Great soundtrack, good graphics, stylistically nice, very sloppily designed, terrible controls. What a shame.
There are many many missing features that you would expect to come standard with a game like this. Like when you hit escape your only options are Main Menu and Exit. Joystick support allows for you to turn left, right, up, and down. But to accelerate, decelerate, or roll left or right, you HAVE to use keyboard buttons. And the ship doesn't handle like a ship. Once you stop moving left with your joystick or mouse, the ship immediately stops turning. There's no weight or inertia whatsoever. It feels just plain weird and cheap.
Targeting is extremely simplistic. There's no way to target the nearest ship, nearest enemy attacking you, nearest waypoint, or nearest jump gate. There are arrows around the aiming reticle that help you figure out in which direction enemy ships are, but it's just too little information. There's no way to get any information on any particular ship you are shooting at. Really from what I can tell you can't even target ships... there's just a targeting circle that surrounds an enemy ship when it gets close enough.
Sounds are ok, but there's only one sound for guns, one sound for missiles, and enemy gun fire is at the same volume (even when the enemy is far away) as the gunfire of your own ship. No stereo effects to tell help you figure out if gunfire is coming from the left or right. Everything seems like it's coming from a mono speaker.
It's a shame, because the graphics look cool, in a Borderlands kind of cell-shaded way. Voice acting is decent. The comic book style of storytelling is nice. The game has almost a film noir slant that I think is great. But the presentation is so shoddy that there's NO WAY I could ever recommend this game, even if it only costs $10.
PLAY STRIKE SUIT ZERO INSTEAD. It is a MUCH better game and I got it on Steam for only $15,99 on sale. Also, Galaxy on Fire 2 HD is not bad, and is a closer match for this type of game, which aims to be an open-ended Freelancer type game.