Elite Dangerous Review

Elite Dangerous, or ED is a game which seems to share many characteristics with it's acronym's original namesake. Both are embarrassing, affect males, eventually when word gets out about it you are subjected to pity and bullying, and can be quite frustrating at times. But luckily one of them you can choose to stop subjecting yourself to... with a little blue pill. (Hey, they chose the title. And come on, two adjectives, I am offended as a teacher of this fine and apparently terminally ill language.)

Click below to see the full review.

You take the blue pill - you stay in Wonderland 
and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. ;)

So after myself and three friends have spent more than four combined days worth of time in the game, I feel that I have something to say about it. And let me begin by saying that the game is not bad, I'm just not sure if it's good either.

So starting with the good:

• The game is quite good looking.
• Only 5ish gigs
• Allows for single, private group, and MMO play
• It is difficult but rarely unfair as long as you are paying attention at all times.
• It has a functional economy system.
• It falls generically  between action and simulation. (Ha! Generically. I made that word up and spell check didn't throw a fit... that couldn't be a real word, what kind of pompous jerk would say something like that.)
• An entire galaxy of stars to visit. No, really, like "400 billion" or so they say.
• It is a bit like a modern Freelancer, which is a grand complement.
• Combat works, its a bit simple, but it works.
• Great target tracking gimbal-HUD.
• Beautiful ships and environment, its a shame you never get to see them.
• Highly addictive and mastering it gives a sense of accomplishment.
• A high amount of detail went into little aspects of the game like equipment animations and texture detail. It's just a shame you don't get to see them more often.

The first few hours of your life are spent trapped in a ship
that doesn't even have the honor of looking as poorly designed as this.

And the bad:

• Things don't always sync up properly (movement, quests, interaction, combat), so often playing with friends is more frustrating than productive.
• The movement may be realistic, but due to things working on a scale relating to gravity and multiples of the speed of light, trying to simply reach an instanced docking point (every point is an instanced docking point so you can see how this would get old) becomes a waste of time as you need to adjust it just right so that you either waste time overshooting an objective, or creeping up to it so you don't overshoot. Once you master the blue throttle locations this is no longer a big problem though.
• Travel in the game is boring and slow, worst of all it requires lots of supervision as there are no automated go-to buttons, docking must be done manually unless you buy a module for it, crashing can instantly kill you or incur hefty fines depending on what you hit, and each solar system is huge... and they mapped an entire galaxy.................
• Going online is much like playing EVE, if you fly your best stuff expect to be ganked by a player-killer just for funzies, then have to pay a fee to get your stuff back. (luckily the fee isn't steep and is well balanced.)
• There aren't enough ships, currently there a handful of playable ships of each class, and sometimes only a single ship in a class or missing classes entirely. So expect to see lots of the same exact ships and load-outs. Everybody is unique and special in this game, just like all their friends and enemies.
• Quests sometimes break, so you can spend hours searching for things that you will never find.
• Annoyingly you must always connect to the internet to play (even in single player).
• Worse than always needing to connect, the dynamic economy is based off the online play model, so you can kiss goodbye playing single player and being a merchant... or ever being a merchant in fact as if it's a good trade run then thousands of other people will find it and run it until that gold mine dries up due to oversimplified supply/demand price driven models.
• Damage is not dynamic enough, yes your ship may look a bit beat up at times, and sometimes you take specific component damage, but it never ever seems that NPC's play by these same rules.
• Many NPCs have too much health, so it takes multiple minutes to whittle them down and when they get close to dying they ALWAYS warp away, robbing you of all possible rewards.
• Combat is, for lack of a better word, samey. every battle is just like the last and the next, you fly in circles around each other, missing most shots, and the biggest determining factor of winner is either how many more friends you brought or how much bigger your guns are.
• Playable ship designs are limited and uninspired, unlike most modern games it feels like this one was developed with fewer artists than anything else.
• NPC behavior is generally crap, as it is simple at best, and dickish at worst, but it is at least logical.
• All ships pilot like pigs in space, and can move best (but still sluggishly) in the Y axis (pitch).
• All quests happen in real time and often have short (hours or days) time limits before they auto fail you. So lets say you start a quest and have to do something in real life like, oh I don't know, go to work, and you almost finish the quest. By the time you get back you will have failed it.
• All cargo that you do not buy is illicit, and may also be illegal in your sector. So if you pick up cargo be ready to make little or negative profit as you get fined over and over again for having it. I want to keep what I kill game devs!

Watch out for that Tree! Errr Star!

In the end I want to like this game. It has potential, but truly feels like an incomplete beta test. There isn't enough to do, and what there is becomes bland as it is not written or acted out in more than a simple procedural way. The game takes the least fun parts (boring travel, long combats, being killed suddenly by higher level people/npc's, dying slowly from a broken life-support system), and forces you to endure them over and over. ED is not one of the D-Souls franchise, and so does not get bonus points for being hard or unfair. But somehow it is addictive and endearing. If you have lots of friends and enjoy greifing, this game could be a more action-packed EVE for you, form a gang and have some fun. If you don't like picking on people you can try to pick on NPC's but that's a crapshoot (literally).

Tips:

• Step 1: re-assign all the keys and continue to do so as you play, quick responses count here.
• I found bounty hunting to be the easiest AND quickest way to make money.
• Always look for things in the blue, blue throttle, blue reticles, blue rings, blue is your friend.
• UPGRADE ALL THE THINGS, it makes a world of difference.
• Know how to adjust your capacitor power settings and never neglect them, that can mean life or death.
• Oddly enough you don't 'need' many of the components your ship comes with. Cargo is a double edged sword and not needed (oddly most cargo you pick up is flagged as stolen or illegal unless you buy it and even then sometimes its still illegal. Simply put, no cargo, no random fines, but this is risk/reward), and the exploration scanner is for quick exploration. Neither are needed to do general missions. Good if you have the space for them or necessary if you are a merchant or explorer.
• If you run ammo based weapons, keep your ammo topped off every chance you get.
• ALWAYS CHECK YOUR MAX/DEPLOYED POWER LEVEL before and after buying new things, for some reason the game lets you launch your ship and over draw power. And nothing is worse than drawing your weapons for a fight only to have all systems shut off leaving you helpless.
• Energy weapons benefit from more capacitor weapon energy, other weapons don't.
• The fuel scoop may not save you much money, but it can prevent you from running out of fuel in un-colonized space where there are no gas stations.
• Mastering flight with and without flight assist can be a game changer in combat.

What this game needs to be better:

• More weapon variety. There just aren't enough that are worth using.
• A heavy weapon mount slot for torpedoes/missiles/mining equipment/mine layers separate from basic weapon mounts.
• Greater damage differences between weapon size mounts.
• More equipment which allows for specialized ship roles. Right now there are a few modules which let you do ECM and such, but that's it.
• Advanced targeting and travel computers.
• In-game purchasable paint jobs and decals.
• Tweaking to ship systems through exorbitant fees to mechanics for small bonuses to differentiate you from all the other people who have the same loadout.
• More ships, the distinction between ship manufacturers is good, but every car maker has competitors for the same markets, this should too.

Final review:

• In it's current state, not worth the $60 price tag. (buy it half off and that might be worth it)

Graphics/Art: 7/10 (looks great but nothing new here, they may make great desktop backgrounds, but won't win any design awards for original concepts)

Music: 6/10 (when you can hear it, reminiscent of Mass Effect and Star Wars)

Gameplay: 3/10 (controls are sim-ish which is fine, but does not give you the amount of control a sim setup should)

Panache: +1.5 for addictive-ness and a good sense of accomplishment through mastery, but no bonus points here for originality, story, characters, themes, emotional appeal...

Overall impression: 6.5/10 a good normal grade game, not deserving of all the hype.



And is it just me or whenever the computer says anything about the "Frame-Shift Drive" it sounds like it's talking about the "friendship drive?"