That was my impressions first when I played with a controller. I changed to mouse and keyboard and it changed completly the way to play it (but not worth a 1/10 for me).
After a few run and upgrades, the game became incredible fun. 8/10

Several players plays the game, and they go more or less far, and many of them do enjoy it.
You can't pass through the very first map = it is a gameplay issue ?
I see an egocentric issue which fail to question itself, but it is my point of view.
Ok maybe the game is hard, and maybe too hard for some people, as you, but balance is not a gameplay issue. (especially during an early access ! You know what's an early access right ?)

Saying it sucks because its hard (and quite honestly it isnt even all that hard), is just absurd.

If you suck at a game, you cant blame it on the game, especially if you are a minoroty. Hell my first run i brought it a bit over 11k credits.

So yea this is a ragequit post if i ever have seen one.

Lol that guy... This game is a breeze after a while! Im surprised how easy it is once you know the ropes! Its like driving a car, does this topic guy whine that driving cars is 1/10 experience?

This game has some decent learning curve, but my God if devs would nerf it, there would be zero effort.. I find this game must be 2 times more harder when you unlock some blueprints and have some experience in weaponry and how to play.

My experience: It's not a casual game. Expect to be shot to pieces within minutes the first 10 times you start. It's too bad really, because it looks great and I love just flying around looking for stuff. But the game is designed to kick your ass when you do that. If you linger too long in one place a frigging battlecruiser shows up and blasts you into dust. It makes me wish there were other game modes you could choose...

Anyway here's the secret to the game: nothing matters but credits. Don't waste your time doing anything but collecting credits. The easiest way to get them in the early missions is to to dogfight. Which means you'll die quick, but any credits you find you keep once you're dead. Then upgrade, and up grade, an up grade. Start with the credit drop upgrade, because nothing matters but credits. After several thousands of dollars worth of upgrades, it gets a bit easier. Just upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.

Glad you have the reflexes of a rabid rattlesnake hopped up on red bull, and enjoy the "terribly easy, lulz" game, but quite frankly, there's plenty of folks that find the difficulty level rather offputting. I've had plenty of runs with absolutely jack worth showing for, as no money was dropped, and it's not so much a learning curve than it's a sheer cliff face.
Most people really don't appreciate getting curbstomped by a game over and over, and will instead go play something more fun.
Certain games like Dark Souls are hard, but at least fair and predictable. This is a RNG meatgrinder first and foremost. ...which is quite a sad thing, really. I wish the game would auto-convert at least the resources to credits upon death, so that picking up other stuff wouldn't seem so totally pointless. Combined with the fact that the upgrades follow the Blizzard school of thought with 1% improvement steps across several subsystems none of the upgrades feel like an actual upgrade until you blow plenty of points on them.

Yeah, I'm a tottery old git and obviously undeserving of this title, seeing that the self-proclaimed pro-gaming elite deems it too easy and demands further difficulty increases to divide the divine elite from the scrubs, but I'll raise my voice regardless:

It's a single player game. Would it really kill the game if you added some difficulty level below "go die in a (galaxy on) fire"? Hell, you could prolly also throw in a harder difficulty for those who are unsatisfied with the current level of punishment.

It is a bit tough i one isn't familiar with these kind of games in terms of flying combat, timeing and luck.
This game combines elements of FTL, Descent, and Freelancer.
For the last two elements one can learn to improve one's skills to get better. The pursuit part, ala FTL, is really annoying, but keeps one moving along.

I don't do as well as some others on here, I've completed 65 missions so far and have not maxed out all the upgrades... I've only made it to sector 4 or 5, don't know how many ther are, once last night, and it took 2 hours.

I'm getting my money's worth, and haven't gotten tired of it. Always driving to improve if one does not get too much bad luck.

If the last sector I made it too is always that tough, I'm not sure if I can make it pas that, but there where some items along the way I salvaged that might help... Still need to leant how that sector works... The cloaking device gave me some exagerated bravado...

I like that there is enough variety of tech stuff one can pick and utilize, so that one can develop one's own style of play...

There is some realy weird stuff out there too, but no spoilers from me... I'll keep playing, I've already gotten my money's worth and then some.... And it is only early access!

i used to think games like descent freespace 1 and 2, independence wars, etc., were too hard, but now i fondly think of them as good games even on the hardest levels. it takes experience to make you better at these games. the other posts here gave good advice. i threw away my joysticks in favor of a good gaming mouse and keyboard. my game suddenly got much much better. the advice on how to play everspace initially for credits is good, but you need lots of resources, too, to survive. you can't upgrade without resources. it took me over 30 kias to finish everspace in sector 7. good luck.

Well spoken, 100% agreement!