Arvyn

This game serves well as a teaser to aquarium fishkeeping. Its Realistic mode requires you to check in on your fishes regularly: feed them, clean the tanks, and swap filters at intervals.

The Campaign presents a good look into those from varying walks of life who wanted aquariums for one reason or another, and problems that could occur from those differing motivations and commitment. The problems presented range from people seeing the aquarium and its fishes as mere decor, fulfilling something external, to just plain bad timing in life. The challenge is balancing the fishes' need with the human want.

Well worth it just for the exploration.

Neat presentation from blending the use of first-person perspective and interactability that flows into conversations. Very contextual. Those two things helps a lot in you having a sense of being in the game.

The story and telling is very grounded, succinct, and heavy. The voice acting/direction in particular is very good, no explosives flairs.

You find a planet that you like the view of, maybe the planetrise as viewed from the moon is gorgeous that you want to make post and set up shop there. Maybe you find a rugged planet with no breathable air, no water, hostile weathers, and decided that you want to use your skills to stake a claim on it, camp on it, live on it, and dominate it.

Invest in the necessary skills and equipment to smuggle contraband, and if you don't have those to go, let yourself get caught anyway and steal away the cargo using your skills in Stealth. Manipulate guards to open locks for you. Toss a land mine in one side to guard your flank while you deal with the other, or just "Force Push" it towards the enemy, making an impromptu projectile. Instigate hostile combatants to turn on their allies. Use your skills in jetpacking to hover in place, using a machine gun and act as a man-turret. Or use that jetpacking to weave in and out of stealth and invisibility across the terrain, picking off the enemy with blades and suppressed weapons. Slow down time, hose down the enemy and pick up their weapons as they die and yours run out of ammo.

Joust your spaceship against another, making passes to make sure their tail is on your front. Invest in a skill that disables enemy's targeting against your ship as you boost the thrusters. Some ships are fast enough that you could boost away from weapon range, make quick repairs, and go back in a hit-and-run. Build a behemoth of a ship and blast away asteroids to mine ore, or depriving enemies of cover. Disable ship engines and board it. Or simply be a good enough intimidator, extorting cargo from traveling ships. Engage in piracy and gain bounty on your name, maybe even forcing you to set up remote outposts as abode. Maybe in the end, you want to atone and pay off that bounty, making service in volunteer militia. Or just double down and join organised piracy, or become a corporate fixer.

Use any or all said spoils to fund your dream home, ships, or arsenal, and again make your own way. All because you can and want to.

In many ways, it's a game about self expression. Lots of options. It's an open-ended sandbox where you can be a freewilling space ace, living out an adventure and mould your character's life as you see fit simply by your own actions. You get what you put in, all you need is creative impetus to begin.

Existing fans of past games from the studio would be pleased that it brought back plenty of older sensibilities, and overall a good step in that direction. The life-sim options are quite complete and modular. The world and how it is laid out remains as grounded and authentic as past games.

As an extension of that last point, this game is earnestly human. The world and its characters, especially those who could venture out with you, have wants: flaws, biases, pasts, hopes, and they're not afraid to indulge you in them.

A good marriage between the player's skill and the role-playing, all facilitated through the sandbox. There is little to no contrivance in the role-playing.

Want to fight for your nation? Better be good at PvP, learning the intricacies of many ships and its fittings at different scenarios and battle composition. Want to be an industrialist? Better be good at logistics, at breaking down problems into a systemic process. Oh, that gate to such-and-such system is dangerous, why? Because it's a chokepoint and pirate-y players exploit that, so watch out. Just want to do PvE missions and no PvP? Better be content with only being able to face, quite literally, a lower class of humans in the strata (you practically play as a superhuman elite), and if you don't want to buckle when being faced fellow superhuman you better shape up.

Also a facet of EVE Online is simply talking to people: the people you face, and the connections you make--even this emphasis on connection still ties well into the game's setting as a hyper-capitalistic corporate game played among the universe's elite ("game" in the general sense), i.e. the act of playing that necessitates making connections is already role-playing even without the player's conscious effort!

There is no disconnect between playing and partaking in the, and making one's own, story.

It's just a shame that the multiboxing dampens a lot of that.