When Odyssey DLC, the mighty space feet, was released back in May, I couldn't write a proper review of it. What I ended up writing was a short snippet of how broken the game was and hence, I didn't see a reason to review, only to advise against purchasing it. Since then, Frontier has patched up the game several times, so now only one question remains: have they managed to fix the game, or is it still woefully broken?
For those, who do not know, Elite Dangerous is a space simulator, where you step into a cockpit of a ship and do stuff in space. There is no story in the game, you just fly all over the space and either explore the vastness of it or do missions inside the human-populated bubble. Or you can start mining or just do commerce, but basically, the end goal, well there really isn't one. Just go to space, make money and purchase bigger spaceships. Do missions, do combat, do trade, do mining, do everything. Oh, and it is an MMO, but not really. You are always online and can play with your friends and do PvP, but you can do private sessions or just go solo. There's a background simulation that is shared by all, but Elite isn't an MMO in the same sense as, say, World of Warcraft.
But, I digress. What about Odyssey?
As stated, Odyssey allows you to disembark from the warm embrace that is your ship. Now each space station has a public area with stores and quest givers. From the stores, you can get the brand new suits, at this moment 3 different varieties, needed for on-foot activities. There's a suit for combat, exploration, and infiltration activities. The combat suit can hold three different weapons, the exploration and infiltration suits hold a specific tool needed for the activities. The infiltration suit comes with a cutter that allows getting through locked doors and hatches, the exploration suit comes with a scanner, which can be used to take samples from biological samples found from planets. The suits can also hold two guns each, a large main gun and a small secondary gun, the combat suit hold two main guns and one secondary gun.
Exploration is pretty straightforward. You still go from system to system, scanning the planets, but now you can find biological markers during the scans. When you do find them, you land, put on your exploration gear, and try to find 3 samples of the vegetation or bacterial growth. After doing that, you can head back to a space station and sell the samples to any Vista Genomics store. That's more or less all there's to it.
The infiltration suit can be used on any mission taking you to a powered down planet base, looting a shipwreck, or any other place, whit closed doors or hatches. The Maverick suit is actually the most useful suit you can use, especially if you are doing any other mission-type besides combat. It also has enough shields to work in a combat situation.
Ground conflict zones are where the combat suit shines. They are, more or less, an expansion of the conflict zones flaring up all around the space. You either fly to the zones with your own ship or enlist to a conflict through Frontier Solutions at the space station, from where you can take a drop-ship to the battle. You do some shooting, get rewards and finally head back to cash in the money you've made. Some missions require you to clean planet bases of scavengers or pirates, so having a kitted-up combat suit comes in handy.
I haven't yet decided if the whole "specific suit for a specific task"-approach of Odyssey is a good thing or not. It adds very little to the game beyond making it a bit of a hassle of deciding what suit you should wear on any given mission. Or, like in my case, when I go to a mission, I just scout the place fist with my combat suit on, kill everyone if needed, go back to my ship to change into the Maverick suit and then just loot the mission compound. Not the sleekest of gameplays, but that's how it goes at the moment.
The gunplay is pretty decent. As you get on foot on planets with low gravity, you have to use that to your benefit, especially when battling against multiple enemies. Basically, that means rocketpack-powered jumps to higher places, like building roofs, from where you can attack your foes, as the AI doesn't utilize the jumping at all, to my knowledge. The weapons range from laser guns to rocket launchers. You have pistols, rifles, and carbines and laser, projectile, and plasma categories. Lasers are good against shields, projectiles unprotected enemies, and plasma can take both, shields and unprotected very well. The downside of plasma is, that it is a slow weapon, so you have to know how and when to use it. Consumables consist of grenades, energy chargers, and medkits. These you can loot from the bases, as well as ammo, buy from the Pioneer Supplies stores from spaceports.
Spaceports and ground bases are modular, as you'd expect. As far I know, there are only three variants of spaceports, depending on what type of port you happen to visit. The smaller ports might not have all the services available, but, as far I know, Frontier Solutions and Apex taxi services should be available from any port. Ground bases have more variation to them, depending on their size as well as their operations, i.e. if they are a mining colony or a military base for example. Their sizes vary a lot and almost all the buildings in bases can be entered and explored for loot.
Base exploration is best done during the missions to abandoned bases, as it makes things easier. As the personnel at the bases scan you rather vigorously, even if you are at a base of a faction you are allied with, it is rather easy to get caught stealing stuff. And as the only penalty for getting caught is a laser blast to a face, keeping your fingers to yourself is usually the best policy.
Speaking of dying on foot, if you are killed in a conflict zone, the game teleports you back to a dropship, which then throws you back to fight. This cycle goes on for the duration of the fight until one of the factions loses all their soldiers. Dying while getting caught transports you to a space prison, from where you have to take an Apex taxi ride back to your ship.
The Apex taxi service is a pretty nice addition, especially for the missions that take place in the system you are in. For a mere 100 credits, you can book a shuttle to take you to a mission location, which is a nice and leisurely way of doing those low threat missions. Just book a ride and let the AI fly you where you need to go. It's not necessarily something for the longer trips, you can book trips from system to system, but it is as a whole, a neat system. When you are on foot on a planet, you can call Apex any time to come to pick you up, no matter where you are, so it's not even tied to bases.
Missions can be now acquired from three different locations when you are on a space station. first off, there's the traditional job board accessed through the ship and then there are the new mission givers, who reside at the space station, and finally, the spaceport computers you can access and through which you can also modify the suit sets and do other stuff as well. If you take a mission from a mission giver, there's a possibility to haggle of the reward. The higher rank you are and the better relations you have to the faction, the higher chance you have of getting more money or engineering materials for your trouble.
So, all in all, Odyssey does give a lot more options for playing. These things are not something that will make the game any deeper or meaningful, it's all still generated stuff, just like with the ships. They don't make the story of the game any more visible, but they do offer new ways of doing stuff. In other words, as a game, Odyssey doesn't change Elite from what it was before this. If you thought Elite was a grindy game before, then Odyssey doesn't change your mind about it. Personally, I have no issues with the added content. I like it and I honestly can't see myself playing vanilla Elite anymore.
But what about the technical side of things? Has there been an improvement? Is it in a state, you should consider purchasing it? Here's where the matters turn a bit iffy.
Frontier Developments has already released several patches for Odyssey in their attempt of fixing the most glaring issues. There has been some improvement in the performance side, you can get playable framerates on low-quality settings, albeit there's still a lot of fluctuation, so there's a lot to do there. The same can be said of the graphics as well. The new render system that was meant to make the game look better hasn't yet been fixed to where it should be. Some missions can still bug out, preventing you from completing them, so you need to take that into account before embarking on them.
Another issue I have is the weapon and suit modding, which has pretty extensive, hard to get material requirements. You can upgrade the weapons and suits 4 times, each time improving their stats, like adding more shields and so on. Fully upgraded equipment also opens up engineering slots, which can be engineered by a proper engineer, just like with ships. This all would be fine, if not for the constantly rising requirements for the materials. For example, at 1st level, you need 4 different materials, 1 harders to get and 5 others. But on the second level, you need 5 harder to get and 10 others. And so on. You can probably guess where these requirements are going and it's not fun or meaningful gameplay.
Should you buy it or wait? I'd still hold out on that. Frontier is constantly fixing Odyssey, but it's not yet quite in the state I can recommend purchasing it. The planned console release is closer to winter, so I reckon they are hoping to fix it at least by then, otherwise, they have to postpone the console release till 2022. At the moment, the player base of Elite is in a bit of an odd situation, as it has been divided in two, into those who have Odyssey and those who do not. FD's intention has been to unite the two so that people could again play in the same universe, but Odyssey's broken state has prevented that as well. At some point, the graphical improvements and the new UI's are updated to base Elite as well, but as long as those things are broken, that can't happen either. So in their current plan, quite a lot is hanging on fixing Odyssey, which is hopefully something they can do.
As it is though, Odyssey is still broken, despite the many fixes it has already gotten. If you are not in a hurry to get playing on-foot content, I'd hold back until the console release. If Frontier hasn't fixed Odyssey by then, they will never fix it. That said, if there are any bigger developments in the messy case that is Odyssey, I'll keep you posted.
There are many things in Odyssey I like, but the current release, even after 3 big patches, still needs a lot of work. If all goes according to FD's plan, they'll release 2 bigger patches before they shift their main focus on the console release, during which they'll try to fix it further. If this is enough time for them to fix the game fully, I can't say.
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