The game polarizes. There are some people (a lot of the folks here) who like it. A lot.
There are other people (quite a few of them are next door, in Dangerous Discussions), who claim to hate it. A lot. Although for people who claim to hate this game, they seem to be spending an awful lot of time on it....
As for getting it - I'm well inside the 'do it' faction. Although, tbh, 30 bucks won't get you far. As the saying goes, the first dose is free. IIRC, you could run the tutorial missions for free. You can get CQC/Arena (same thing) for ~8 bucks. Base game is 30 bucks, Horizons another 30 (or get both and have a few goodies thrown in). As usual, people will expect a discount somewhere in autumn/winter (either 2.2. release, black friday, christmas or any combination of those).
If you're unsure, go over to Youtube and check out a few of the videos - for a general introduction, I'd recommend the
Ghost Giraffe channel, although they have (and use) a lot of Horizons (i.e. planetary landing) stuff. But their videos show one facette of ED very nicely: there is no mission/story line to follow (or rather, the story line a.k.a. Background Story is too large for any single player to follow), you have to make your own stories. Some people like it, others don't.
And finally: if you decide to buy the game, consider buying it directly from Frontier Developments. Steam gives the game exposure, sure - but they're also taking a large cut off the game price.
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Oh, and if your forum name is in any way indicative of your age - you're amongst the younger players then
We have quite a few dads and granddads here, the oldest player I've seen lately here in the newcomers forum is 70...