In my opinion it is neither. Allow me to elaborate:
Let me start with this: I'm still pretty new at Elite, A bit under 72 hours total but it'll climb bit by bit every day (or at least for now)
Now on to my explanation.
Elite Dangerous has the reputation it deserves right now. The game while feeling great isn't that deep but let's start with the good parts.
Starting with the flying:
While i have played games like Elite namely Freelancer (that game is an old masterpiece seriously, if you haven't played it yet you should), Strike suit zero, X rebirth (i played it because i couldn't get Elite Dangerous at the time) and out of these games Elite feels the most free and engaging to use. I changed the pitch and roll control immediately because it felt seriously clunky to me but past that it's great how you can control nearly everything your ship does. Flight assist is great as well for flying with a feeling that you are actually flying in space.
Combat:
While i didn't really engage that much in combat (i'm a trader at heart) i do still enjoy the parts that i did, the human NPC's have a good difficulty to them at higher levels but are reasonably easy at lower levels and thus perfect to start out and invest time into it. Thargoids are a fun challenge (even though i was pretty much carried by the CMDRs i was flying with) and man do they sound good. Which brings me to my next point.
Sounds and effects:
Elite dangerous is a great looking game and sounding game. My Elite runs on mid settings considering i have a GTX 1050 and i prioritise FPS over textures. i started up ED for the first time, got in my sidewinder and thought
it's running on ultra so i went to my settings to find that the graphics were on Mid, it's funny that many games of that release time have graphics on ultra that look worse than Elite Dangerous on mid. And the sound, man that's a gem as well. I remember the first time the countdown started for the FSD and was struck with an adrenaline rush for how cool it was both in effects and sound.
Other mechanics:
Things like Asteroid Core Mining while being relatively new are engaging and fun to do (albeït tedious at times, yes i'm looking at you pulse scanner), they sound and look their part too. Cracking open an asteroid for the first time was again a great experience and i never grow tired of it.
Now let's go to the bad as well, let's not kid ourselves there's quite a few.
Bugs:
Don't get me wrong here every game has bugs but Elite has some bugs that really need to be ironed out. Like the Wing core mining bug where your charge will explode right away even though it shouldn't and the likes. Again bugs are normal so it can somewhat be excused.
The map:
Elite Dangerous has a massive and i mean MASSIVE map, but that comes with a catch. The map was clearly created by an automatic engine, this resulted in a general pattern to be present in nearly all systems. Most systems will have 1 or 2 main orbits around the sun and some lesser orbits around the main orbits. This results in a reduction of variety.
In-Game purchases:
To me this is kind of a big one but to others it most likely isn't. For me being able to customize everything is a big thing in these kind of games, i like to look good and i will skip certain ships just because i don't like how they look (the Fer-De-Lance for example). But any and all vanity is locked behind a paywall. Elite Dangerous is certainly not expensive (25 euro's here) it is still a game you buy to then have to spend more money on said game. Now don't get me wrong here, i don't hate it. With how niche this game is it's a big thing to still get revenue after sales but it'd like there to be at least some options that i can buy with credits instead of everything with real money only.
Missions:
Missions give all if you're trying to get a more expensive ship, my python for example would've taken me at least 1680 hours to get if i was earning credits at the rate i was doing missions. After 60 hours of playtime i had roughly 14M overall (6M in credits, 8m in assets) when i was doing the highest earning missions i could do. Considering the ship i was going for was an Imperial clipper i'd need around 140M credits to buy and fit it properly.
In-game help:
While i hate games holding your hand (like COD or any recently released game for that matter) the way Elite Dangerous just throws you out is also a bad thing. Things like Core mining, ranks, reputation, outfitting prices and so on you'd be crazy to say you don't have much to do. But a new player won't know that, they'll see the surface of everything (mining with mining lasers, missions, some trading which is all somewhat explained) but not the rest because none of this is ever even mentioned. Finding things out for yourself is great and all but not being able to know anything because nothing is ever mentioned isn't a good thing. Or at least in my opinion.
Ship and weapon variety:
While not being a really big point it's still worth mentioning. Elite doesn't have much in terms of variety, ships have not many classes they are classified in and not many ships in said classifications: Fighters (8 ships), freighters (5 ships), multipurpose (8 ships) and passanger (3 ships, one of which DLC locked). Compare that to Freelancer (a game released in 2000) has 2 main classes: Fighter (25 ships total) and frieghter (6 ships) with Fighter having 3 sub classes: light (11 ships), heavy (9 ships) and very heavy (5 ships). Freelancer while being a way older game (elite coming out a whopping 14 years later) has more ships in it's fighter class than Elite does in total (don't believe me? check out the Freelancer wiki:
https://freelancer.fandom.com/wiki/Vessel_Types). Weapons however are about the same, that still isn't great though.
But with that let's end this with a high note. I love Elite Dangerous, i really do. Its community, or at least what i interacted with, is great and seriously helpful. The gameplay is great and the sounds are perfect! Keep in mind all of these pro's and cons are my opinion so you might not agree with me.
See you out there commanders o7