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.

I have exactly 3500 hours into this game as of this writing. But it's not this game that I'm playing. I am playing Reforged Eden 2, a scenario built around this game. I played vanilla Empyrion for awhile and started getting kind of bored with it. But Reforged Eden 1 came along and totally hooked me. Then came Reforged Eden 2 and I will never put this game down. I spend almost every waking moment playing it. I've played Space Engineers, Elite Dangerous, No man's sky and most of the other good space games but nothing even comes close to what you can do in this game. After playing it for about a year I still get surprises now and then, something I didn't know existed in the game. The guy that created RE2 is amazing, he is very imaginative and creative and I feel he has a very kind heart. He is a very good story teller, you can see it in his long missions. Yes, I highly recommend this game but without RE2 I feel I would be playing something else by now. :)

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.

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.

In comparison to allot of building based space games this can be counted among the few that actually has a universe that feels alive. I think that these game designers understand that not everyone wants to play online with other people, and as a matter of fact want to get away from people. At least in this game their are npcs to interact with and fight with. The NPCs seems to be a working progress but the game doesn't feel completely empty like Space Engineers does. So far Im very happy,

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.

It’s Minecraft on steroids in space.
To me, it felt like Space Engineers with actual PvE, but less elaborate Space Lego.
It’s a buggy, horrific, low grafics and still needs optimization mess.
But I love it.
Wanna combat? Done. Wanna space combat? Done. Want to assault fortificartions? Done. Want to dig a tunel and attaçk from below? Done. Want to build? Done Want to explore, collect and set a point base? Done. Want to recycle ships? Done. Want to take a planet? Of course. Want to fight against harsh enviroments, enemies? Done. Want a prebuilt ship? Done. Want to modify it? Done. Want to build it from zero? Done. Want to fight against massive battleships, or millons of drones? Done. And some views... are amazing.
If you love games like Space Engineers you should also love Empyrion. It is more of a game and less engineering but you can still build block by block. More to see and do, in a janky way but it's not bad. Space is full of ships that will wreck you if you're not prepared. The updated galaxy map is really good, hundreds of star systems, maybe more. The ability to build everything from scratch is what makes this game amazing. If you've never played before, take the missions with a grain of salt. They're not the best so if you're brand new to the game, don't worry about following them too closely. Just start exploring and see what's out there. I start a new game every few months because it's so much fun exploring and coming up with new builds depending on what resources are available.
The universe is fixed. But nothing is as amazing as taking your own build ship out in the air to vacuum. Really it is as seamless as No Man’s Sky in that respect. But unlike No Man’s Sky, forgetting to put a tiny airtight block in your ship makes it leak air. The craft building is almost as good as planet nomads, as planet nomads allows you to build monorails etc. using physics rules. There is a lot of story and plots. And there is a very big community. You can also be very lazy and use someone else's blueprints from the workshop. There is no fabrication automation or stuff like that.
Again, it’s janky. There's a lot of rough edges. That being said, it's also charming and enjoyable with a group of friends. There's a lot of points of interest that people have added over time that got folded into the game, so there's a fair amount to explore and sometimes to break in funny ways. The Reforged Eden mod adds a lot to the game but I'd recommend doing a vanilla playthrough at some point. I played vanilla for a long time before playing Reforged Eden and it felt like a brand new game with similar mechanics. Some might recommend jumping right into Reforged Eden but I had a blast doing everything I could with the vanilla, and then exploring the mods. Don't hesitate to cheat yourself in resources in response to janky mechanics. It's the kind of game where you make your own fun.
Reforged Eden itself does add a lot of balance changes to the gameplay, but it also reworks and adds a LOT of storylines, missions, quests, and NPC factions. It's a total overhaul and addition to the base game. The easiest way to describe it is imagine the base game as like a creative mode or sandbox mode where you are given a basic tutorial on how to do X, Y, Z but then just left to your own devices to build/explore/craft whatever you want. Reforged Eden is like playing the game in Survival Mode, where there is an actual storyline, quests, rewards, objectives, RPG elements, balancing changes, and a generally good feeling of progression with an end goal. It blows vanilla out of the water. It's criminal that they haven't hired them or worked with them to move the game more in line with RE as a base.
I like it very much. See it as an early access game (despite the full release) with potential. Try the Reforged Eden mod for more fun. It's a lot of fun, as long as you are willing to tolerate the jankyness. If you're the kind of person who can easily spend 200+ hours in a survival-crafting game, go for it. It goes for sale super cheap very often. 100% worth it.
8/10