Early Access Review

I can not recommend anyone support this payment model, and I'll tell you why.

I don't mind the price, people pay full price for WoW expansions every 2 years or whatever, this can be priced at 38€ or more, fine with me.



What isn't fine with me, is what they're delivering for that money. WoW expansions, to stay with that example, contain most of the content off the bat. Blizzard don't deliver 2 dungeons and then promise to add the raids, open world content and PvP over the course of the year. They deliver a good amount of content off the bat, more than anyone can digest in a month at the very least, and then add additional content over the course of the expansion.



With Elite, we got "the Wings update" (a.k.a. grouping, a.k.a. a feature no other game released today would ever dream of shipping without), we got Powerplay (currency-grind, NPC annoyance, lorenerd features and little to no gameplay value), we got CQC as one update (an out-of-universe arena mode that suffered from bad matchmaking, making it essentially D.O.A.), and...I don't know, what was the fourth update? It doesn't matter, because I'm certain it didn't add any gameplay value to the game.



To finish the train of thought that started this review, not only are FDev basically selling dreams with this expansion, but they did it in the past and delivered...well, we just did all that. One could argue that WoW also has a monthly sub on top of those full-price expansions, but it doesn't really anymore (PLEX), and WoWs content is actually worth a damn at least half of the time.





Onwards, Horizons is announced, and as a first feature we get planetary landings...more empty space to do NOTHING in, great. I'm seeing the comments on Brabens videos, grown men losing their ♥♥♥♥ when Brabens ship slowly enters the atmosphere and praising this game as the best thing they've ever played- you know what? Good for them. I, sadly, play games for the gameplay, not for the scientific wonder- and while the way gravity changes the flightmodel of ships is impressive and cool, it's not gameplay content just because you can spend time doing it over and over (maybe they just don't know this?).



What else are we going to get with this "expansion"? Crafting? The fact that this hasn't been revealed together with a complete overhaul to the mining-system means either that it's gonna be terrible and save you little money while wasting tons of time, or it's gonna have exclusive items and going to be another dang thing to grind for.



Commander creation is likely not going to be more than a character creator and the ability to walk into the back of your ship and sit back down, but I guess that's worth being a cornerstone of the expansion, rather than updates to the terrible state the very core professions (trading, mining, piracy) of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game are in.



Multicrew is the only feature I am somewhat hopeful for, but my hopes are very small. Like with planetary landings, I expected it to not work well and be a mess, so when I logged in and had 40fps with stuttering on the surface of a moon, I wasn't surprised.





I gave them more money for this because I'm a stupid sucker, don't be like me.



P.S.: Apparently this bears pointing out, I have played the base game for well over 400 hours during which I have experienced most aspects of the game, and have played the expansion for a couple more off-Steam.