Recent reviews by Pony Plop

**UPDATED 2022/01/10**

Firstly, 2 tips that will help:
1. Make sure to limit your FPS for your system before downloading, unless you like to burn money/GPU components.
2. Disable any extra monitors, the game really doesn't like extended displays.

Unfortunately the game is still technically blocked in mainland China, if you want to download it and play, you need to do some silly workarounds with steam store location etc. That being said, the downloads/updates commenced with very reasonable speeds.

Incredible scope and scale, I did the obligatory 'fly over your house' and it was remarkably accurate for both my childhood homes in England, as well as a current residence in Mainland China- though naturally the Chinese maps/areas are a little outdated, they have most of the key features and even some little rural airfields.

One issue is that the topography isn't too accurate- places where there should have been hills etc are fairly flat, but otherwise accurate from a birds-eye-view.
Some vehicles/roads are home to flying/floating traffic, but it's not a huge deal.

Slowly working my way through the tutorial missions, so far so good, I've been alternating between xbox one controller and thrustmaster HOTAS setups- actually I prefer the xbox controller in most use-cases, since I can more easily pan my camera around, and there's less faffing around trying to remember all of the random button placements that are present on the thrustmaster.

Adding a tablet/touchscreen for purposes of interactive displays is something that is on my to-do list.
If I get really into the rabbit hole, there's also the new boeing edition thrustmaster yoke and throttle set- though I can't really justify the price just yet.

Very interested to see the kinks get ironed out over the coming months, I'll be coming back for more flight time.

Would also be nice to see more compelling VR support (apparently it supports VR with keyboard and mouse only? yuck)

PREVIOUS REVIEW-> (Most issues resolved by disabling secondary monitor during gameplay)

Constantly crashing to desktop, most of my 10 hours of 'play time' were spent downloading patches and troubleshooting.

I've logged a total of 1 hours of actual 'play'-time, and some of that was spent fighting with the controls since the game mistook my razer keypad for an xbox controller, and during a tutorial section, would only refer to actions in terms of xbox controller inputs rather than kb/m or HOTAS functions...

When it works, it's awesome, but I haven't been able to go more than 15 minutes without crashing to desktop or even fully black-screening and my system going totally non-responsive.

In fact, I've been working through the tutorial missions, and have so far managed to finish maybe 10 or 12 of them, and I've had CTD or blackscreen no fewer than 7 times in that span of time...

Some stupid stuff:
-The game frequently crashes if you use a dual-monitor setup. Disabling my secondary monitor seemed to significantly reduce the frequency of game crashes.
-You need to manually limit the background framerate unless you're planning to use your GPU to heat your room during the DOWNLOAD/UPDATE/MENU operations... No idea why the game needs to utilise 85% of my 2080Ti to 'download' (not even install!)
-The download period counts as play-time- This may affect your ability to apply for an automatic refund.

Had this game in my library for ages, put in maybe 40 hours a few years back.
Recently came back after seeing some friends were back into the game, and decided to check out the advanced edition.
One week and 60+ more hours of gameplay later, still loving the game, hunting down the ships and achievements feels like a great time.
Once I finish the vanilla game, I'll probably move onto modding the game (multiverse) and get even more hours of enjoyment out of it.
For the price and the simplicity of a game that can run on just about any machine, it's a no-brainer. Pick it up ASAP!

The game feels fantastic so far, with a few caveats (RTX OFF): 2022.03 UPDATE (Turns out my 2080Ti had some problems with RTX in general, RMA'd the card and it runs fine now- though RTX drops my FPS to around 30-45)

The story and gameworld feel engaging and thoughtful so far, and I'm eager to dive back in. I encountered some small bugs (floating phones/guns etc, people sheltering for cover despite no sign of conflict) but nothing game-breaking so far.

I'll jump back in soon, it's really addictive..

The game crashes with the 'whoa, cyberpunk flatlined' error if I try to turn on any of the RTX settings- so I just play without RTX.
Can get an easy 60FPS at 4k high/ultra and actually capped my FPS at 60 to avoid fan noise from the GPU as it heats up.


For reference, I'm playing on 3900X, 2080ti (galax HOF OC lab edition), dual display (3440x1440 + 1920x1080) , 32GB 3200 C14 RAM, X570 steel legend, Windows 10 64bit.

14 hours in version 1.03 (current version is now 1.04) and using nvidia driver 460.79 (12.09.2020)

I have better things to do with my time than grind away at this game, and that's coming from someone who forked out for the HOTAS controller, foot pedals and set up my own head-tracker.

It's beautiful, it's nice to cruise around and drive across planets, but the bugs and crashes really ruin the immersion for me.

It's a real shame that only incredible amounts of grind will make the cooler stuff available for players (I know about grind, I completed RuneScape a few years ago...)

Save your wallet, your waistline and your wellbeing and find something that has a bit more respect for your free time..

I picked the game up on the Chinese steam store for ¥158 (<$25), and I feel that it's just about worth that price, and here's why-

The good:
- Plenty of chores to keep you busy.
- Quite engaging, plenty of things to discover/learn about the ingame universe.
- Really nice for getting cool screenshots (the HUD sucks though) and getting easy reddit karma.
- Quite a few achievements to keep you grinding/playing.
- Excellent to play muted whilst listening to an audiobook (The Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy).
- It's pretty relaxed, death isn't such a big deal since you get an autosave whenever you exit your ship/clock a new location.
- It's amusing to name entire star systems, planets and their contents with labels such as 'I'm Ronnie Pickering; Who are you?'/'Save Harambe' etc.

The Bad:
- Cut and paste of lots of lazy mesh modelling, poorly textured assets on the ships, stations and man-made features.
- Juggling the inventory system feels like something that's better left to medieval tabletop roleplaying down in someone's cellar, and not in a futuristic space sim, if you can work out space flight, surely you can work out how to stack a bloody Gravitino ball without resorting to a bug/feature..).
- The water in this game is pretty awful, literally PSX-gen flat texture, no ripples/splashes or animation at all. It's not dynamic and it's not pretty.
- The flying controls are soo simplified that they never become anything more than an A-B transport. Not fun/challenging at all!
- Fairly frequent (every hour or two) crashes, as a result of but not limited to 'interacting with certain tools'/'landing at a location'/'just because'.
- Mostly broken ship component 'Blast cannons' which still hasn't been patched, and seems to be present on every single ship other than the starting ship.. The cannons won't target lock, are stuck at 0% capacity yet will fire and can be used to harvest space rocks if your lasers aren't optimal.
- Very slow default movement/swimming speed. A big pain when exploring on foot. (Can use a mechanic called the run-punch-jetpack jump to speed up progress.)
- Some achievements are buggy, such as the 'extreme environment survival' challenge that seems to ignore extreme radiation planets..
- Only 3 races of advanced sentient life, seems pretty low considering we have 'the whole universe' to explore..
- The 'procedurally generated' animals are pretty much the result of throwing together three or four pre-determined body part/types together from a database of maybe 15 or so sub-varieties.
Sometimes the results are amusing, but often it's just the same rat-bird/gazelle/jumping houseplant/dinosaur combo. Definitely not an homage to Darwinism.
- The nagging sense of a wasted day when you look outside and realise that the sun is gonna go down soon and you've spent 4 hours solid grinding Gek transmission towers to cheaply get up to a 48-slot ship.
- Apart from the time I accidentally signed up to get married to a Vy'Keen warrior, the interactions with the NPC's are often lacklustre, text-based. 'make your own adventure' type affairs, with little effort put into the performance, similar cut/paste replies, and only the extra difficulty wall added by having to go around picking up parts of each of the languages, one word at a time via big cylindrical blocks/sites/orbs.
- Incredibly disappointing ending/no real endgame content.
- Atlas questline is buggy, make sure you have your 10 stones or you will unexpectedly miss out on the end of the quest!

Overall, I'd say you'll feel robbed within 24 hours of gameplay if you buy at the Western RRP.
Pick it up at less than half price and you'll have a fun enough time for your money!