The Long Journey Home

I really want to love this game. It's heart is in the right place, but ultimately it ends up clumsy.
I don't mind the grind of looking for planets to land on. But there's other weird repetitive things in the game like, you make contact with an alien, then it loads a new area, just so you can hit "hail", then you load another area. Then to leave the conversation, you hit "hang up", then you have to hit "goodbye", then you have to click to go back to the ship vs ship view. Then you have to charge your hyper drive to leave the encounter. So many needless steps to get in and out of sections make the game really cumbersome. Especially when you are doing these steps over and over. They didn't get very good play tests results because I can't imagine good testers not noting this.. or maybe they didn't care. But they could have made the transitions quicker.
The battle system is frustrating as hell. And I consider myself an Asteroids aficionado. The fx are really cool. But the control scheme and mechanics are bad. You collide with an enemy and then both are just stuck there. It's not a good design.
however the music is awesome.. and I like the systems with all the personnel. I like the exploration and seeing how far it is to get home. I like the alien races a lot. I just wished the interface was tighter because it makes me not want to play it so much because its frustrating.
But still a good title to have.

I bought the game because I heard it was punishing and difficult. I see a lot of comments from people who perhaps looked at the art style and didn't realize what this game was bringing to the table... It is a rogue-like, with random generated galaxy each time. That means that sometimes, the dice gods make your life really hard. This is a feature. not a bug.
The aesthetic is a happy, optimistic future for humanity, but it also handles death, genocide, drug usage, slavery, and racism in a fairly pragmatic and sensible way.
I wont ruin too much of the story, which is discovered through multiple playthroughs, but you must accept that you will fail. and when you're playing "rogue" mode which is like ironman in similar games... you have to accept that after 6 hours on a playthrough... you may have to restart. that is the genre we're in.
Consider this my vote of confidence for this game, it challenges, and forces you to make hard decisions, sometimes bad decisions, to weigh all options against an uncertain outcome, and ultimately persevere..

I enjoyed this game.....not that I managed to get to the end, but it was quite an interesting experience all in all. It is not perfect by any means, but in my opinion the game is better than average Steam score might indicate. The difficulty is probably one of the reasons why it scores so low. You can crash into planets, your lander can get destroyed and combat is very dangerous too.....a lot of things that are usually taken for granted to be relatively easy. Diplomacy and careful risk assessment probably ensures greater longevity.

What to say about this game. This game has flavor of its own. If you like the idea of trying to scrambling with very limited resources back home, it is great game. If you are looking for some space combat simulator like FTL, it isn't that even though it has combat. Combat has in my experience been costly and difficult. Granted, you are piloting a science vessel and not a warship. You will die a lot. If you run out of hydrogen for your engines, your crew will no longer be able to produce oxygen and will sufficate. If you crash your lander hard and destroy it, you probably will die. If you shoot at every alien ship, you will die. You will die a lot before you start succeeding.
If you are the kind of person that can't feel the tension of needing to land a lander on a high gravity planet in the middle of a storm for hydrogen, you need or you'll run out of fuel, then this game probably isn't for you. I still remember all those times I slammed my lander hard into the planet on entry or had damaged thrusters that couldn't quite get me back in orbit to the ship.
Landing on planets in this game gets compared to the old game Lunar Lander. They are very similar in style but no other game that I know of captures the tension of needing to land the lander with a limited amount of fuel. Some planets you just avoid if you think it would be too hard to land on them for what resources they have. Lunar Lander was a great game for this reason. This tension was also prevalent on the first moon landings. Neil Armstrong had only a few seconds of extra fuel when he landed on the moon. Lunar Lander was much more unforgivable in comparison to this game. You can slam the lander around and it does take on damage and you can concuss the crew but it doesn't force you to have to perform feather gentle landings.
If I were trying to summarize the game, in one sentence it would be "The game is FTL with a more Lost in Space theme, better graphics and music, less focus on combat, and more focus on interacting with alien factions and resource management."
Pros
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Great graphics and music. It really captures the feeling of exploration
The different ships and crew adds variety
The game is very unforgiving but that makes the successes feel worthwhile
The game uses codes for created "random worlds". If you or a buddy came across a setup or a special event, you can play the same setup more than once.
There is a lot of tension in this game.
Cons
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If you destroy your lander, you are screwed.
Entries on to some planets are so fast that it is hard to not take some damage on your lander
You can't speed up time. This isn't really an issue unless you are trying to super save fuel by taking arching orbits to planets.
I like the game and got it for $8. I would wholly recommend it for anyone that like space exploration games. I can see why some people might find it boring but there is a lot of game here if it is right up your alley.

Honestly I think it's a fun game. Yea the controls are a bit tough to master but I actually spent time mastering moon shots in Kerbal without MECJEB so the physics on this pale in comparison.
The storyline is fun, the factions are fun, and the combat is tough but do-able if you are patient.
Replay value? Well, not so much. Yea there's new things to find each time you replay but overall the game is pretty much the same and after you beat it, your pretty much done.
My suggestion: Wait till it's on sale, and only buy it if you like to think about gravity wells and their effect on the universe....sorta...in a star-trek kind of way...

It's addicting and worth the one playthrough. I enjoyed the first ten hours and cried for the last 5 but I made it.

Not sure why all the hate on this game. Its pretty decent imo.
I like the premise behind the game and the graphics are kinda unique.
Nothing groundbreaking here, but it is still fun.
Like others, i can say the controls arent great...but i would not agree that it is "nearly unplayable" its quite playable.
And once you get used to the controls you will learn to fine tune your thrusting. I would guess the lander pods controls is what people hate. Yea i was cursing at the screen a few times, but once i got the hang of it. it was fine, and i got pretty damn good at it.
Good
1. Fun graphics
2. Story ok, premise is interesting.
3. I like how the games physics is loosely based on real world physics.
Not good
1. Shallow
2. Controls are funky, but once you get the hang of them its fine.
3. Nothing ground breaking.