Recent reviews by Ryakna

Trading and a fighting - it's getting pretty crowded in my 'verse :)
Lots of fun - some things can be a bit grindy but how you play is really up to you.
There is a fairly steep learning curve initially but there is plenty of tutorials out there on YouTube that can point you the right way.
Options for solo and private play - these are still in the same universe but avoids having to deal with other players. However that would miss some of the best parts of ED with the community goals and dealing with real people rather than AI controlled NPC's. Also some ships allow you to crew them with other players in a co-op style.
You can be a pirate, bounty hunter, trader, explorer etc and there is a large galaxy to explore.
At around the time of writing this there is only around 0.04% of the galaxy explored after 5 years so if you want to fly out into the unknown reaches and make a name for yourself you still can.
All in all a good game with new content regularly added.
Recommended!

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tl;dr

Was promising a few years back but now broken, abandoned, and not worth your time any longer

Okay...previously i thought this would one day be a lovely little indie game.
But this is now one of the Early Access (EA) games that made me decide to pretty much never to EA again.
It was never really developed much further from my earlier review some years ago - more that the game was 'un-developed' to remove every thread of fun I previously had with it.
Previously you didn't need a rocket engineer phd to work out how to build your ship, it was reasonably intuitive for the most part. Then there was the power update and everything you thought you knew was gone. Existing Ships had to be completely redesigned - not just the power systems, as the way they worked meant they had to be spread out (wtf?) and your sleek looking cruiser was now this god awful mess of blocks. And then it would hardly move <sigh>. Building a new ship from scratch wasn't any better.
Like many others I had spent a long, long, long time working out how to build ships and how the mechanics of the game worked and while not perfect anyone could understand it fairly quickly. With the power update it made absolutely no sense. It went against all the advice and feedback a majority of the community had said, and seemed half baked. "Stuff that" he said and did it anyway and...tada you have the abandoned mess you see before you.

Look, it was fun to start and you can still get the fully fledged demo for free to play, but imho just don't bother. No one is playing it any longer - that's because the formerly active community that was funding and providing feedback to help create and improve the game was treated like a piece of poop on the bottom of the dev's shoe.
So we voted the only way we could - we put his broken piece of ♥♥♥♥♥ into the nearest garbage scow and fired it off into the nearest black hole <waves goodbye, and opens his helmet to the vacuum of space>

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(Jan 2017)
Cons: (fairly minor and remember this is still Alpha)
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Pirate stations - Systems are generated with way too many Pirate stations currently (expect this will being to change as development continues) .
The ability to switch versions (if playing on different servers at different releases) requires it to re-download that release.
Ocassionally exiting ships and getting stuck within blocks of the ship you just exited.
Not enough people know about this game...and they need to!

Pros:
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Can build and equip any sort of spaceship(s) you can design to fly, fight and/or explore - or just have sitting there looking pretty.
Fleets.
NPC faction AI.
Trading system.
Logic blocks.
Huge procedually generated systms and galaxies.
Quite stable considering this is still Alpha.
Regular content and bug fix upodates.
Dev's listen to the community.
Build tools (mirroring, block replacment etc)

Space...the final frontier...
Star-made even in Alpha hs been very enjoyable to play. You build you basic ship out of the blocks given to you when you initially log into a server. The blocks you get can vary depending on the server setup by the admins but generally there will be plenty to make your first basic ship to start exploring and mining asteroids and planets for raw materials. As you go on you can expand your ship by refining the raw materials and using these to build other components. Eventually you will be able to protect yourself or fight back the ubiqutous pirates that roam the galaxy.

There are plenty of player hosted servers to chose from - some are PvP, some role playing and others PvE
Most I have tried out have been a friendly and any griefers I have seen have appeared to been dealt with fairly quickly. You can protect you precious ships by docking to your faction home station before logging out and they are safe from pirates and any griefers that may slip past your server admins watch.

I personally have not encountered too many bugs or crashes - definitely not any that stop me from wanting to play. The game has been playable through Alpha and as I enjoy the building side I have really enjoyed it. Recent updates introduced NPC factions with AI who have there own goals and are dyanamic - logging on my server today I found the NPC 'Outcast' faction has expanded it's claimed systems to right next door to mine! Also there is a trading system now which means you can search for and buy components from other player or AI shops and put up your excess or manufactured products for sale. This has made the galaxy feel more alive. Previously all there was was pirates and pirate stations everywhere and players and due to the size of the procedually generated universe you see another player, unless you have really annoyed them, or gone to war with them :)

To summerise, if you like block building, sandbox and space this game is definitely worth looking at. This game is progressing in leaps and bounds and already is meeting a lot of it's potential.

~Ryakna~

A really enjoyable game
Played through the game on the default setting (Med).

Pros:
*Overall a great story line and gameplay
*Interesting and varied graphics
*Cutscenes help flesh out the storyline

Cons:
*Occasionally found I almost impossible to centre on an item to pick it up (generally smaller things like lockpicks/coins) even though it appears to be sitting clearly in view
*Could sometimes hear AI's like they were next to me but they were not in the nearby vicinity (eg might be around the other side of a building)
*Not long enough ...I am really slow and love to examine every nok and cranny but even so completed this in about 15 hours.
*Some minor graphics are bit 'flat' eg. baskets of fruit. It felt almost like they couldn't be bothered to finish of some of the finer details at the end which was a minor annoyance especially after the great effort they put into the rest of the graphics.

Now onto the 1999 unlock - as it said it's really hard!
But it makes you really think and work out your tactics..

Overall 4.5 out of 5