Look, honestly, its one of those times I'd say a neutral review is in order, because the tension, the progression- from the very start to what I'd roughly consider 'midgame' (a very vague term because this game is exceptionally freeform, but for my example, roughly when you get your first crewmember) its great- theres quirks just about everywhere, things that seem important that aren't, things that are important but aren't made clear, etc- its great in the sense of exploration and giving you space to be player directed.

The problems come up when you get your ship larger- wanna do a complicated airlock that isn't your ship's docking port? You have literally only on and off switches to do that. They can be 'kinda' complicated and 'sorta' automated, but ultimately you'll be probably toggling two switches and its very... involved to operate it. And for some reason- at least in my game, the airlock ALWAYS leaked air despite the doors being closed. VERY frustrating- Only if the exterior door was unpowered did it not leak air.
You want your crew to consistently work during their working time? No dice, they'll more or less do whatever they want even with orders waiting- I didn't have this happen too often, and I'm willing to wave this off- if the game wants to simulate complex characters, then well- your workers might not work every hour of the day they're assigned, perfectly fine. I actually semi like this 'feature' if that is what it is.
You want your crewmember to actually use their freetime rather than sleeping during it? Well, thats another thing you can't really control. Also fine, but just a touch irritating- considering the idea is they'd fulfill their other needs during that freetime- their priorities seem always just a little wrong- he's tired, but he also needs to go take a dump- why not? oh, but he's also dirty, so he cleans himself first, then goes to sleep, and presumably he'll wake up to take a dump later, disrupting the actual sleep periods- which uhh, has gameplay detriments because they sleep LESS EFFECTIVELY during a non sleep shift!

Oh, and the fast forward option isn't really 'fast forwards' its more like 'skip these hours and depending on what actions are being done, increase attributes' which is SO very WRONG. Useful for training skills, TERRIBLE for actual gameplay- where you have to 'game' your fastfoward usage. I'd rather the game check all the facilities available on your ship and decrease requisite needs to zero when fast forwarding at this point. And time on the fastest -not fast forwards- speed is remarkably slow- you have 'a lot' of time. A lot of waiting. I didn't mind this, until I realized how incapable of the NPCS are to handling their own needs- even during freetime when they're suppose to. Yea, I'm not gonna lie, my initial plan to play this game was to make a long hauler to haul cargo between places and almost handle it like sims during the journey- a task thats implied to take in game days depending on where but I still haven't gotten there quite yet- but the need management is awful because it screws you on both fronts- either you play through the time legitimately and jump between your characters as you cycle through their needs- which wouldn't give much gameplay. Or you fastfowards and have to sorta do 'batches' of handling needs with the pure intent to just get there.

Then, finally, performance... The job assignment system is... Extremely inefficient. I don't have words to begin- if you order enough things to happen, your game will crawl as your crew and characters check 'every' single one of them for availability- now, this is partially because every freaking order is handled in like three parts- you order floor to be constructed. So what happens is they first check if it can be immediately done- makes sense... But typically, it cannot- it needs the floors delivered. Fine- you can either have loose floors from what you were salvaging or carried them with you (there are problems on this too- like certain items not stacking and or otherwise inefficencies that are painful regarding constructions.) Except for the fact that it first tries to do EVERY single floor job- which will lag your game as they replan to bring the floors to the job- and then they will bring floors ONE BY ONE (A item that stacks to five- oh and this also affects hauling floors) to each of the planned floors. So either you take direct control and tell them to pick up as many floors as they can, or you watch as you visibly age in the inky blackness of your unfinished construction slowly gets every floor delivered. Then it can start building. (EDIT:BTW planned walls block character movement as if they're actually there, and doors do it too, but only occasionally- pretty annoying.)

but wait, that needs battery power in your tools- and if you forget- then suddenly your guy is just twiddling his thumbs wasting time and leaving you confused- you learn to check their tools battery percentages pretty fast after noticing they're not working once you figure it out, but changing batteries is a three action interaction- you open the tool, you open the container with your batteries, you swap batteries. Furthermore, they can't tend to their own suit needs either- they won't even take off their helmet if they're in a safe environment to do so to conserve suit resources. I've seen NPCs suffocate ON STATIONS (extremely rare, they do usually take off their helmet once their suit is out of resources if they're in a safe zone, but still) because of this situation.

The situation is that all of these are individual situations that aren't 'too' big of a problem when individually confronted, but all of them at the same time? In a game asking you to operate a nuclear reactor? With the reward being 'the game will behave itself a little better' if you consistently solve each of these problems as they come up 'for' the game?

The game is excellent when you're a single guy on a scrapped together ship- clunky, but it feels a lot more meaningful when you're a solo guy whos doing literially everything you can to get out of a situation of being broke and effectively doing death runs to change your fate. Its once you start dreaming bigger, wanting to do more than cobble- wanting to make yourself a identity- is where the game starts fumbling.

Despite all of this, if there is one thing you can take away from my review- is that I have enjoyed my time with it despite my grouchiness with the systems. There is excellence here. But ultimately I think that until things are worked on even further than they have been- I would never think to recommend this to someone who asks for a space game- This has the bones to be one of the very best ones out there, it does so many things better than a innumerable number of other games- and if not better, at least individually worthwhile. This is a great game, but only worthwhile to those who have looked at it, and said 'This game is way too cool to pass up on' and is willing to bear with all of the difficulties with just playing the game that don't come from trying to survive in the game.

First game I returned.

- blurry pixel-graphics makes my eyes and head hurt
- finicky controls
- very bad tutorial
- very bad ingame manuals
- all the female characters look like Karens
- upon character creation you get hit with the pronouns

I keep coming back to this game, it's just fun scavenging one ship to expand your own rig, the game loop is fun once you understand how to keep yourself alive in space.