the details in this game both visually (this game does have beautiful graphics even without photorealism) and in the lore.

The audio (music and otherwise) is top notch and pulls you in, even if you don't exclusively play with headphones. But I'd recommend it for the last bit of immersion.

The gameplay is surprisingly good, the ship is a joy to fly, even if it might look complex, I am able to controll it intuitively and was able to do so very quickly. There is gravity pulling on you, the landing is great and you can abuse the ship surprisingly harshly without it breaking.

In zero gravity movement can get a bit wobbly as I was usually compensating thrust all the time, I am unable to properly stop without the games assistance (which I'd recommend keeping enabled)

But to point out some flaws:
This game is heavy on your hardware. I am playing on a dated, but still beefy setup with a RTX 3090 and an AMD 5900X with the settings at max and 4K with fluid frames, though I get to hear the system complain (by fan noise :) )

Also the loops do have their "boring" bits, as you have to go to your shuttle over and over again. Also since you only have limited time per loop, you can have loops where you go back to where you were just to find that single last clue and be done with an area. This is a tad unnerving.
And since the world is running on a clock you can feel under pressure more than you might enjoy, but this is an ellaborate design decision, so I won't flaw Outer Wilds hugely for this.

I think I am in the last 15-20% of the game and today I had to take a look at the wiki since I was stumped as to why I was unable to progress at a certain site only to find out I had a wrong assumption.

Well, maybe I was just not patient enough :)

All in all, bigtime recommendation and easily one of the best games I will play this year!

Edit:
I just finished this masterpiece and I am just so blown away, I am out of words.
I love this game.