izigame.me

If you are wondering if after more than 740 hours, if I still keep this as negative review, the answer is yes.
It is just not polished enough, inconsistent and still has the same basic problems in being dependent on mods to perform any basic task.
The game mechanics are inconsistent, an example, you can move an action like turn a block on or off to a hotbar, great, and you also heave a toggle option, so it alternates between on and off. Everything you need right there. But other blocks that also have on off option don't have the toggle option. Why, why the fuc#. A simple example, take a tank, and look at the stock pile and auto fill. Just a toggle but inconsistent behavior.
Naming, daamm, after the new update for automatons, who the hack name the events on the event controller. No consistence what so ever, "Angle changed" quite a good name for an event, then we have "Hinge/Rotor Attached/Detached", wtf is that? Its like it was done by two complete different people. Just name it "Attached" or head attached.
Then you go for the actual functionality, again, seems like it was done by different people that never exchanged a single world about it with each other. Seems the initial idea was to have a single event to handle all similar blocks, which would be super good, like the "Angle changed", but then you have "Connector ready to lock", "Landing gear" locked and "Magnetic ready". Jesus just have "Ready to Lock" and "Locked". There also no event for hinge lock and rotor lock, they have lock but I think the dev that was going to develop the lock event for hinges and rotors got a day off.
See consistence, the game is not consistent and it is not polished. Simple naming and basic block info are note present in a technical game that expects you to calculate mass, weight and thrust, but it doesn't give you the info before hand. Its like going to a store, buying a super cool electric oven, installing it home and then realizing that it is 110v and you have a 220v house, "because you can only see the oven technical info after you install it", and now its fried. That is basically how the game expect you to handle energy, mass, thrust and weight. There is no info about it on the blocks, you have to build it first then you have the numbers. So calculate what you need after you build, which make the game heavily dependent on mods that give you those info before hand or keep googling info about how much thrust a Large or small Thruster has.
If you want to have cool and precise machines you can, but you can't have precise inputs because everything is done in chunks. The game allow you to manually enter specific values, like how far should a piston extend, but it completely prevents you from automating it, unless you want to learn C# just to set the distance that a piston should move, if you try to use it from a timer or something.
"Go make your creation, add connectors and rotors, hinges" well now you can't control anything as it is a separated grid and does not respond to directional inputs. But that is no issue, as you can always just get a mod to move your subgrid.
10 Years of the game, and still don't have consistence. That is it, just make it consistent. Fix the naming, add power override on Thrusters just like wheels and Gyros have.
If, you get pass all this, yes, the game still a creative game like minecraft, stationeers, factorio, and mods will keep you playing it for a good while.

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Damm, I really wish we have a neutral review on steam.
In summary, the game works, you can build whatever you want and go from ground to sun.
If you are only looking for some kind of space game where you can build the ship, mining some stuff and fight some npc or do some pvp, yes it will works fine.
The issue for me is that the game limit itself so damm hard. Almost anything you want to do you have to use a script for it. Even after the new release of the automatons, you still can't just set some very basic stuff. One very common thing is having way to much stone, so lets keep 30k and drop the rest, well only with scrips. You can't even tell which item you want to monitor.
Lets mine until 50% of the ship cargo, well unless you only have 1 cargo, you also can't. The automaton (event controller) doesn't do this basic. If you add 4 cargo to the event controller, and set it to trigger at 50%, it will behave in 2 ways.
1 - it will only fill up to 50% of any cargo and stops, even though the other 3 are empty
2 - it will fill up 3 cargos to 100%, and stop when the last one is at 50%.
So, for me, that wants to use the game to automate the game, which you should be able to, you can't really. Even the power reading from the cockpit about the battery life is wrong. Make a floor with 10 or 20 batteries, add a cockpit, it will say the time for 1 battery reading, not all battery.
And, you guess it, if you want to know if you total power is like 30% or less, you also can't.
Those small inconsistency only keeps adding up.
For a game of this genera, one would expect to at least be able to do those basic stuff.
PCU limitation, by default you can barely build a base and a ship, so you have to go manually change some hidden settings.
Which, by the way, every single game you start, you have to set everything again, from scratch. There is no option to save the settings, same for mods, so, every game you start, you have to do all the configuration again.
3º view camera from large ship, again, limits you zoon in for no reason. More annoying then fighting giant Dark Souls 3 or Elden ring bosses.
I wouldn't leave as negative review, as the game works, it does what it say it should do, but it limit it self and don't allow you to do what you want to do with the game, even though that is exactly why one would play the game. This for me is a deal breaker.
Not being able to input a specific value from a block, lets say you want to press a button and set the max speed to 257, you can't, it is either increase/decrease button which goes by chunks, or scripting. Come on, script should be used for people that want optimal performance, and do fancy calculations like having a crane with multiple joints that levels itself as you move all pistons and rotors at once. That is a nice place to have a script setting some values for each part of the crane.
But the simple ability from setting specific values from other blocks should be there by default.
The mods, like other games, are what keep the game going. But unlike factorio, where the base game does everything it should do and mods just add a ton of new things, in Space Engineers you need mods to even do basic things like reading total power or cargo, can't have filters.
The game bags you to add more blocks, like having more thrusts to be able to move a heavy ship, which will just go against the PCU limit, which makes you build small and basic.
The sensor for voxel is almost useless, even picking up thinks from the start drop pod is not reliable, you go to the container, grab some items, deposit some stone, go do some stuff, come back to deliver more stone, but for some random reason, it doesn't allow you to pick or add stuff to the inventory. This normally happens when the blocks are not connected with conveyors, which is not the case for the start drop pod.
That is the best way I can describe, the game limit itself and prevent you for doing what you want, which just go against the game play.