It has some beautiful moments, but for the most part the gameplay is uninspired and repetitive. 80% of your time is spent staring at a wormhole animation or floating dust in super-cruise.
Best description I heard is "miles wide but inches deep".
The flight model is great, you get detected by your heat signature which depends on the power your ship is using. You can turn off subsystems (like shields) to reduce your heat signature so you can't be targeted, or dump all the heat into a piece of metal that you eject from your ship and shows up on enemy radar. Mining is great too, but overall there's no overarching progression target. In good game design progression should open up new experiences, here (after you collect enough money, which can be done in a few hours) every part of the game is accessible, and none of them lead to anything worthwhile. You just keep doing the same things with more expensive equipment.
If you don't mind 2D graphics and no multiplayer, I would recommend playing Starsector. It has pretty much the same basic gameplay loop as Elite, but it features more complex combat + ship mechanics, a more dynamic world and it allows you to setup your own colonies on newly discovered planets.
Also you don't need a powerful machine to play the game, it's runs flawlessly on my laptop in 1080p (Fedora + Intel HD520).
there is some truth in this. but people play and enjoy American Truck Simulator. Elite sometimes seems like Galaxy Truck Simulator. many similarities, including having to play a parking minigame before delivering your cargo.
