Recent reviews by Exalts

Elite Dangerous is Frontier Developments' flagship game where you take the role of a new independent pilot being dropped in this absolutely massive recreation of our very own Milky Way to make a name for yourself.
Elite attempts to give you a simulation of what our world could be in the 33rd century, when humanity has conquered the stars and established a bubble of their own within the galaxy; and it does so superbly.

Become a space pioneer, take on the role of a trader, buying goods for cheap and selling them where they are most valued; a smuggler, delivering illegal or stolen cargo to black markets; a bounty hunter, tracking down dubious pilots and turning them into space mist for a profit; or a pirate, scouting civilian vessels and assaulting them for their cargo; an explorer, travelling through unexplored space and scanning planets for all their worth, both in minerals, possible biological or geological anomalies, or even xenological artifacts; pilot a transport ship and take civilians and VIPs alike to noteworthy places across the bubble; a xeno-hunter, taking on the Thargoids, who are a menace for humanity; or just a regular brawler, and battle other commanders in the Close Quarters Combat tournament.

Let's talk about the strengths and shortcoming of Elite Dangerous.
Pros:
- An immense universe for you to make your own
- Lots of ships, each with their own unique feel, whether they are clumsy freighters, agile fighters, massive frigates or all-rounders
- Fully customize the loadout of your ship, yes, you can turn that transport ship into an heavily-armed warship!
- Player-run economy and political landscape, you have the power to push your minor or major factions to greatness
- Very complex control scheme, flying a spaceship shouldn't be easy, and it will take you a while to get the hang of it, but once you do you will truly feel like a space pilot.

Cons:
- So much grind! You need credits to buy ships or outfit them, for which you need to do missions, it may feel fast at first, but once you get your first 10 million credits ship, you will feel your progress slow down drastically. I understand that you shouldn't be able to obtain a Python within 10 hours of game time, and that's fine, but most gold rushes that are found into the game get nerfed into oblivion, it won't stop long-time players with hundreds of millions of credits in their bank account, but it will seriously slow you down. You also need navy ranks to get the best ships, or get access to the best systems, which takes even longer! You also need to grind merit within your superpower to gain access to their unique modules, grind materials to get the best engineer upgrades on your modules, and grind missions to get the Elite Rank within your specialty. After 250 hours of game time, I am almost Elite in trading, am Ranger in exploring and Competent in combat...
- The pacing is very good, but it won't be to everyone's taste. If you want a space sim with mostly exciting moments, and few breaks, Elite Dangerous won't be for you. Most of your time in Elite will be spent in peace, travelling between systems, or farming missions for those sweet, sweet credits, with only some moments of intense excitement. While that is perfectly fine with me, I would suppose not everyone wants this to be their experience.
- Online-only. Whether you play on your own in Solo Play or with other players in Open Play, you must be connected to Frontiers' servers to play the game, and those servers aren't always stable. If you want to play and don't have access to the Internet, you're screwed. If you want to play during a moment where the servers don't feel so good, you're also screwed.

Do I recommend the game? If you're anything like me, yes, absolutely, it's definitely one of the best games I have ever played, but it's not to everyone's tastes.
If you want a game where you need to seriously work your way up to the top, if you can accept that you will be insignificant for a significant portion of time until you get the best ships, and can accept that only 10 to 20% of your time will be sheer excitement (whether it is intense space combat, or discovering something unique, or anything out of the ordinary for that matter); if you want a game that is hard to pick up, that takes hundreds of hours to master, where you may get caught by players and turned into their punching bag; a game where you will die, and need to fork over significant amounts of resources to get your ship back; a game where you will spend a significant amount of time travelling, and want a somewhat realistic outtake on what independent space pilots may do in the far future, then I *ABSOLUTELY* recommend you give Elite Dangerous a try. It is a truly unique experience unlike anything I have ever seen before.
If you want a more casual experience, and I do not mean casual pejoratively, with a simpler control scheme, more streamlined progression system, or need fewer downtimes, then I cannot guarantee Elite Dangerous will be to your liking.

I'll be seeing you in the bubble, CMDRs! o7

A very impressive game, although it's only early access, you could stay for hours floating in this ocean, enjoying the scenery, trying to survive or fighting off carnivorous predators who take you for their next meal. There are hours of fun to be had with this game, and although I am quite new at this, I've enjoyed so much of my time on it already.
Unfortunately, the H2O update broke access to the game for me, but I expect it to be fixed in the future, this doesn't change the fact that this is one awesome game and that I'm looking forward to what Unknown Worlds will provide us !

Can't.... stop.... playing !!

The game is still in alpha, let alone Early access, but I will put my experience to your service.

Overview:
This game is a voxel-based space sandbox with a bunch of original content.
In this game, you can build ships, and fully customize it with the hundreds of blocks at your disposition.
If you feel like taking a true challenge, you can go on and build a space station.
The game includes factions, and faction battles. Factions have absolutely no player capacity limit. You can easily end up with five hundred factionmates with you.

Now, let's talk about the pros and cons.

PROS:
- Infinite procedurally generated space universe, countless galaxies, special stars, derelict stations... so much content to explore.
- Ships are fully customizable, and can get really accurate thanks to the advanced building mode at your disposition.
- No size limit, feel like building a 400 megatons titan ship ? Feel free to do so, this game doesn't restrict you one bit.
- Full multiplayer support.
- Full controller support.
- Developpement team pays huge regard to community opinion. You are the key to a better StarMade.
- Totally functional logic systems, you can finally make your 50 meters squared chip in space.
- Factories, automation.
- AI-controlled turrets and probes.
- Awesome active community on the StarMade forums, and the StarMade registry.
- So much pros, I surely forgot something.

CONS:
- Glitchy, that's to be expected of an Alpha.
- Can crash on multiplayer... hope your ship was full-stoped before you did.
- Tough on low-performance CPUs
- Hard learning curve, you'd be best watching some tutorials on the web before throwing yourself in the game.
- Larger ships are incredible stronger than smaller ships due to buffs in shield systems and weapon systems depending on number of blocks, more on that later.

Now this game might be for €9.99, but it sure is worth twice as much, if I had one gift to do to a bored gamer, it would be this game.
It has been on developpement for about 4 years (More, already ?), but is still progressing at a sustained pace. The community can't wait to see further progress, and neither can I.
Ships will become overpowered exponentially with their mass, if one dreadnought is 50 megatons in mass, it will still be much stronger than 200 corvettes of 500 kilotons. This is due to the exponential increase in stats the more blocks you have connected in one array. This is sad because that can inhibate epic space fleet battles. Fighters will never be able to breach through larger ships due to the former having weak weapons compared to larger ships, and the latter having too much shield recharge rate for the former.
Schema and the developpement team plan on upgrading this though, to make smaller ships stronger and more of a threat, and larger ships more exposed to swarms of smaller ships.

I guess I'll take my leave, before this review scares other people.