fraggle

Heh, fair enough. I've become quite a fan myself but I can understand why it's not everyone's cup of tea. The gameplay can become quite repetitive. I hear they're planning to overhaul some of the basic gameplay this year to try to improve things.

I think last time I sat down I managed to get my 8bitdo sfc30 pro joystick mapped to fit the ships and completed the docking tutorial, just barely. I at least admire it requiring patience, persistence, practice; I think I just lack the time in one consistent lump needed to get into it properly.

Ah, it sounds like you didn't get past the tutorial stage then? I completely understand.

I recently got my wife into playing it with me so I've been watching her experiences learning to fly a ship. It's certainly not an easy game to get into - the learning curve is almost comically steep by modern game standards. I've compared it to learning to drive a car, except you're doing it in 3D. Lots of crashing into walls, crashing into ships, etc. In her case using a proper flight stick instead of a gamepad helped a lot.

But it can be quite a bit more fun once you do get the hang of it. Particularly as a multiplayer game it plays quite nicely, though it's a shame the multicrew feature isn't available on Mac.