TIE Fighter is generally known to be one of the best, if the best, space simulation games; I personally can agree with a lot of that opinion (especially in term of story and flight mechanics). There's an added degree of difficulty, though, due to the titular ship you end up flying a lot of the time. For me, this translated to a lot of mission retries, even on easy, and often not of my own fault; mid-air (mid-space?) collisions are a fact of life in this game. Frustrating, yes, but worth it.

First space-sim that I played. Quite good. Somewhat weird playing it on a DS4, but manageable.
Got repetitive by the end of the main game and it just turned to bullshit during the first expansion. Advanced missiles on you is not fun, dumb wingman AI is not fun. Truly a game of its time.