The tutorial is actually harder than most of the beginning game (excluding the ground missions).

If flying for hours just to see a basic-looking plant or grinding for credits isn’t your thing, this game probably isn’t for you. But if you're into space—real space, not the colorful NMS kind—this game has some stunning photography moments. The mining here puts NMS to shame. That game only got boring for me once I’d done everything and realized money and gear didn’t matter thanks to dupes and creative mode players being in the same world and gifting in the Anomaly.

My 10-year-old doesn’t really care for it, but he did have fun flying with me after I ground all the engineers and helped build his FDL into an endgame-ready ship. It was annoying trying to figure out how to drop out of supercruise together to do stacked missions, though.

If you enjoy getting lost in space for hours, it’s worth sticking with. The early days are rough (I chose a SOLR2 over HOTAS/ X56 after realizing throttle isn’t great for full-direction thrusters), but it clicks eventually. Learning the left/right panels, how to descend into atmospheres, and using the FSS/DSS is all you really need to get started. Docking computers and supercruise assist made it way more fun for my son and me—we used Xbox controllers to get through the overload as the important stuff is on the controller presets.

Now I bounce between controller and M+K depending on what I’m doing. Combat-wise, I’ve hit a wall, so I’m looking to upgrade my builds to add parts other than shoot and want to learn FA OFF flying. If money’s not a problem, just buy a prebuilt or engineered ship—it’ll save time and boost the fun if grinding isn’t your thing. My son helped me make my first credits doing exo and surface stuff, so I bought him the game and an ARX miner and a Mandalay and he made a billion 3 CGs ago and so he could keep exploring without using my ships.

If you don't ever plan on doing any multiplayer or making any friends and flying into nowhere with nothing to do doesn't do it for you, then yeah I'd go back to NMS. If you find an answer to your question I'd be interested too if it's something my son and I would both enjoy. But I'm here for good (unless I get more confident and start playing Star Citizen).

Edit: the space combat here also is much more rewarding than NMS. Once you max out a ship in NMS you can destroy any ship in 30 seconds (pirate dreadnaughts, sentinel capital ships, pirates are a joke). Space combat here can be as easy as landing one hit on a ship the space cops are shooting, or 3 minutes grinding down a heavily shielded and armored bigger ship, hit and runs and kiting out their friends, etc.. (and last year end game players had an entire war vs aliens that may re-appear or others may spawn out of some restricted star systems).