Recent reviews by RedkiteRonin

If you love Bethesda games, and are at least a little interested in the genre, give it some time; it gets good.

I found the beginning to be a little disappointing: a lot is thrown at you and is confusing, you feel forced into the story from the beginning, and flying could be more immersive and less menu bound.

However, once I got over these things and just treated the game like a typical Bethesda experience, I started having a blast. Here is an overview of my first 20-30 hours (minor location/content spoilers ahead, no story spoilers):

After a short, confusing and disappointing flight; I found myself thrown into a huge city. I went and met the main group that you are to join and wondered there a little bit. I then wanted to find a trader and got a bit lost at first but once you learn a little more about the city after some wondering, it gets easier to navigate (I found every other settlement/city I've come across to be less confusing than the first city you enter).

After quite some time learning the systems: learning that some abilities/skills are locked behind your actual skills, learning to deal with the menu system and finding it actually kinda useful, after doing a little googling about how some stuff works; I actually started to enjoy the game more and respect some of the game decisions.

Even though I'd prefer to be forced to fly everywhere (not like flight sim style, but just using some ship commands to feel more immersed in the flying experience), I found the menu/map system to be quite useful, and the ship systems for combat are still fun.
In the end, I decided to pick somewhere small that I could focus on and learn the ropes more. After completing the first part of the story and joining constellation, I came across a cool mining town on mars. So I spent hours there, talking to people and completing interesting story content. Once I just started going with the flow there, I really started to enjoy the game. I mainly focused on my character and didn't play with the ship stuff much.

Completing quests on Mars let me to some fun encounters on some rock: Using my scanner, I noticed an area called landing pad (or something like it). It popped up because a ship had landed a bit a ways from me whilst I was fighting pirates in an abandoned facility. I decided to ignore finishing the fight and strolled over to this ship. I had been itching for a new ship (they're expensive to buy, at least early on), and so I checked if I could get inside this ship. Advanced security lock; luckily I had been focusing on my security skill, as not being able to crack open containers and doors is annoying. So I managed to sneak onto the ship, walked to the cockpit and just flew away with the ship.

I land back onto the moon and immediately am met with another ship coming into orbit. I think "can I do it again?", I rush over and find that mercs are looking after this ship. I choose to not engage and went straight to the ship entrance, door is unlocked. Walk in, alarm is triggered and i'm in a fight. The ship decided to take off and so now I have to fight these mercs as I have no where to go, we're in space, my ship is on the moon.

So I managed take the ship, I now have 3 ships. Not the best ships, in my opinion, but it was pretty damn cool to suddenly have them.

Another fun experience was fighting pirates on a freighter, the gravity system was damaged so we were fighting with gravity one second, then in zero-g the next.

Did some surveying of a planet and it's wildlife. Was a chill time.

Found another floating ship in space, based on logs I found it had some issue exiting orbit or something (I can't quite remember), but the ship was insanely hot. I could only stay on the ship for a very short time. Lots of dead naked crew aboard (well, in their underwear). Had to find the captain key quickly to be able to loot some areas. I think you're supposed to go in with a better heat resistant suit than I had.

Finally got to experience some hard space combat. There was one fight against 3 pirates that I just couldn't do (was using one of the ships I had stolen). So I quickly googled how to get away using my gravity drive and finally got away after about an hour of fighting these goons. I decided to dock at a nearby city that was probably the next city I was going to focus on, I got a quest from Mars to go there. So I park up and think about how I could probably do with a new ship. I managed to come across a pretty decent ship and I can just about afford it (I had been saving up a fair bit). With my new ship, I go back and blast those goons a new one. Tho I do decide to disable the last one's engines and board them, which gets me another cool looking new ship to play around with.

First 20-30 hour experience over. I've since played around with ship customisation, which is a lot of fun. Got into corporate espionage, and experienced other stories that have popped up whilst on my travels. All in all, a damn good time.

Main Positives:
- Very fun and interesting stories to explore.
- Main hubs/locations are really fun to explore. Lots of named NPCs to talk to.
- Ship customisation is fun.
- Gun-play is best Bethesda experience so far (no VATS is a plus for me).

Main Negatives:
- Beginning experience could be improved.
- Menu systems for space travel ruins immersion.

Main wants:
- Would love more crew options and the ability to have more ships flying at once, so you could assign crew to different ships (similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, if anyone has played it before - Bethesda published game).
- Ability to land/take-off manually for immersion.