The setting kinda sucks, but the craft/build/research stuff seems pretty good so far. Also not a fan of the combat but I've been avoiding it as much as I can.
It isn't as freeform as I'd like. Empyrion tries to give you quests and you can say no and it doesn't bother you again. This one some of the tech is locked behind story stuff.
Then you do the story stuff and half if it is in arabic or something? And the english bits don't make any sense anyway.
I watched the old movie and kinda dug it because it was super wierd. Watched both new movies and thought they were utter garbage. So I decided to read the first book and it was even worse. Really nothing redeeming about the setting at all.
It looks nice though! If you like sand. There's a cool giant dildo in space you can see at night.