It's quite good, but it is what you make of it.
The best thing about it is how the ships controls, how they feel, it's a very good basis to build on as I am sure they will.
It gets even better if you happen to have a joystick, but it handles well even with the standard mouse control, way better than you would expect. Or you could use a xbox controller if that is your fancy, or do what I did, a joystick + G13 gamepad.
This guy https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjgBlzLxsgbVuHfZPe0AeIg has a series called "Flight assist off" it gives you an idea of what you could be doing out there, even though most of them are from beta they are still very informative.
It's a sandbox, a huge, gigantic, galactic sandbox. It is easy to get lost out there, personally I have not seen any players since I started out, as I just went off in one direction until I found a perfect trading system which I claimed as my own. It's not fast or have tons of action all the time, but when you do end up fighting it can be very tense depending on the situation.
But you don't need to get into a fight to feel the heat, you could just be jumping around exploring the area just to discover that your fuel scoop does not work on T-class stars and you now don't have enough fuel to go anywhere. So the only thing left to do is to crash into the star in a blaze of glory and accept the loss of all that exploring data.
Or realize that selling your shields to replace it with cargo space was a really bad idea when a pirate opens fire at you with 100 tons of gold at stake.
It's a game that is easy enough for most people to get into, but at the same time have a lot of things that you could master and customize to fit your playstyle. Even things like doing an efficient hypercruise jump is very rewarding when pulled off since it can save you up to several minutes of travel time, and it is worth learning if you trade a lot because time is money friend.
Also if you want to truly immerse yourself in this world, get voiceattack with elite voice pack and some VR goggles, it is actually quite impressive what they have done with it.
It's not perfect, but the gameplay is solid and well done, so if you are somewhat interested in spacesim or space truckin you ought to check this one out.