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..

Was low on fuel so I had to recharge near a star.
...In a system with a black hole
Didn't end well.
Instead of just destroying the ship and killing the crew, I got to see everyone get broken bones, Ripped intestines etc, while each part of the ship broke down individually.
Made me feel like an idiot for even trying and made me pity the crew I doomed.
Thumbs up for that.

Right now, and for 10 days to follow, the game is in sale at the massive discount of 90%. Given that there aren't many reviews, I'm writing mine with that in mind.
So from the get-go, you can't really go wrong for €3. I love the whole Infinite Space/FTL type space exploration sub-genre, so of course I had to try it.
It's life, Jim
For those unfamiliar, the core gameplay of The Long Journey boils down to a simple concept: You are in one place, and you need to go to another, and there are obstacles preventing you from doing so that you need to deal with. And maybe you figure out a few other things along the way. You select a four person crew, with each potential crew member bring their own expertise, and a potentially useful item. They man a spaceship and its lander, and you hop from system to system, from planet to planet, landing on those planets to gather resources. As you travel, ship systems start to break down, sometimes from wear and tear, sometimes through rough handling. The same counts for the crew, who can sustain injuries and die after acquiring five of them. While basic resources can be acquired through the mining of alien worlds, more advanced resources have to either be found, or acquired from the numerous strange, alien races in this universe. The entire game clearly had a lot of effort put into it, and frankly it looks very good. The design of your ships is detailed and imaginative, there's a little cutscene every time your lander departs and returns that looks great yet isn't too long to be annoying, the menu's look good, the aliens are all nicely animated, the planets you land on look interesting. Lots of care was put into the looks. Even the way screen artifacts pop up when you round a star a little too closely and catch a dose of radiation speaks of proper attention to detail.
But not as we know it
So now comes the obvious. No-one bought this, and reviews are mixed. The developer normally makes adventure games, and it shows. Like I said, the visual design of the game is great across the board. Aliens and crewmembers alike have clear personalities and are well-written. There's a ton of different quests to run into. Sounds great, right? Yeah, except the game really drops the ball on the entire gameplay part of the equation. While the interface looks good, it's also rather obtuse. When I'm flying around a solar system, I can't zoom out, so my course will always be wonky and waste fuel. Burning costs fuel, so the game incentivizes you to take the slow road, which isn't very exciting. Because you need to orbit a lot of planets, and then make the call if you want to visit them. So you take out the lander, and its controls are rather clunky. The game straight-up says it's better with a controller, which isn't what I'm looking for in a PC game. It's a lander minigame, a simple path so well and truly trodden down in the history of PC gaming that there are no excuses for poor controls. And it really is kind of barebones. Thus far I've always had to land on relatively flat maps, so that's not where the challenge is. Planets have different hazardous conditions, but these aren't very fun. They add little to the gameplay, and especially high winds push you around even when you've touched down, so you're sitting there firing your engine in reverse to stay put while you mine. It's tedious.
Then there's the way the game forces its negative conditions onto you. The mix between it being arbitrary and it being the result of player action is poorly defined, and negative conditions are hard to avoid, so it feels less like you're making optimal choices, and more like you're just taking whatever comes on your path. For instance, some planets have wrecks on them infested by worms (this is the only type of wreck I've seen thusfar, which is strange). You can let your pilot go out and look for loot, but they'll get worms. And worms can infest other crew as well. And they require a special cure. But the item itself isn't clean, either, so it'll infest whichever crew member uses it. So you let a member of the crew who already has worms use it, right? No, you can get worms twice. But the real kicker was when, with this knowledge, I decided to skip the wreck and just mine the resources while I was down there and not waste the trip. The pilot still got worms.
And that's this game in a nutshell. The items used for repair and healing? One use only. Also, expensive and rare. And you'd better believe wounds don't heal over time. Break your leg, and it stays broken forever. And while the equipment breakdown is at least interesting in being conditional (less mining yield on X type of planet, for instance) and can be worked around with some thought, injuries are mostly just a ticking health bar with flavor text. Whenever you start a new game, you will always meet one of the alien species who'll give you a starter quest. And the ones I've had have all been garbage player traps. Oh, just go down to this Deadly planet to retrieve some stuff for us. Oh, I'm a loanshark and expect to be paid back before you've had even the slightest opportunity to make any money. There's even a bunch of aliens who just want to be your friends, and follow you around. That's nice, right? Without fail they will crashland on some Deadly world you happen to pass by. But OK, this is a junk run anyway, the planet read-out does mention wreckage, so let's break out the lander and go get them, right? That's the point here, right? Punish the fresh start with a nice, Deadly planet visit? Right, so gravity isn't high enough that my lander is permanently stuck on the planet, which is nice (and yes, that's a thing that can happen). There's the wreck, just touch down there and get our friends. It'll be nice to actually get a no doubt fat reward for one of these punishing quests. Wait, what's that text read-out? Worms. It's another damn worm wreck. So is it just these guys crashing everywhere and spreading worms? Seems likely, with how much they crash. But why entice me with that goddamn text prompt going "your friends have crashed", basically begging me to fly down to that hellhole and help them out, only to give me the same event I get on EVERY planet with wreckage on it? Don't get me wrong, there are fun events/quests, too. But this is still a bad way to leave a first impression.
OK, but why is that still a thumbs-up?
Look, the game is €3 right now. Less if you're from someplace that isn't Europe, probably. It's hard to go wrong for that kind of money, and I consider the competence with which the visual design was put together to be worth the price of admission. And maybe, if you stick with it long enough, there's something else under the worm-infested crew and perpetually broken ship with no way of fixing it. It's too well put together for me to dismiss entirely, and this recommendation is very conditional: You won't lose anything much by trying this out while it's on sale, and it's entirely possible you'll find the mechanics of this game to be less frustrating than others. Maybe there's just a bit of a learning curve, as is usual for this genre. Oh, and here's a fun bit that shows it's not entirely a lost cause: You start every game with a seed by entering a word. So you can easily remember your seed, and maybe come back with some fore knowledge. Maybe I'll try that.
That said, outside of sale this game costs a full €30, which is completely ridiculous. Big shoes, hoop pants, water-squirting flower, honking red nose ridiculous. It's not worth that kind of money, and you'd be better off spending it on any of the many, many quality games that routinely sell for that kind of money in and out of sale.

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 )

This game punishes you for making bad decisions, taking unnecessary risks, not paying attention and requires a modicum of skill to pilot the lander in harsh environments.
It does not hold your hand every step of the way and mollycoddle you making sure everything will be OK.
Systems fail, people get sick, resources are limited and space is brutal.
Your constantly teetering on the edge and just when you think you finally might be able to make it home hubris strikes, you explode and everyone dies.
That's why people don't like this game.

What I do not like in this game is this "Lunar Lander" like minigame each time you need go down a planet and land or miner for ressources.
It might sound inconclusive, but to be fair this "Lunar Lander" minigame also adds to the game. I guess the fine line between entertainment and challence might need some more balance?
To be honest I am a bit lost here how to be constructive. The game itself is captivating. You want to succeed.
But oh boy. The game surely can say *nope you rolled a 1, now you are going to get rolled*.
So if you don't mind stubbing your toe hard during (mini)gameplay (reflexes needed!) and overcome adverse situations this might be for you. If you look for something casual maybe go for Star Control: Origins or No Man's Sky.
My suggestion might be: find some "Let's play" on Youtube and then decide.

Its a great game with a good story behind it and I would definitely play other games like this. It has relatively easy control and the planets are randomised enough that you do get a break from really hard planets with hiogh gravity