The release of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey finally allows Elite Dangerous ship commanders to touch down and explore the numerous planets that populate its massive universe. The excitement and hype surrounding this expansion was palpable, but the final product that was delivered comes nowhere near being what was promised. The amount of bugs, performance issues, and sheer repetitiveness of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey should convince all fans of the game to stay as far away from this expansion as possible.
The core premise of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is to allow Elite Dangerous players to engage in planetary exploration by landing on any celestial body that they wish. From there, commanders are able to enter space stations that give them the ability to purchase new equipment and interact with other players or they can take missions that will have them completing tasks on outposts throughout the universe. Odyssey also adds a gameplay mode called Frontline that pits players against each other and NPCs in massive battles to claim control points on a planet. This was a lot to add into the game, and these features could have been fun if done correctly.
Instead, almost every new mechanic or concept that Elite Dangerous adopts is buggy or broken in some way. The largest offender is the abysmal performance that Odyssey suffers from at nearly all times. Even when a player is just exploring an area by themselves the game struggles to stay above 30 FPS. The problem is that once larger amounts of NPCs or other players get involved this number starts dropping drastically. It isn't uncommon for a game of Frontline to hover around the single digits and become essentially unplayable. On top of this Elite Dangerous: Odyssey suffers from regular server crashes and bugs that prevent missions from being completed or wipe progress.
If performance issues were the only problem that would be one thing that some extensive patching could solve, but the new content itself either doesn't work or is very boring. Exploring a planet is fun the first time that it's done, but then it quickly becomes apparent that every planet and outpost in the universe is nearly identical. Most of the planets are essentially gray space rocks with no oxygen or intelligent life to speak of and players would be hard pressed to find an outpost or settlement that has a different layout than the last five that they visited. The procedural generation of environments that was promised by developer Frontier Developments either does not exist or isn't functioning within the expectations of players, which has already been heavily criticized by fans.
Those who manage to accept a mission and go out to engage their enemies will quickly realize that it isn't worth their time. All of the mission types are simple and repetitive tasks that boil down to traveling to a planet to acquire or drop some item and then kill whatever enemies are trying to prevent that. This would be fine if combat wasn't so lackluster. Despite being able to choose from pistols, rifles, and laser based weapons, all of the guns feel underpowered and none have any kind of weight behind them. The balance of enemies in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is also strange in that some have stormtrooper-esque aim and go down in just a few shots while others are bullet sponges that can shoot the player with pinpoint precision. Even if gunplay is unbalanced and boring it somehow winds up being one of the few things in Odyssey that is functional, so that's likely the biggest draw for anyone still considering giving the content a shot.
There are so many other issues that Elite Dangerous: Odyssey suffers from that it would be difficult to catalog all of them, but the primary problems are so widespread that it's already evidence enough that the content needs serious repair. Some have compared Odyssey to the infamous launch of No Man's Sky back in 2016, and it's an apt comparison, albeit one that might be a little too generous. Elite Dangerous didn't deliver upon the many promises that were made, but, whereas No Man's Sky was still a serviceable space exploration game, there is essentially nothing in Odyssey that makes up for its many problems. Elite Dangerous fans shouldn't spend their money on Odyssey until Frontier Developments has made some serious improvements.
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey can be played on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Screen Rant was provided with a digital PC code for the purpose of this review.