izigame.me

Ok,
I've finally got enough hours into this game to feel like doing a review is worthwhile so here goes.

Summary

At it's heart, I'd best describe SE as Minecraft in space with a touch of Garry's mod for physics fun. I enjoy that sort of game, so it went on my watch list until the price point matched what I was willing to pay. I bought SE a few years ago when it was much "younger" and had some issues that made playing frustrating. There are still a few issues that need to be worked out (more on that later), but I think the dev team has done a great job of keeping it moving forward.

First things first:

There is no story, just you and vast space and exploration. Some have said that this lack of story and the lack of any real "end game" type content takes away from the game and I can see where they are coming from. If you're the type of person who gets bored just building things and you want to get to a point where things just work so you can go after bad guys, then this is probably not your type of game. If you are the type of person who finds yourself annoyed at the story and such getting in the way of tinkering and seeing what you can do with what you have, then this is probably right up your alley. I cannot stress enough that this game is very much multiplayer friendly. If you can, play with others. It's way more fun to work together on things. It makes the accomplishments that much more awesome when you can show them off and have a laugh with friends when they fail miserably and possibly explosively.

Getting started

Getting started, I'd recommend watching a few "beginner's guide" videos for this game. A youtuber called "Vechs" has a really good set of videos that should do a good job of setting your expectations for your first play. Here's the first one: Space Engineers Meteor Storm Survival Episode 01. I would recommend starting in space as well. I'll explain why later, but suffice it to say it's just easier to get the hang of things and in my humble opinion more fun. Once again, I would also recommend playing with friends if you can. The basic premise is very much like minecraft: Search for resources then build cool stuff. In the beginning, you'll be building ugly simple ships that will look much like the lego creations we all probably created as kids with the "giant box of every lego piece in the house" mishmash of mismatched parts. Forgot a forward thruster? Just stick one on somewhere. Need to go faster? Slap some more thrusters on that baby. And of that leads to the next section:

Physics is fun.... most of the time

Remember when you stuck all those thrusters on your ship to make it go faster? In space .... only your wife/kids/friends will hear you scream obscenities when you realize you won't be able to slow down fast enough to keep from plowing into the asteroid you were going to mine at full speed. You. Will. Break. Everything. Just accept it. And honestly this is part of the game that I hated at first and later came to enjoy more than anything else. The things you build are yours and as ugly as they may be, your iterative design process that yielded the "Mine-o-saurus" with 8 mining heads and just the right size to get inside asteroid caves was a long one. When you crash it, it sucks. But this is what I love about it. More so than any other game I've played, I find myself playing rather conservatively sometimes with my "favorite" toys and I take care of them because I'm proud of how well they work and having to rebuild is kinda sad. I like this "attachment" and I think it alters the gameplay in a way that almost fills the void where a story might go. Now that being said there are ways to create blueprints and rebuild the ships you made more quickly, but I won't go into that here because it isn't always the best option and it is sometimes more trouble than it's worth.

Space.... the only frontier that you'll enjoy

I say this jokingly, but if I had started playing on a planet, this would probably be a very different review. Gravity sucks and they haven't gotten the physics balance where it ought to be for good gameplay in my opinion. Friction is a thing that, in space is not really a key factor. On a planet, it's everything because any rolling vehicle needs it and it just doesn't work well. Collisions cause damage, duh, right? But what if every little bump and bounce your little dune buggy hits causes damage? It does. We gave up on rolling vehicles after having more than one explode for seemingly no reason. As of this writing, wheeled vehicles are just useless except on perfectly flat terrain and that's not really much fun. Gravity makes building flying devices, arguably the greatest portion of gameplay in SE, more difficult and keeping them in one piece almost impossible. Landing without crashing, even with a good design, is very difficult. It's weird... space is far more forgiving in this aspect. You can leave a ship parked in one place with just some thrusters and a gyro and it will stay there, but in gravity, you are constantly using fuel to keep your ship in the air and even more to keep it upright and level. These two facts make mining on planet an arduous task compared to in space. We killed more good equipment trying to make something that could mine ore without blowing up than I care to count. All that being said, once you've got the hang of the game, give it a try... it's a huge challenge, but it isn't without rewards when you do get things working well enough to start to explore the planet a little more. We even had fun starting on planet and basically working to get ourselves to space before we could start exploring the stars on one play through.

Conclusion

So where does this leave us?
Pros:

Great Physics implementation (in space)
Completely open-ended building
Great cooperative multiplayer building
Challenging enough for plenty of replay value
Fairly well maintained

Cons:

On-Planet Physics is not well implemented
No real story
Enemies are a nuisance at best and tiresome interruption at worst

You should give this a shot if:

If you enjoyed minecraft and want a bit more challenge and better graphics with a space theme and more physics
If you enjoy building things in real life
if you are a meticulous kind of person who likes to design and re-design things for fun

You should probably pass on this if:

If you want a space shooter
If you really enjoy having a story to go with your game
If you are an achievement sort of person who wants to get to "the end" and feel a sense of accomplishment (spoiler alert: there isn't one)


I hope this helps make the buy/don't buy decision a little easier for someone.
-JMC