This game to me is a reference class in many aspects:
Sound Design - near perfect sounds, that even after a decade feels fresh and allows you to immediately to identify what's what, spatially and semantically
Cockpit UI design - look at something, and it activates. This is master-class design for VR, and for ten years nobody else could touch it. The color palette - perfect.
VR - this is still *the* reference VR space game, on par with Alyx, just sit-down-view-only (meaning playing this with VR controllers isn't a great experience at all)
HOTAS support - few games can match the poise and prowess in which players can configure their favorite control devices. I've added a full high-end HOTAS setup, complete with Voice Attack support, and it works well. Originally, the game only supported only 32 buttons per device, Thankfully (after years) this silly restriction was lifted. Identification of which command is linked to which button is strangely limited (so you don't know which Button 1 it links to if you have multiple devices) - the configuration screens still work great, though.
Private Co-op and Massively Open (PvP). I'm a co-op wuss. Playing Elite with friends is fun, and since you can play with your friends in a private universe, you are protected from griefers. Oh, and like flights sims, playing in VR gives you an incredible advantage (provided, of course, that you can hold in your lunch. Some cockpits can induce strong vertigo in VR. Make sure that you are sitting down)
An ocean wide, an inch deep - storywise, ED can be quite shallow and grindy. After 50+ hours I must say that I don't mind, but if you come here for story-telling, this isn't your game. Story is the one inch deep part. Exploring, on the other hand, that's the mile wide. And ED delivers in spades.
Kicking your customers in the teeth - for reasons I never understood, Frontier (the producers) did not implement VR support for the "Space Legs" part of elite. While flying space ships is still the reference in VR, walking (on a planet or inside a space station or carrier) isn't supported in VR (driving a planetary vehicle, strangely enough, is supported).
Also, Frontier has in the past tried to alter or "enhance" many game mechanics. Some have fallen flat, while others positively cratered. "Power Play", "Thargoids" and "Mercenary Career" aren't what people have expected. The basic Space Miner, Spasce Trader and Space Bounty Hunter mechanics, however, have been strong since day one
(Thank God) no pay to win - there are many, MANY things that Frontier will sell you, thankfully all of them are optical only. And unlike another famous (perennially alpha?) space-themed game, you earn your ships in ED the grindy way: trade, bounty or mining.
So, yeah, a strange, near schitzophrenic experience. If you own VR and a good HOTAS, I think you owe it to yourself to at least jump in, and marvel at the incredible universe. And also marvel at the chances flushed down a sanitation device when Frontier decided to go pancace for the dirtside parts (Mercenary FPS).
TL,DR: It's a really good game that's being held back from greatness by it's lesser demons. So close. What a pity. Still good, thogh.
