Empyrion Galactic Survival

This game… this horrible and gorgeous game — full of bugs and rough in every aspect:
An incomprehensible and terrible UI.
NPCs that get stuck on the tiniest polygon, yet somehow have perfect, instant headshot aim when they shoot at you. Quests that can’t be completed and block your progression. Enemy drones that don’t even react when you fire at them. If your friend turns on the thrusters while you’re not seated, you will clip straight through the ship’s hull and into oblivion. Generic, free 3D assets are scattered everywhere.
They took seven years just to add the ability to crouch
Many weapons still have misaligned crosshairs.
And yet, with all these flaws, after 10 years and 1,000 hours of gameplay, there’s no other game I want more to evolve and achieve the success it deserves.
After all this time, and countless memories playing with friends — memories of instant death by an invisible sniper, but also of traveling in our own handmade capital ship to another system, trying to mine zascosium from a toxic planet by deploying our hover mining vessel escorted by an armed small craft, only to spend hours fighting through a POI swarmed by abominations — I must say: this game is not for everyone.
If you’re like me and after spending the GDP of a small country on games you still can’t find another that lets you explore, exploit, and fight across the galaxy with your own creation and you’re willing to scratch beneath the surface and discover the magic in this horrible, unique game — then give it a chance.
I just hope my lifespan allows me to see it reach its true potential.

In light of the recent negative reviews(looking at you dude with 2.5h into the game but can somehow explain how 60 hours of content suck...):
It has its flaws, sure. But it's still an indie game and a labour of love. The devs are trying their best from what I can tell and I keep coming back to just enjoy space. It's better every time, no matter what people say.
If you can look past the flaws, it's fundamentally different to its contenders and offers its own unique experience that they do not or cannot.
If you can't... Fair I guess. But the rest of us love it! Give it a shot if you haven't.

DISCLAIMER:
I HIGHLY suggest playing this game with Reforged Eden 2 mod/scenario, it adds so much content, and makes the game SO much better, you have no idea.
I've gobbled up 200+ hours of this game in like a couple of weeks, and I'm honestly in love with it. Granted that I'm getting close to the endgame very soon, and it saddens me a bit, but come on, 200+ hours as a baseline for content is pretty amazing.
RE2 has a giant galaxy with a ton of factions, missions, stories, creepy spooky locations and many more other amazing things.
There are a bunch of pretty rough edges (the most jarring are probably the non-rotating night sky when you're flying around moons, while the surrounding celestial bodies ARE rotating, and the ridiculous space distances which should be measured in thousands of kilometers, instead are measured in... just kilometers. Space doesn't really feel big at all, it's quite immersion breaking). The character animations are also pretty bad, devs should probably make them a LITTLE bit better.
Anyway, with a handful of patches and adjustments, this might become the best space game currently on the market. That's coming from someone who has over 1300 hours in Elite: Dangerous and an avid Freelancer lover...

3,500 hours into this game and a decade later, guess I should leave a review huh?
Ok, so let me preface this first by stating that this is a small development studio game, like we're talking single digits, and they've designed this absolutely incredible gem of a beautifully broken game.
The very fact that a game like this, with such a small development team has been around 10 years, should tell you something. The game has wonderful bones, and honestly I've played a lot of different games of the genre and there is absolutely nothing that lets you build custom bases, ships and even capital vessels like Empyrion. There just isn't anything like it, and the community for this game is absolutely incredible. Frankly the community should be credited for at least half of the reason this game is still alive. Look over on Youtube and search Reforged Eden 2, and you will see what I mean.
That's not saying Vanilla is bad, they've just recently done a major update to vanilla that I am playing through now and so far so good!
Is this game for everyone? Absolutely not. If you are looking for something shiny and with new, sparkly graphics, play something else. If your idea of a creative building game is prefabricated, modular designs that you didn't create and blueprint yourself, then go play Starfield. If you are looking for absolutely perfect, seamless combat, with excellent melee and range alternatives, go play a AAA game like Doom.
Empyrion is a unique game, and it's not perfect, but it's certainly good enough and definitely good enough for the price. If you like survival, a bit of pew pew, and exercising creativity where there are very few limits at all, and are not afraid to face a bug or two here or there, then this is your game. It's been here for a long time, and well, it's still going and I do look forward to seeing what may happen next.

This feels like an over-ambitious project that was never finished
I love and hate this game to be honest. It's a true sandbox where combat in general is pretty crappy, Your goal is less fighting and more building, collecting things and doing your own stuff.
Storyline is poor, character animations is clunky and choppy but it is so vast with so many possibilities to build amazing things that I can't just drop it.

This is a very well rounded game. alot of fun. It can get as technical as YOU want it to get.
If you want to hang out on the starter planets with the Bobs and stay simple and play EASY and RELAXING, you can.

If you want to space travel 1,000 light years from the viking bay Bobs,, then get busy, get technical, and build a ship that can take you there. Go find an unexplored galaxy & star system where i promise you wont see any other players. Go find a nice habital planet to call your own and build to your hearts content.
If joining up with a tribe and staying on a populated planet with a community is your thing, you can do that too.
We like to get at least 400 light years away from the starters, its in teleport range but far enough out we very rarely ever see anyone.
Build mechanics can be very simple and basic to highly technical.
All depending on what YOU want to do , and WHERE you want to go.
There is NEVER any shortage of things to do. Go to close planets explore, gather resources, or go raiding POI's for goodies and get into battles with un friendly aliens who dont want you raiding their bases.
battle on foot on planets or in space with enemy ships.
but be careful, some of these alien factions are tough as nails and can kick your butt and blow up your ship..
But,,,, the tougher the alien factions, the more valuable the loot.
Some factions can be friendly and after doing a few jobs for them, they will open their stores up and trade with you.
Some factions are extremely dangerous and will attack you on sight.
Some factions space areas are pretty safe, some are extremely dangerous, some zones are even pvp. So pay attention. .
Your relationships with the aliens in your world is 95% totally based on your own interactions with those aliens.
If you attack them, be prepared for revenge. They will also send ships out and attack your base in return.
Explore with caution because there WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.
Good tutorials. It starts out easy and as you learn HOW to play the game, then gets progressively harder.
As you progess, build better weapons and better ships so you can travel further, fight & raid tougher aliens, and gather higher end materials to build even better stuff.
So you can ease into learning.
This game can literally get as tough and technical as YOU want to make it. Or be as easy and relaxing as you make it.
I highly recommend this game to all ages.
AFTER 3880 hours, its still NOT boring and we are still learning and exploring.

This game is basically minecraft in space. It has a bit more story. It's pretty easy to learn. The tutorial is only like 24 hours long and my google search history is only 80% this game. If you don't know what to do, don't worry you will only have to spend several hours figuring out the best way to do it. This is gonna be my "terrible game, would not recommend. 10,000 hours played". It's actually fun.... or addicting - I'm not sure which.