The initial experience with the game is a fairly standard survival-management game.

You're getting hit pretty hard at the beginning and have lots and lots of actual decisions to make and establish your economy. While the first few in-game days/weeks are pretty rough and you might stumble upon some real troubles and chances of loosing after figuring out the base work stations you're left with more than half of the game to get through. It's not bad, but the end-game challenges are unfortunately mostly luck-based (except for one - the Gwendolen fight, though that one is kind of random as well if you made some "bad" leveling up decision).

To be more specific, my biggest beef for the game lays in it's not-really-predictable test system. When the player has some test to make, mostly during exploration and story events, he's given the information about skills that will be used there (and it's good). But while the test is done, it often turns out that some skills are exclusive and others joint, and there's no real chance to prepare for the test. It's especially frustrating on the last test (no spoilers) when the player literally have no choice to resign. So some important thing just needs to be done over and over again, because there are no items to temporarily boost the stat so the player can at least prepare for something that he knows he needs to do.

As for the other aspects, fights are pretty nice, though really simple. The story is engaging and characters likable - especially the "romance" side of their development. Though the importance of their relation mechanically speaking in negligible.

Overall I liked the game but I would definitely like to see more "puzzle" based approach to important/mandatory tests and let player boost their abilities if they have to redo something bazillion times because their crew don't have the right combination of attributes and skills.