My thoughts so far:
I already decided I was getting this on day one, and even then the price still shocked me, but
it does make sense if you think about it.
KSP1 was codded in someones garage with no solid plans on what it will eventually become. 2 has an actual established gave dev studio, tons of employees, huge ambition, and a long development roadmap.
I’ve racked up over 1200 hours in the first one, currently 3 hours in the sequel. There are a lot of welcome changes that couldn’t be worked around in the original codebase, so I can sort of see how this game will eventually flourish. For example, regarding building of vehicles, the interface, presentation and build logic is so much better and since I tend to spend up to an hour or more building vehicles, this makes the whole process way more enjoyable. The procedural wing system is amazing.
They also put so much polish in at this early stage already, subtle things like, UI sfx, music, tutorials, radio chatter, etc.
To address the negative reviews, it’s in early access… the end. Don’t expect an almost finish game that they decided to release a few months early. KSP1 was 10% of it’s current size when it was release into EA.
People are also knocking the performance and optimization, again, early access, optimization tends to happen once the core features are in.
I’m getting smooth frames (30-60) at 1440p, high quality, 2x AA. I’m running a i5-12600 and 6700 XT. I haven’t built anything big yet.
I’m excited to see how this goes.