From what I’ve seen of NMS, I don’t want to put $60 into it since I don’t think it will hold my interest that long, and I don’t know how well it will run on my rig. That said, I like the concept.
At the same time Empyrian is on sale for $10 and seems to scratch the same itch. Granted, it’s still at the Alpha stage, but I’m seeing a lot of comments from people rating it as better than NMS.
Can someone who’s played both confirm that is is, in fact, the better package, price notwithstanding?
I don’t know about that game, but from my brief glance it looks pretty good; another game I was keeping on my radar to satisfy the same itch is Astroneer.
Empyrion is good but far from finished. I’ve dabbled but shelved it until some unknown point in the distant future closer to release, with some polish. I’m sure you could get a lot of value out if it however.
NMS I’ve hammered about 25 hours worth so far and still looking forward to getting home tonight so I can play. It’s far more polished and complete, and kind of its own thing.
I find it very ARKish with the prospect of leaving your starting ‘island’. Like ARK it has this kind of gameplay-dynamic which makes me going on with just surviving, evolving, …flying to the moon! I’d also state that I don’t consider it as bothersome as ARK. You don’t die that often, you achieve things in a more reasonable and less masochistic way.
More ontopic: I’d doubt that the game is about exploring a galaxy… it is more about surviving and ‘conquering’ the few planets that are already in the game. But it has some sense of wonder and discovery to it. (Mabye more so if I’d have already got off the first planet…).
I was tempted to buy Subnautica instead but I decicded to go with Empyrion because it is the smaller project (?) and I imagined it might benefit from some fresh and none-discounted money…Subnautica seemed to be the game that’s meant to be played feature-complete. (Because everybody says it’s so good…!).
Now that it is discounted I’d totally buy Empyrion… it’s at least great fun while ‘working’ torwards your first vessel… and maybe for hundreds of hours more… I can’t tell yet ;-)
p.s.
okay, to be acutally helpful here: I don’t think you can fly anywhere within the first 5-6 hours of your game-time. You first have to build (really build…) your spaceship from scratch.
I’ve not played NMS… but from what I get… NMS isn’t a crafting/survival game, but a … well… planet-sightseeing-spaceship-maintenance-game? I don’t know. Empyrion is about building stuff, like building with voxel-engine building stuff. Nine planets here are’nt nine planets there (NMS)… at least nine planets here seem to be quite a lot for the start…and, as far as I know, all the planets are needed to evolve (to build more and better stuff).
It’s not that there isn’t anything to discover; it’s just not about that, it’s a survival game… in space, on the planet’s surface. Not a journey through space. (At least that is my impression after ~10 hours a playing).
Empyrion has a lot more crafting to it and also base building and starship building.
NMS has more planets and is way, way better looking and polished.
Both have pretty terrible combat, with Empyrion being less bad but still bad if that matters to you.
I like both a lot. Not sure I would put either above each other at the moment all things being equal, but $10 for Empyrion is a good deal regardless imho.
More crafty than explorey. You can set up on a planet and mine or grow crops with some base building and defence and then take your goods and sell them on other planets and get involved in some faction wars and stuff.
I was just thinking about picking up Empyrion but went with From the Depths instead. Then of course 20 minutes later I get an email saying an item (Empyrion) on my wish list is on sale.
I think I will pick up Empyrion now anyways because it’s on sale and play it later - From the Depths is just the over complicated style of game I love.