Recent reviews by TargetBob

An elegant little game about being a cat in a robot city. Very heartwarming and nicely done with excellent physics. A real delight.

Holy wow. I think some would argue that it's too short for the cost, but on any Steam sale this is well worth the money. Kudos to the development team, this is a wonderful piece and literally has the capability to change how you see the world. Yes, I know that sounds over the top, but give it a chance, it's a gem.

This sounds trite, but you get out of ED what you put into ED. There aren't any "missions" or "gameplay" other than what you want to do in it, it is a real sandbox of a game.

That said, there are ways to earn credits and buy different ships or ways to modify your ships: guns, cargo space, passenger cabins, rovers, fighters, faster engines, bigger power plants, a ton of variety and control. You earn money by taking on various tasks for different NPCs. Want to go be a space trucker and move different materials between stations? You can find trade routes and do that or take on a task from an NPC to shuffle something between one station and another. Want to go be a space mercenary and assassinate other NPCs for other NPCs? You can make money for that. Want to just be a space pirate, hijack anyone else (NPCs or multiplayers), take their cargo and sell it on the black market? There's money in that. You can even just go explore and map different worlds and systems and sell that cartographic data back.

But it's up to you in the end. Go be a space pirate for a week and then head out to the hinterlands while the heat dies down. Go be a space trucker who carries a lot of guns and a fighter escort and woe be to the pirate who intercepts you. Get a super fast ship and be a space courier running items around or just go shoot down anyone you feel like, it's up to you.

That said, the learning curve is steep. Real steep. Like, "here's the keys to an intergalactic space ship, manual is in the glove box, there's no pause button, thanks for shopping!" kind of steep. You get a free starter ship and can easily immediately drive it into the sun. I was blown up the first time landing at a station because I got the pad number wrong. The galaxy is dangerous, it's there in the title.

I had a friend who walked me through a lot of the early stuff and was incredibly generous with their time. It turns out that most everyone in ED is kind of like that though, there's a real sense of "yeah, just follow me and we'll show you the ropes" community that permeates a lot of this game, Discord is a huge help and the game encourages wings and squadrons to band people together. And that, frankly, brings me back to the original point: you get out what you put in. Find a group or friends that meets your goals and this gets a lot more, well, fun. It's a lonely place out in the universe and part of what makes ED fun is sharing parts of it, putting more in and getting more out.

I'm glad I bought it on sale one day and even more glad that a friend casually mentioned they had 3,000 hours in it one day, as encouragement and friendliness made this go a lot better than the tutorials alone.