The Long Journey Home

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 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 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.

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.

While I do understand most of the criticism here I think if you give the game a fair chance and like taking a closer look story wise (looking for hidden information / trying stuff just for fun) you will find that The Long Journey Home has a lot of content for you to explore.
For me the game is like reading a space story with a bunch of minigames.
The Long Journey Home is much more than its minigames, but if you don't care about the lore this game is not for you.
The game kind of trolls beginners. I suggest looking for a beginners guide if you feel like the game is too hard.
(Especially the choice of ship makes a big difference )

The game is actually nice...
After finishing it for the first time (it took me 14h and three different attempts), here are my thoughts:
- Pretty and with nice music
- Hard as [email protected]%# (even in story mode)
- The tension factor is great (only felt like this playing Sunless Seas)
- The story is... Meh
- There is some value to replayability but not that much
- Not worth it's full price but I do recommend it on sales (at least 50% off)
P.s.: it is way easier if you play with a gamepad!