So I love space games. I have put at least 100 hours into this one. It is one of the most frustrating games I've played in a long time, because I see the potential for this game to be good, and yet it falls woefully short at everything it aims to improve from other games in the genre. I don't want to touch on the obvious things that other people have mentioned, such as the plethora of loading screens and the lack of storyline variety.

The towns are Oblivion small, with one city per planet. I understand that the game is already large to begin with, but when there is one small town per planet with maybe 50 NPCs max, you lose a lot of the intended feeling of a large city. Same with the scanning for flora and fauna. There are maybe 10-15 plants per planet that you can scan. And the fact that each planet is like 3 different environments max.

There are things left out that seem like they wouldn't have been that difficult to implement, like giving Sara books when she asks for them. Or being able to choose and see your patches on your constellation suit as you earn them (which was a promised feature by the way).

The ship-play is woefully lacking. It's nice that you can build whatever sort of ship you want but the lack of actual time you spend piloting that ship is extremely limited, and not engaging at all. Sure, you don't want to have the E:D style of seamless spaceflight and landing because you aren't hosting everyone on some external server. But at least it should be reasonable to fly through a system, or fly over a planet and land less than 500 meters to the left rather than having to go through 4 different menus. The dog-fighting is also extremely unsatisfying, where you are left spamming missiles and waiting for a ship to fly through your line of fire. All this technology and you can't shoot behind you?

The crafting gameplay loop is the same that it's been for every BGS game, which is to say extremely boring. This is not new and I'm not surprised to see it hasn't been changed. It would have been nice to be a bit more hands-on, so to speak, especially if you have a whole skill tree devoted to cooking food, to maybe be able to at least handle said food items? Or have some kind of cooking animation of the various dishes? Maybe the ability to actually eat something instead of hitting a menu button?

Why not have the opportunity to do more with the base building mechanics? You literally start out as a miner, you should be able to at least make some kind of crude mine. What about hydroponics? What about being able to create a base on a watery planet? I would enjoy setting up a tiny illegal aurora manufacturing base somewhere and ferrying it to Neon.

Probably the most egregious though is the complete lack of dimensionality from any character.
The most interesting character was Ron Hope, and he was a side character that interacted with you for all of 3 missions. None of the Constellation characters are interesting, despite BGS clearly trying to make them so. Andreja's first encounter has her killing Va'ruun zealots, and she explains how she feels like she doesn't fit in because she's an assassin type, and that you shouldn't tell the other Constellation members about what happened. But then you, the player, will wipe out hundreds of characters in front of Andreja and, say, Barrett, and they both kill and her dialogue remains the same. There is a lack of connection between the very sanitized dialogue and what actually happens in the game.
The best character is Vasco, because at least as a robot it has an excuse to have the same 5-10 canned phrases.
They try to make Barrett this very goofy lackadaisical wild card type that gets into all sorts of trouble but there is no instance where he will make an independent decision during some scripted or unscripted encounter.
Neon and the inhabitants of it are supposed to be full of vice and intrigue and danger but the worst thing that happens is two Disciples deciding to run through the main shopway and start shooting at you. Sara Coe reads the same poem every 5 lines. Sam Coe yells at her to clean up her room when you are in a ship with no rooms to clean. Compared to the NPC interactions of a game like RDR2, there is absolutely no life in these characters that makes you want to like or care about them.

And I get it. There's a lot of things that would take a lot of effort to develop, especially given the constraints of using an existing game engine. But, it really is hard to excuse this when we are talking about BGS being owned by Microsoft (so having millions of dollars at its disposal to throw at this game), being developed for years, and being a brand new IP that has absolutely no precedents set in the way anything behaves or feels.

That's not to say I hate this game. I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy Skyrim or Fallout 4. It can be played and can to some extent be entertaining. But it's hard to see this game and not think of all the things it could have been.

So I love space games. I have put at least 100 hours into this one. It is one of the most frustrating games I've played in a long time, because I [i]see[/i] the potential for this game to be good, and yet it falls woefully short at everything it aims to improve from other games in the genre. I don't want to touch on the obvious things that other people have mentioned, such as the plethora of loading screens and the lack of storyline variety. The towns are Oblivion small, with one city per planet. I understand that the game is already large to begin with, but when there is one small town per planet with maybe 50 NPCs max, you lose a lot of the intended feeling of a large city. Same with the scanning for flora and fauna. There are maybe 10-15 plants per planet that you can scan. And the fact that each planet is like 3 different environments max. There are things left out that seem like they wouldn't have been that difficult to implement, like giving Sara books when she asks for them. Or being able to choose and see your patches on your constellation suit as you earn them (which was a promised feature by the way). The ship-play is woefully lacking. It's nice that you can build whatever sort of ship you want but the lack of actual time you spend piloting that ship is extremely limited, and not engaging at all. Sure, you don't want to have the E:D style of seamless spaceflight and landing because you aren't hosting everyone on some external server. But at least it should be reasonable to fly through a system, or fly over a planet and land less than 500 meters to the left rather than having to go through 4 different menus. The dog-fighting is also extremely unsatisfying, where you are left spamming missiles and waiting for a ship to fly through your line of fire. All this technology and you can't shoot behind you? The crafting gameplay loop is the same that it's been for every BGS game, which is to say extremely boring. This is not new and I'm not surprised to see it hasn't been changed. It would have been nice to be a bit more hands-on, so to speak, especially if you have a whole skill tree devoted to cooking food, to maybe be able to at least handle said food items? Or have some kind of cooking animation of the various dishes? Maybe the ability to actually eat something instead of hitting a menu button? Why not have the opportunity to do more with the base building mechanics? You literally start out as a miner, you should be able to at least make some kind of crude mine. What about hydroponics? What about being able to create a base on a watery planet? I would enjoy setting up a tiny illegal aurora manufacturing base somewhere and ferrying it to Neon. Probably the most egregious though is the complete lack of dimensionality from any character. The most interesting character was Ron Hope, and he was a side character that interacted with you for all of 3 missions. None of the Constellation characters are [i]interesting[/i], despite BGS clearly trying to make them so. Andreja's first encounter has her killing Va'ruun zealots, and she explains how she feels like she doesn't fit in because she's an assassin type, and that you shouldn't tell the other Constellation members about what happened. But then you, the player, will wipe out hundreds of characters in front of Andreja and, say, Barrett, and they both kill and her dialogue remains the same. There is a lack of connection between the very sanitized dialogue and what actually happens in the game. The best character is Vasco, because at least as a robot it has an excuse to have the same 5-10 canned phrases. They try to make Barrett this very goofy lackadaisical wild card type that gets into all sorts of trouble but there is no instance where he will make an independent decision during some scripted or unscripted encounter. Neon and the inhabitants of it are supposed to be full of vice and intrigue and danger but the worst thing that happens is two Disciples deciding to run through the main shopway and start shooting at you. Sara Coe reads the same poem every 5 lines. Sam Coe yells at her to clean up her room when you are in a ship with no rooms to clean. Compared to the NPC interactions of a game like RDR2, there is absolutely no life in these characters that makes you want to like or care about them. And I get it. There's a lot of things that would take a lot of effort to develop, especially given the constraints of using an existing game engine. But, it really is hard to excuse this when we are talking about BGS being owned by Microsoft (so having millions of dollars at its disposal to throw at this game), being developed for years, and being a brand new IP that has absolutely no precedents set in the way anything behaves or feels. That's not to say I hate this game. I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy Skyrim or Fallout 4. It can be played and can to some extent be entertaining. But it's hard to see this game and not think of all the things it could have been.