First, I am not saying that this is a bad game per se. It has things going for it, probably more than I managed to figure out in my 25 hours of playing.

Elite: Dangerous is a sort of sandboxy space sim with (apparently) a huge galaxy to explore. Problem is it's all procedurally generated and as a result, everything pretty much looks the same. If it has looks at all.

Let's take travel as a way to illustrate the problem. There are three 'modes' for movement: normal, supercruise and jumping. Jumping is used to move between star systems, you activate the jump, point the ship towards the star, wait for the charge and you're there. Normal movement, is for 'action', it takes place in relatively tiny bits of space where you fight, loot, etc..

And then there's supercruise, which is your way of getting around in a starsystem, as well as the mode in which you can scan the system and find planets, points of interest etc.., all in the most tedious and boring manner possible. Your surroundings are geometric shapes with a starry background and if you're lucky, a glowing round object in the distance. And you spend a LOT of time in this mode, because you need it to get anywhere and everywhere.

Mostly supercruising involves watching a number tick down. Then you arrive at a place where you slowboat do something, which mostly involves more geometrics. Maybe comparing some numbers on for trading. You then take appropriate actions through a horrible, horribly inefficient interface, some number on a screen changes, and you go to the next spot to repeat similar actions.

And sometimes you get in a fight, I guess.

It just doesn't inspire me in any way. I could trade goods, or hunt pirates, but what's the point? Moving boring looking numbers and lines? It doesn't have actual impact om the galaxy, which is pretty much static. There are factions but they don't really do anything. They aren't fundamentally different, some might tend more to crime than others which is reflected in mission offerings, but that's it. All NPCs are interchangable.

Fans of the game will tell you that this is freedom, that you get to make your own story. If I wanted to do that I'd open a Word document and start writing with actual freedom.

The problem is, stories don't take place in a vacuum, pun intended. They take place in an engaging context, in an interesting environment. Elite: Dangerous is not that, it's a collection of numbers and geometrics. Good stories have stakes, either personal or societal (or both). Elite: Dangerous does not, it's just a question of credits for a new ship.

Compounding this issue is the interface. It's unintuitive and inefficient, requiring needless buttonpressing for everything. An example is 'cockpit mode', a button that switches between combat and scanning mode. OK, but I also have weapon groups that swap between my weapons and scanners. And I can't put my weapons and scanners in the same group and then use scanning mode for scanners and weapons mode for firing lasers. The game tries to fire lasers in both scenarios and tells me I'm in the wrong mode when trying to scan.

Remapping keybinds so you have workable controls is obligatory but first you have to figure out that these buttons exist, that you need them, and that you should bind them, after which you need to determine the proper sequence in order to get it to do what you want. Which is unnecessarily complicated and more often than not requires out of game research.

Long story short, this game is not bad, but it is boring, tedious, and demands a time and effort investment into control research before you can do something that resembles playing. I already have a job, I don't need a second one without a salary, thank you.

Spent 70 hrs working and getting a new ship. Got a new ship and went out on a mission. Died and now im back to square one because my ship just gets deleted if i try to pick a different ship. I cant even recover it. What a waste of time. Not only do u just lose all ur progress but the controls are alot to manage. You need to spend at least a week just figuring out controls and even then you have no clue whats happening. Theres no tutorial. This game needs a major QOL overhaul.

3 Stars out of 5.

I've experienced nothing like the feeling of the dog fighting possible in this game - Elite Dangerous succeeds in making one of the most immersive space flight sim experiences I've ever had but fails in some very key aspects. That said here are a few plus and minuses.

Key points:

Interface. The ship Customization interface is like something from the 90s. Has no one there ever played Mechwarrior 4? That lack of ability to view all of what's on your ship at a time and the further need to go in to multiple submenus to simply change out a part is ludicrously and criminally inexcusable for a game this far along in it's lifespan. It's like they stopped at alpha testing and said, " we will make money from this; good enough, go home." The word is Iterate, people.

There are many quality of life features that should be present. But aren't:

- A freaking MARKET? Hello? It's what year in the game, and they haven't invented ordering things to be shipped to you. We can even get stuff we already own shipped to us but we can't order materials and have to waste time going and finding them? What is this backwoods, 10th century BC sh*t??

- No way to save power distribution presets. One question: Why? Can't request docking without going through two menus? Can't save ship fitting presets. Required to navigate many menus with essentially the WASD buttons.

- And here is the supposed answer: Consoles. For what seems like the sake of a desire to not create a negative imbalance for console players, the game lacks many things that should by all reason and logic, be there. This is ... not smart: we can make macros; and other game features already break this logic - IE the good keybinding mentioned below.

-The graphics are pretty nice, and the overall presentation if you have an excellent PC can be quite beautiful.

-The ability to bind multikey presses to any function however, is amazing. If you want to make firing your weapons require you to press CTRL+F+U, you can do that.

-Galaxy and star system scale is excellent. And the integration of almost seamless movement through systems and onto planets and stations is well implemented.

- Pay to win. This game IS P2W as a fact, to a large degree. I was surprised to find there was no subscription to this space MMO and this is why. The ability to purchase superior, fully fitted and free (in game) to replace ships is completely imbalanced. This coupled with the insane real world prices if you want to so much as CHANGE THE COLOR of your ship is unbelieveable.

In conclusion, the developers of Elite Dangerous have some truly inspired members of the team; unfortunately it doesn't seem like those are the people in charge of what gets implemented - or they left after initial development; which has left the game the position of just good enough to justify playing. It has it's high points but it also has its extremely frustrating low points which seem unimaginable that they haven't been fixed 10+ years into continuing to get paid to develop the game.

Frontier needs to get it together. FIX THE CONTROLLER LAYOUTS! And what is the point of a SRV if you still cook inside it on hot planets???? it overs no protection, there was no warning, i just black out and my scarab is destroyed. This whole game is garbage. the learning curb is too steep and if i need to watch youtube to learn how to play your game then its built like garbage. people want to have fun, not feel like they are going to work or need a college degree just to understand and play the game. You need to simplify it and scale it back with all the grind garbage and create a control scheme that allows a controller to do everything. fix this mess or scrap it completely. Its better that this game does not exist at all than exist like this. what a waste of money. its like watching paint dry.

Sweet game, played on ps4. But on Steam its ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass. ERRORR AFTER ERROR AFTER ERROR of connections to server issues. you cant play for more than a min before your booted. But wait it gets better. The server will say its good, and after doing all kinds of port forwarding, changing my MTU value and a bunch of other crap IT STILL isnt playable. Frontier you suck hard ass, people shouldent have to do this to play your game. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ unbelievable. Just play eve online or no mans sky bc this games team is a joke.

woulda loved to give a good review but they have the worst server connectivity i have ever seen in my life

For a game that’s been around for more than 11 years, Elite Dangerous has held up surprisingly well. It fills a unique space in the sci‑fi genre, and I honestly wish I’d tried it years ago. In many ways it feels like what a single‑player version of EVE Online could have looked like. You’re free to roam, bounty hunt in PvE, trade, or explore at your own pace. The graphics can still look great in the right moments, though they’re definitely showing their age compared to titles like No Man’s Sky or Starfield.

The scale is still one of the game’s biggest achievements. The entire Milky Way is recreated at a 1:1 ratio, and after all this time players have only explored around 0.1% of it. I didn’t venture too far outside the bubble because I wanted to upgrade ships and see what the rest of the game offered first.

I put around 60 hours into it before the repetition started to set in. I pushed on for another dozen hours hoping the gameplay loop would open up, but unfortunately the grind became too much and the content wasn’t enough to keep me hooked long‑term.

The Odyssey DLC adds more ships, upgrades, content, and the ability to land on planets, but this is also where the game’s age becomes more obvious. The engine limits are hard to ignore. It also feels like the DLC speeds up credit earning as a way to encourage players to buy it for faster progression as well as new content.
Base building is essentially an end‑game feature, which makes it hard to feel attached to anything except your ship — and even that is something you’ll eventually outgrow.

Elite Dangerous has a steep learning curve, a repetitive loop, and a noticeable lack of meaningful content once you get past the initial excitement. I enjoyed my time with it, but personally I’d rather play X4.

The real mission is completely different from tutorial. Very hard to enjoy as a rookie

looks fun but very unstable keeps crashing repetedly to the point it's unplayable

they dont do any anti cheat so the pvp community is cheating their faces off.