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This is a nostalgia filled review but not with a rose tinted glasses, why am I even telling you this, you'll understand after reading it.
This is NOT a space sim game, this game is more appropriately classified as an open world looter shooter game with spaceships as your controllable avatar, but having said that this game :
Is the closest thing to a 2020s made sequel to the 2003 Freelancer game, a game that regarded by many as a space sim game.
So, in this game you play as a pilot and you'll follow a rather by now the usual story driven space adventures that spans multiple star systems in which are explorable with your spaceship, and also including several planet based locations that are explorable. (This doesn't mean you can explore them on foot, everything in this game is being done with your ship or on occasional circumstances you'd control a space bot)
Now, aside from visitable planets the other difference from Freelancer is that in this game you'll find many environmental puzzles to unlock loot or progress through certain parts of the story and it's all solved with your spaceship hence why this game also in a lot of times feels like a contemporary action RPG, you solve those puzzles by grabbing things, placing things into specific places and sometimes rotating objects etc... and in many of the explorable places usually there are specific location challenges that you can solve to unlock the rewards.
Speaking of exploration, this game is like Freelancer where there are explorable sectors that you have to get to other star systems by the way of Gates also very much similar to the X series, and then in the systems itself you just have to use "jump drives" to explore the system and jumping in and out from and to the explorable spots, the main spots in the systems are ether static locations, but there are also randomly generated locations like in Elite Dangerous, usually contained random locations with space wrecks and mining opportunities, or distress call from random friendly needing your help, but can also be random enemy "bases" with enemy spaceships that you can try to destroy for the XP and loot.
Now talking about rewards, as I said the game can be described as a looter shooter game, because that's also true, and this has some similarities with some space sims in the past where you can loot stuffs from destroyed ships in space but in this game this aspect has been much more intensified to the point that it resembles Diablo kind of games where you practically has to hunt for better equipments (guns, engines, armors etc) for your ship by actively seeking combat in the hopes that your defeated enemies dropped something valuable and worthwhile...
Aside from looting you can also buy and sells them in certain space stations that you would encounter throughout the game, and in fact if you want to acquire new ships you practically has to buy them from select space stations where they would only has a few of randomized selections that you can buy amongst the broader list of buyable ships in the game.
Speaking of buying, in this game you can also do space trade like in many open world other spaceship games, you'd need to buy cheap and sell expensive from and to specific stations to generate profit or you can also acquire the goods from spaceships that you destroy but there's no any dynamics to the trading system unlike in say the X games or Elite Dangerous where supply and demands would react to your trading related actions (including disrupting other traders ships), AFAIK there's no such complexity in this game, the focus is more on the looter shooter RPG thing.
So now I'm going to talk about the other aspect of the looter shooter RPG thing in this game, where like Freelancer (if my memory isn't failing me), in this game you start from a level 1 rookie and climb it up in a very RPG system, by destroying enemies and completing missions, your spaceships get bonus whenever you (the pilot, the main character) level up but there are still like 8 levels of spaceships where the only way you can level up is by buying better level ships, and for that you need to grind a bit, the grind isn't really too bad though unlike in some of the other space games that I mentioned.
What's rather unlike in other space games is that in this game your ship equipments are transferable between all other ships that you acquire and they can also be levelled up, so your level one guns can be upgraded into level maximum, and this equipment levelling is following your main character levels, not the 8 levels of ships that I talked about...
And that is provided that you have the right materials to upgrade them, which brings me to the crafting system, which follows standard contemporary >2010s open world games where you gather stuffs to craft your equipments where equipments and materials have levels of rarity and yada yada etc, materials are gathered by the looting system or you can buy them from stations.
Another RPG aspect of the game is that ships can have special weapons (abilities) and special devices that sort of letting you cast RPG esque various time and refillable energy (just like mana system in traditional RPG) constrained "spells" be it like super boost, AoE EMP jamming etc... the special devices are transferable between your ships, but the super wrapons are tied to the type of the ships, in this game there are only 3 types (or classes) of ships, each one of them has specific super wrapons and whenever you buy them they'd also has randomized "perks" that is tied to that ship, so buying 2 exact type of a ship will still gets you different "perks" and for this one aspect you're at the mercy of the RNG.
In this game you'd meet "companions" that you only see in texts and limited hand drawn conic style cutscenes (on the plus side they're all voice acted) but the companions provide you with their unique perks where you have to provide them with materials to unlock the benefits for you, further gamefying those type of "interaction" that's usually absent in space games.
I haven't finished any of the main storylines at the time of this review but so far it has been serviceable, the main story related gameplay has some variations in them in line with the location based puzzles and challenges that I mentioned previously, so it has more variability than the older games like Freelancer, the story itself is nothing to really write home about at this point of video gaming history.
Now, this game supports practically every controller hardware that usually being used to play space sims, including HOTAS and HOSAS controller system or even comboing a stuck on one hand and a mouse (or a keyboard for that matter) on the other hand... I tried to use my HOTAS for this game but I quickly conclude that while it's doable, I don't think the control system fit such config, some people said that the HOSAS is much better fit but I disagree, mainly on the basis that the game is too fast paced to be used with most modern higher end HOTAS/SAS hardware, you can do that, especially given the game also has options for auto aiming regardless of the controller, but still I feel in a game this fast paced using such expensive controller would only causing more wear and tear to them at no benefits for gameplay or immersion.
A cheap console controller is preferable IMP for this game, but even that in the default keybindings is quite limiting and has some problems (the default spaceship roll system is one of the problem with the keybinding, but I also saw that they have some preset that you can choose), long story short I conclude the game is best controlled with a mouse and keyboard control setup.
Visually the game is nice, it was using Unreal 4 which has been upgraded into Unreal 5 with modern bells and whistles including DLSS4, you can also choose to use software Lumen to enhance the Global Illumination effect on this game but as with many other games using Unreal 5 it would cost your frames.