1:1 scale Milky Way, 400,000,000,000 star systems to visit, with most having multiple stars and planets within. Only ~0.06% of them explored. Sounds exciting? This is the game for you. Looking to jump on for an hour for some quick exciting gameplay? This is not the game for you.

This beautifully presented (visually and in the sound departament) game plays slow, long and complex and after the initial first hours of navigating the monumental learning curve discovering what the game has to offer, it might start to seem boring. This is a game to be treated a semi-sandbox for you to create your own fun in, with the devs giving you just enough stuff happening if you can't think of something to do for yourself.

The main "story" revolves around the conflict with the alien Thargoids, but the scale of the game means I didn't see them or a sign of them even once - on purpose. I'm simply not interested in that stuff so instead I turn it into Euro Truck Simulator, but in space. Got bored of that? I'll go mining for a few hours! Got bored of that? Shoot some pirates! Got bored of that? Great. Now we can get into the best part of the game: Exploration.

Equip the right scanners, configure your ship just right and start jumping. Quickly you'll realize that all that life, the stations, the Thargoids, random cruise ships is incomprehensibly small compared to the size of the galaxy around you. Travel far enough and you drop into a boring system with nothing but a single star... until you realize that you are the first person to ever drop into that system. You scan the system and rush back to civilization to sell the exploration data, not get payed much, but who cares. Your name is now permanently displayed next to the star as the first person ever to discover it and anyone that visits it will see it too. Now let's do it again, but go even further. Now you are surrounded by undiscovered systems... Come back... go again... further and further. Now your exploration data is actually making you money too! And yet you've barely made it out of The Bubble. You learn of Colonia, a human colony of systems thousands and thousands of light years away. A region much sparsely populated, in a much more interesting part of the galaxy with discoveries ready to be... uhh... discovered all around you and the sky around you filled with bright stars unlike anything you've seen in The Bubble. You make up your mind and decide to move there and start your journey. On the way there you discover your first neutron star, your first black hole and space phenomena. After a long long journey you make it. You make yourself at home and after a while you're ready to go out into the black again. Is that an undiscovered neutron star? Next to a black hole? There's 6 more systems like that all around me?

I wonder what's more out there to see you think to yourself... and start planning the journey to the center of the universe... and then to it's farthest edges... and all you can find in-between...

All that combined with a VR headset and a HOTAS? I'm told it's a religious experience... maybe one day?

Or just disregard all that exploration nonsense and try to fly straight into a Thargoid Maelstrom and realize there might be a reason to stay in The Bubble... to try and fight for the survival of humanity... Millions of escape pods full of people suspiciously disappearing in Thargoid-controlled space never to be seen again should be plenty reason and motivation.

Personally, I'll stick to Colonia though. Whatever your path, you'll want to get yourself familiar with the wiki and 3rd party tools as the in-game functions are very much lacking for finding anything. And do make sure to find a tool to connect your game to the Elite Dangerous Data Network - the thing that ties all the community tools together - to make sure your discoveries are shared with the Elite Dangerous Star Map initiative and that the prices of goods on INARA are up-to-date.

(Odyssey is a mixed bag, I personally didn't buy it and I'm not planning to, space-legs is not my thing, make your own mind up about that part)