So one thing I didn't realize right away is that in the ship there is a board where the game auto stores your discoveries detective-style. It really helps provide guidance when you feel like you're out of leads or don't know what to do.

On the one hand, if you don’t enjoy the game that’s fine. It’s a masterpiece, but that doesn’t magically mean that everyone will enjoy it.

That said, if you want to enjoy it more, focus on one thing per loop, everything is designed to be completable in a single loop, (or maybe a few for the more complicated puzzles if you get stuck). And if something is frustrating, do something else.

Things really go wrong if you keep smashing your head against a brick wall or if you keep jumping around and never manage to finish anything.

We’re trained to think of death as a major failure by other games, it’s not in this one, it’s just jumping back home, repairing the ship, and starting from a central location and a known state.

It takes some getting used to. And maybe looping games isn't everyone's cup of tea(e.g. Majora's mask).

But the exploration, the knowlesge based progression, the cleverness of the story, and its delivery is absolutely brilliant.

It's a hard game to get into. Played for 2 hours on my first run and didn't know where to go.

After 2 weeks or so I tried again because everyone was recommending it to me. Now it's one of my favorites, even though it took another 2 hours before I had any idea what I was doing.

same here. i keep hearing good things and restarting the game but every time I'm just losing interest by the first hour.

The most common gripe I hear is the ship controls. It's really designed for controller, and manual space flight is kind of pointless when the autopilot can do it so much better (as long as there's nothing in the way).

It's really a game about pulling threads until you find interesting things. The ship's computer is useful for keeping track of the thread ends. Most places can be reached in a minute or so right from the main planet, although depending on where you're going you might have to wait longer to get access to what you want. There isn't really any "starting over" because what you're gathering is knowledge in your own head.

I think the hardest part initially is finding an interesting thread to pull on. I think Giant's Deep was where it started to click for me, but there's undoubtedly more.