Elite: Dangerous...

It's an interesting game because it's not a game. It's a simulation. There's no specific winning or end. Yeah, there's an endgame of these high level ships that you can customize and fine tune for hundreds of hours, but there's no "a winner is you" screen.

Flying a spaceship in Elite is both daunting and intuitive. On one hand you need to juggle multiple things at one time, and it only gets harder when you're in a dogfight, but once at some point in your career you'll have a moment where it all clicks. Every motion becomes more fluid, every action less wasted, every shot more on target. Once you click with Elite, that's when you've won.

I talk about customization and should definitely go into it further. Yes, to make your ship look cool, pretty, or wacky you need to pay their microtransaction currency as the rate of earning it for free is pretty slow. It sucks on that end but the prices are reasonable and honestly only matters for that personal style points factor. The functional customization of ship internals is where it's at though. You can make guns do different types of damage. Lasers can heal teammates, machine guns can deal corrosive damage, missiles can EMP shields. And it won't stop at guns. Make your ship fly faster but hotter, make jump range triple, make your gear weigh less than a ton.

The jobs in Elite are also straightforward despite a lack of balance currently. Exploration pays the least but you get to go across the 1:1 scale Milky Way and see some truly exotic wonders. Glowing green gas giants, strange anomalies, the Thargoid infested planets, Guardian ruins, or maybe find your own mirror of Earth out there and call it yours. Combat can be engaging, at least for PvE. In PvP it's a whole different ball game from what you'd expect, as players have a meta in there utilizing speed and heavy hitting weapons for hit and run strategies compared to more sustained fights PvE offers. Mining gives the most money and is even rather pretty to look at with solid volumetric lighting, but of course it attracts pirates of all kinds.

Overall Elite: Dangerous is completely worth a purchase and a playthrough, especially if you're willing to sink your teeth and time into something simply because you can.

Elite: Dangerous... It's an interesting game because it's not a game. It's a simulation. There's no specific winning or end. Yeah, there's an endgame of these high level ships that you can customize and fine tune for hundreds of hours, but there's no "a winner is you" screen. Flying a spaceship in Elite is both daunting and intuitive. On one hand you need to juggle multiple things at one time, and it only gets harder when you're in a dogfight, but once at some point in your career you'll have a moment where it all clicks. Every motion becomes more fluid, every action less wasted, every shot more on target. Once you click with Elite, that's when you've won. I talk about customization and should definitely go into it further. Yes, to make your ship look cool, pretty, or wacky you need to pay their microtransaction currency as the rate of earning it for free is pretty slow. It sucks on that end but the prices are reasonable and honestly only matters for that personal style points factor. The functional customization of ship internals is where it's at though. You can make guns do different types of damage. Lasers can heal teammates, machine guns can deal corrosive damage, missiles can EMP shields. And it won't stop at guns. Make your ship fly faster but hotter, make jump range triple, make your gear weigh less than a ton. The jobs in Elite are also straightforward despite a lack of balance currently. Exploration pays the least but you get to go across the 1:1 scale Milky Way and see some truly exotic wonders. Glowing green gas giants, strange anomalies, the Thargoid infested planets, Guardian ruins, or maybe find your own mirror of Earth out there and call it yours. Combat can be engaging, at least for PvE. In PvP it's a whole different ball game from what you'd expect, as players have a meta in there utilizing speed and heavy hitting weapons for hit and run strategies compared to more sustained fights PvE offers. Mining gives the most money and is even rather pretty to look at with solid volumetric lighting, but of course it attracts pirates of all kinds. Overall Elite: Dangerous is completely worth a purchase and a playthrough, especially if you're willing to sink your teeth and time into something simply because you can.