At first, it is REALLY hard. But you'll eventually get into the gameplay...
When I tried it out in 2006, when I was 10, I played ONE hour. 10 minutes afterwards, I was uninstalling the game. The game was TOO hard to understand. Besides, my english wasn't so good yet that time. The tutorial... I had a *hint* at what I should do. There are two categories of tutorials... Movement, Trading and Interacting with NPCs/the environment - and Space Combat. I haven't even finished one of them yet, but so far what I've learnt is surely put to use.
Now, I'm 13, and I can totally understand the game. I'm a bit sad of a glitch that disables the voice of the NPCs in cutscenes/communication. It would come in handy if I could hear the instructions, due to the objective box being pretty small.
The game itself is amazing. The graphics are very good, sound aswell. However, there is one thing that was a crime not to do:
Adding multiplayer/online play. Imagine that. You can create your own "character", which has a different storyline than in single-play. You can just fly around in the mass traffic of the players, and trade, get richer, etc. It would probably be hard, but it would make the game - in my opinion- perfect. Making it feel like an MMO would be devastating.
This shall be end of my review. If you consider it, buy the game in case you have the chance to. It's an old game, but you might be able to find it somewhere. Thanks for reading!