After putting 500 hours into Elite i think its time for me to review it, i gonna be reviewing the basegame here, if you want to check my honest opinion about odyssey you can check that one on the dlc page, that one is a negative for very obvious reasons, but the base Elite Dangerous is indeed a positive.

Graphics:

With years and updates the graphics and texture quality as well as other elements have improved a lot, planets look gorgeous, stars look incredible, the space ports even if they are a bit copypasted and most of them look the same, are still pretty well detailed, quality wise the graphics are obviously not some AAA stuff, but quite high on the double A standarts, they will age well with time if no further graphical updates are planned for the future. This gets even better when you play the game on VR (Which is how i play 99% of the time).
Odyssey did make some improvements on the visuals, but i have to admit that some improvements are worse than Horizons had to offer, some are better.

Story:

There is no story, you are playing Elite Dangerous bro, you create your own story and do your own plans and adventures. Its a space sim, you can be a trader, a pirate, an explorer, a miner, a bounty hunter, a military agent, a courier, a xeno hunter, etc. Or you can be all in one (Which is how i like to play mostly). But there is no main plot here to follow or any main quest, it just does not exist and it doesn't need one. You basically set your own goals and focus on activities you like to do.

Quests:

The quality of the quests is the same as you would expect in an mmo, if you played Star Citizen or EVE Online, well its the same case here. Go here kill this pirate, go there deliver message or goods, bring us goods, kill x number of civilian ships, aid us in the war by killing 10-20 ships of our enemies in conflict zones, bring passangers to a destination, etc. This type of quests offer not much in terms of variety and can get repetitive, but since its a space sim that can be considered an mmo, i gonna consider it as something "acceptable". Do not expect epic quests here, this is not Mass Effect after all.

Gameplay:

And here, is where this game shines, you have a good variety of gameplay options for mutliple purposes. You have a good amount of ships to choose, one work better for one type of activity, some work better for other activities, some are balanced for multipurpose. I personally run a Krait MKII, and i absolutely fell in love with this ship, its sexy, it fits for multiple purposes, exceels in combat and xeno hunting, does decent for exploring, a masterpiece of a ship in my opinion.

You can land in surfaces, deploy an SRV (land vehicle), explore the surface of planets, fight drones and humans in that vehicle, mine materials and minerals, and just have fun.

You can go to the other side of the milky way and explore systems that were never visited before by other players, discover new planets and earn a living as an explorer.

You can engage in combats with both npcs and players (I recommend not enganging with players till you have a decent combat ship and skills), npcs can be hostile (pirates), neutral or friendly depending on your reputation with factions.

You can gain reputation with factions by doing trading, bounty hunting, missions and other multiple activities.

You can join a power and advance in ranks inside the power by gaining merits.

You can engineer your ships to exceel on some activities, like upgrade your weapons and shields for combat or FSD Drive for exploration. Be warned about the overgrinding for material and engineers unlocking that can take quite a lot and be tedious. Elite is well known for being very grindy.

You can play this game fully on VR, both on your ground vehicle (SRV) and inside your ship, the exception is on foot gameplay from Odyssey but again, this review is for Elite Dangerous Horizons. Careful with the motion sickness especially on the SRV, i dont have that issue but the bouncing on ground can get many people sick.

There is just toooooo much in terms of gameplay Elite has to offer i cant just go and describe everything, it will take more than 5000 words and there is a text limit for the reviews. Just know that you are gonna get overwhelmed with content and stuff to do, and that Elite has a very hard learning curve, which is not for everyone, be patient.

Conclusions:

I play ED on VR most of the time (That is why i raged on my Odyssey review), i use voiceattack and the callisto custom voicepack, which basically install an AI that can perform actions for you if you say the orders with your voice, its 100% worth having.
The game optimization is now better as well.
Aside of the small issues with overgrinding (Materials and Reputation for aquiring system permits), some broken promises that fdev made and lack of quests variety.

I will give Elite Dangerous Horizons (Base game) a solid 7.5/10

One final thing: If you play in open beware of gankers in Deciat system, its a meme now but that first engineer is well known to be a nest of players flying overpowered battle ships picking up newer players, that can make your life miserable while trying to unlock new engineers. Fly safe o7.