It's an open world game but IN SPACE and you're IN A SPACESHIP! It is fun and a fresh take on the genre, and that's important because without it it's just another open world game with shallow repetitive missions (follow trail to get orbs, shoot these things, escort this guy by shooting these things quickly) and not particularly interesting plot. For its distinctions it also inherited a large problem from space games: the amount of time spent just pressing the sublight drive button and watching your ship go from waypoint to waypoint is boring as heck.

The main characters are well written though! And the interactions between them are great! Also the combat---once you unlock a few things---is quite fun compared to similar space combat games. The capital ship battles where you fly inside them and blow them up are especially fun. However that's not enough to make me want to finish this game, especially since with the way autosaves work I lost quite a bit of progress when my game crashed.