Recent reviews by Leonineus

I think whether or not you can like and excel at this game, largely depends on one thing and one thing alone: Whether or not you can work out how to actually fly your Sidewinder. There are tutorials for every aspect of combat you might be expected to undertake, even one for how to successfully dock your ship at a station.

The only tutorial they are lacking? How to actually fly. The three-dimensional layout is entirely disorienting; every single time I have tried to complete any of the combat tutorials it has ended the same way, with my ship spinning wildly out of control and no idea how to steer the thing. I can determine that general motion is determined by your WASD keys and your view is dictated with your mouse, but trying to actually fly is like trying to drive a Porsche through a nuclear bomb blast; you can't see where you're going half the time and the slightest mistake will leave you flying off in a random direction with no ability to control your vessel.

The HUD readout is also largely incomprehensible. I found myself getting dizzy just trying to figure out what direction the target was on my radar map, but completely failed to understand where or how to read the status of my shields, until the game flashed up on the screen that they had failed and the simple "easy-to-destroy" target of the combat tutorial I was doing was now drilling holes into my hull from 500m away.

I have seen in other reviews that Elite: Dangerous is a game leaking potential out of every pore, but sadly lacking in content at this time. I find I have to agree, with one small difference. Elite: Dangerous IS a game leaking potential out of every pore, PROVIDED YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET INTO IT. I would LIKE to be able to get into the game, but am finding the lack of any kind of formal instruction on how to actually move this ship in a coherent direction (the combat tutorial I tried with a target that will shoot back once engaged didn't actually register I was there until five minutes in, when I clipped it by accident in passing and proceeded to never see it again because I spun out of control) to be an insurmountable barrier between myself and any semblance of enjoyment of this game.

In conclusion, or just for those TL;DR readers, I am still recommending the game because maybe others will have better luck mastering the finicky controls than I did, but at this time, I am washing my hands of it.