I'm also flying on the English European release server (nick Gortef... duh). Well... I'm there time to times anyway.
So far my impression is so-so. Of course, there are not that much space-combat-online games around so I dunno. I used to play Jumpgate and I can't help but compare other games to that.
Anyway... I got the feeling that it tries to be both Freelancer and EVE at the same time, but does not really reach either and butt-lands in the middle.
The actual gameplay when flying is almost just like Freelancer, simple and more or less attractive. Controls respond quite well, but not perfectly IMHO.
Also it has a direct support for x52 for example but damn that thing was übersensitive. So Mouse-Keyboard for me... still @£
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On the other hand the menus and other gidwids are more to EVEs direction where ya actually have to click around a lot in order to do someting -LIKE LOOT the wrecks for cryin' out loud (I miss the automatic tractor beams Freelancer had/has). After an hour or two the menus become more familiar, and ya can see how to operate them but I'm still not that impressed. Perhaps I need even more time, I can see the potential when in station but when in space operating the interface takes a bit too much time... especially when there are loads of buggers shooting at ya.
One thing that REALLY bothered me when I found about it. The space is actually divided into restricted sectors, the player can move to another sector only by jumping. Ya can't just take yer time and fly, if ya try to do that an invisible wall comes into the way and the system tells ya to go back (and it actually bumps you back to the direction ya came from). Then again I haven't actually tried to do this after I got finished the introduction campaing so it might just have been during the introduction. I need to confirm this.
Oh yea the Introduction. Otherwise nice but there's this Nimbus sector which lags enourmously.
The story is actually quite amusing (yea it has a story). There are quite a lot of noticeable shortcuts in it (I dunno if ya could claim them to be plot holes... more like unexplained things that could have been explained on that point), but amusing nevertheless.
Welp, that's my thoughts. I can recommend that people try it though. It's free!
