Recent reviews by Miwenskee

Enough time has passed for me to not need a reason to absolutely recommend this game.

[UPDATE] 08.02.2017
The new year marked a new beginning for my E:D endeavours. After pretty much not playing it since initially writing this review, I was a bit hesitant, but a friend had just bought it and felt totally lost so I dusted off my HOTAS and jumped in to help out. I've been playing full time ever since. I will leave my original review below as I still stand behind what I wrote for when I wrote it.

So let me cut to the chace - am I changing this from "not recommended" to "recommended"? Yes. Here is why:

Elite is still grindy as hell, it will always be this way. However, "Guardians" has managed to redeem "Horizons" in my eyes - not only with the awesome new features included, but also the fact that materials gathering got a balance fix, allowing at least for a much more engaging, diverse and entertaining way to grind for engi modifications. Is griding for meeting engi requirements still tedious? Heck yes! But at least you only need to do it once.

Initially, I said the game is not for everyone. Technically, this is still correct, but I realize how vague this actually sounds - comparatively speaking, very few video games today can be considered to be "for everyone". So let me rephrase - as far as space sim fans are concerned, the game might not necessarily be for all of them. It does not hold your hand... at all! To be completely honest, I still feel very reluctant recommending it to someone who has no idea what they're getting themselves into. I wouldn't recommend it out of fear they'll give up too soon before getting to the good part - i.e. starting to pay more attention to the visuals, the realism and the incredible detail (both graphically and in terms of mechanics) of the game once they've gotten confortable with the controls and have full control of their own ship. I feel this is the line you need to cross over in order to be motivated enough to educate yourself on the hundreds of other game features there are. So yeah, go through every single tutorial would be my advice (you don't have to be succesfull in all of them, in some you definitely will not be).

Next, I want to adress some of the comments saying I disrespect the game by giving it a red after investing so much time in it. The money-to-hour ratio is ridiculous, I know, but a very important note to be made here is that an enourmous portion of this time was used up on endless, nerve-recking grinding. Before Horizons I felt like it was justified - I had set a very demanding end-goal for myself. The initial live iteration of Engineers made most of my work totally obsolete in my mind, and I felt pretty butt-hurt :D This contributed to making the review negative. At the current state of the game, grinding feels rewarding again, which completely changes the way I look at it.

Finally, I must admit I was somewhat close-minded half a year ago. I did touch on the different types of players that might be interested in Elite, but now I want to expand on this. You don't have to be an overachiever like me to enjoy this game. The game is what you make it. If you want all the biggest ships with all the best specs and modded to perfection - you have a looooong way ahead of you, so buckle up and get your s-h-i-t-bucket. But you don't have to be that kind of person. You wanna go out, explore and get lost in the visual wonders of the Milky Way? Play for about a week until you can get a decent exploration ship and you can do that! All the better if you do it with a VR set (in which case I also want to point out that I hate you!). You wanna group up with friends and go bounty hunting? You will be able to afford to buy a fighter within the first few hours of playing! You wanna join a player faction and engage in various community activities? To feel like a part of something bigger? Go for it! You might even be able to do it with your starter ship. I repeat, the game is what you make it! If you're new, take your time with it, enjoy the little things. If there is something you don't know or understand - there is a way to find out, Elite's community is among the best out there! A friendly advice, however - if you don't know all player controlled ships, that's a good thing! Don't go on YouTube or wikias looking for them - I don't want you seeing an Anaconda and thinking "I want that" - that's a recipe for disaster. Like I said. take your time.

So yeah, this is what I have to say for the time being. It always bothered me that I had grown so attached to this game and yet my review for it was negative. But I was never going to change that without justification. I am glad that "Guardians" has provided it to me. But if Frontier drop the ball in a future update, you can rest assured I'll be taking note of it! "Multicrew" looks very promising though, so hopefully there won't be a need for concern.
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[ORIGINAL POST]

I am not going to lie, I am hooked on E:D. The visuals are amazing, the universe is vast (as one can imagine), the activities are (technically) hundreds in number. I would say that for me personally having the opportunity to experience something like it has had an everlasting impact on my gaming life.

Would I recommend it to a newcomer, however? The answer is no, and the reason for that answer is simple - it is not for everyone. There are, of course, things for the casual gamer to try and experience in this game and have fun doing it without having to invest a lot of time. Sadly, doing this will result in you getting bored after several sessions. If you want to feel like you're succeeding in there, you have to get your hands dirty. In other words - grind grind grind until you want to punch a hole in the wall... and then grind some more.

Grinding for money is just the start. With all the attractive additions that Frontier add to the game with every update (like ships, gameplay features and mechanics, etc.) come more and more layers of grinding. I mean, there is 4 different types of just reputation to grind for, for Christ's sake! With Engineers there are so many amazing features that were added to the game, but all of those seem to be blocket by a grind barrier that, for someone like me who already spent 80% of the play time grinding one thing after another, becomes a bit too much.

There used to be a time when I was so enthusiastic about Elite that I wanted to convert more people to playing it. I even bought an extra copy of the base game to give to someone who might have shown some interest. Sadly, this copy is still in my inventory. The game is in such a state at the moment, that even I feel reluctant to start it at times. At the time of writing this review I haven't played it in about two weeks, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the mere thought of starting it. I will eventually start playing it seriously again, but my point is I can't even imagine how massive of an undertaking it would be for someone who has not picked it up before to start playing it now.

If you are a casual gamer who wants to experience an extremely realistic and believable space sim, maybe do a few missions, get a taste of all the different kinds, do some exploring and witness some trully facinating sceneries (BUT NOTHING MORE than the aforementioned!), then I would have no problem recommending this game to you, you'd have a blast! If you, however, are a bit of an overachiever like me, and want to pilot the best ships and have the best equipment this game has to offer, it is not difficult to execute, but you better have some nerves of steel because you'll be doing the grind of your life!