Star Citizen is a game that has been in development since around 2013.
It claims to be a space simulator, MMORPG, FPS and a bunch of other things.

More than 10 years later, 750 million USD invested, what have we got?

The good#

The game looks visually good, even if overly generic “space stuff”.

Nothing much else to say on that point, the ships have real thought put in their design, starting environment seem to be somewhat consistent and hand built (tho I noticed there are really a lot of food shops everywhere for some reason).

There is also a good already existing selection of ships, all having their own stats and benefits, which you can also upgrade.

The bad#

Not a single of my sessions was what I would call a good experience.

From server crashes, game crashes, contracts items magically disappearing during loading, contracts themselves disappearing after a game crash, ships going through the floor, getting kicked out of your ship for no reason at all and having a fine, the list just goes on.

As of now, the game feels like any Unreal Engine asset flip of a “space stuff” game.

The game is mostly empty, contracts get repetitive really quickly, you can barely talk to any NPC and despite having those, you have to shop using touchscreens (which barely work if the server is a tad laggy).

Nothing in the game is really explained, it feels like there is feature creep even though no single feature is actually finished and in a working state.

The performance is also a huge issue, never going above 45fps, even when no players are around (and it goes without saying my computer specs blows the minimal ones out of the water).

The ugly#

The game itself requires putting on the table at least 50€ to get into, the more expensive starter pack being at more than 1300€ as of time of writing.

In normal times, I wouldn’t have an issue having a store where you can buy things to support the development of a game, however, we’re talking about one that is possibly one of the most expensive game of all time, where in the end, there barely is a game.

The fact that if you lose in-game something you bought with real money for 250€, you lose it permanently, is also the cherry on top.

They also use the “we are in development” as a shield to deflect any criticism of the game, which honestly cannot be done when talking about a game having this much money poured into it and already that much development time.

So, conclusion: don’t waste your money.

Star Citizen is a game that will continue with its unscoped development and probably will never release in a stable or playable form anytime soon, if ever.

It’s an already seen tale of a game too ambitious to be done in one go, with developers trying to do it anyway.

I’ve seen Bethesda games with fewer bugs.

Happy new year, btw.