Rather than a game, I see E:D more as an experience. While there are major concessions to playability (FTL movement 😑), its rendition of space flight feels real enough to me. It's vast, difficult, boring, uncaring and lethal. And incredibly beautiful.

My personal recipe is to take it as easy as possible. You can't really relax when a distraction might cost you the entire ship. So I rarely play more than one hour at a time, a couple times a week. Some sessions consist entirely in me traveling through a few systems before logging out--a small step in a longer route to a distant nebula, or a routine delivery of expensive goods. I radically change playstyle every few months so E:D never gets old.