I'm interested in buying this game but I'm not sure how well it works out of the box and if there is any tinkering that needs to be done.

Out of the box, a few things weren't working for me.

I had to disable shadows, as suggested in one post (see Dear GOG - Dynamic Shadows aren't supposed to be on by Default). They were bad in the original game and still are.

I then set swapinterval to 1 in the .ini to enable Vsync, as suggested in another post (see Vsync doesn't feel like its working right?).

I also had to fiddle with volumes to get a balanced sound, but I worked it out in the end (effects at three quarters, music at one quarter; the voice volume doesn't work).

Other than that, the game worked well (1280 x 1024 on an old 19 inch LCD). It was a joy to play, except, at times, for the crewmates AI on away missions, but that's as it was originally.

One more thing. I installed the mod suggested in yet another post (see HD Mod). It was totally worth it. It makes the game look as good, if not better, than Elite Force II unmodded.

Does the cheat console work like it did on the original game? I loved messing around with it.

All the commands that worked in the retail version patched to 1.2 work here.

This is no port. I have the original game and this also.
Both work on windows 10. No standard resolutions and the bugs with windows 10 are not solved Its the same identical kit just without cd keys.
Game broke sometimes and need to be reinstaled- ask for cd.