Heaven's Vault is a very specific game and definitely not for everyone. As I am a historian and archeology lover I will give it a thumbs up, because there aren't many games where you can truly feel the secrets of the past slowly uncovering before you and the history becoming clearer with every artifact you excavate. On the other hand the game suffers from many bad design choices which can be off putting for many casual players. I know I felt frustrated by a lot of them.

We assume the role of Aliya Elasra, a rather unsympathetic young woman, living her life as an archeologist even though mostly no one is really interested in her findings. Not caring about the others she learns more and more about the mysterious space region Nebula, home to all. When she is tasked with searching for a lost member of the University and important friend to her stepmother her calling as an archeologist is gonna be fulfilled. Many questions will rise up during her search and answering them can influence the whole Nebula, for the better or worse.

• As I said, I haven't really gotten along well with Aliya, which is bad as you are gonna be with her all the time. I am not sure what exactly, but something in her manners was making me hate her. Also her graphic appearance didn't help much, as she looks so pissed all the time. To make it worse, most of the characters you are gonna meet in the game despise Aliya and nothing you do will change it. On the store page you can read: Meet a diverse cast of characters who remember everything you say, and who's attitude to you will change with how you act. I agree with the remembering part, but the other one is not true. No matter how I acted, their overall attitude towards Aliya hasn't changed. Sometimes there were glimpses of some change, but they quickly disappeared. Simply put, if they liked or hated Aliya right from the start, they stayed that way no matter what you did.
  Most of the game you will spend accompanied by a robot sidekick named Six. They talk together a lot about the findings, history events and other things you will stumble upon. Their talks have a great dynamic and are rather enjoyable.

• The graphic design is peculiar. I liked the environment and especially the Nebula. People on the other hand are weird. When they move their feet are invisible, don't ask me why. Their moves are not exactly fluent, which is best seen on expression changes. They just swap between them. Also I believe that the expressions are randomly generated, because sometimes they were in complete opposite to what the character was saying and not suitable to the atmosphere - when Six announced the preparations of sails and he looked like crying or wanting to murder us are great examples. It really disturbs the immersion.

• Conversations are specific and you can't start them whenever you like. There are two types - a more classical approach with a static camera and choices to pick from and some “free talk”. The other happens mostly with Six - sometimes circle(s) would flash in the lower part of the screen, if you'd managed to hit it in time a conversation would start with the difference that you could still be moving around freely. I highly advise against moving around when you talk, because you can get close to some important story spot which will start an auto sequence which will lead to your inability to continue in the previous conversation as it won't repeat again. A few times the circle flashed so quickly that I completely missed the opportunity to start the talk… I am not a fan of such a design.
  There is no voice acting (except for a few lines) and the talks happen automatically, so you have to pay really good attention. You can set the speed of messages that shows up to your liking, but this design comes with additional problems. When it goes too quickly you don't have time to sort all of the information inside your head and can easily miss an information when you think about something that was said. When it goes slowly you are gonna suffer from it, which is most visible in the second run. When we consider the huge scale of the game it's not in your power to remember everything that was said in the first playthrough, so you can't say for certain what is new or different. So you are going through the same stuff and you can't safely skip through it in any way. The few new lines you are gonna learn on any subsequent runs can't justify suffering through the whole game again and again.

• Main and most important aspect of the game is exploring the vast Nebula. Landing on different moons, inhabited or long ago deserted, in search for artifacts and of course our dear missing scientist's whereabouts. What I truly hated was the fact that once you landed it took Six like 10 steps for him to state that there is obviously nothing here and we should leave. If you happen to agree with him on that by a mistake or a wrong assumption that he is right, you will leave and in 99% cases you are unable to return. Yes, you can't revisit the sites. That's just… stupid.
  On the store page you can read that it's not your usual linear adventure game. In one thread the developers basically said that you have to go with the flow and once you do something it's done. Okay, even if we agreed with this idea, why the hell can't we return back at our will? If any historian or archeologist visited any historical site only once we wouldn't learn much about our history.

• On your travels through Nebula you will find many artifacts, most of them with inscription which will require your translation. Some of them are only a few words, some of them are complex sentences. I have really liked the translation and was always happy to find something new. The more artifacts you find the more words you learn, also it helps you specify an unknown location for you to explore next.
  You can then give the artifacts to curators at the University, exchange them with an antique seller on Elboreth or just keep them (some can be used in a few situations). As I really wanted to learn more about the history of the Nebula, I have decided to give the artifacts away as you will get new ones in return, which will give you new sentences and new words to learn. Let me tell you that it was an unbelievable ordeal! If you are thorough on your travels you can even in one visit acquire dozens of new artifacts. On Elboreth I was able to trade 3 to 5 items at once, at the University 3. After that you have to leave and return which is extremely time consuming and in the long run very annoying.

• You can travel around the Nebula on your own in a ship similar to those you can see in Atlantis and like that you can uncover ruins and find artifacts. Or you can pass it to the Six, which is basically a fast travel, but that way you won't uncover any ruins. I have enjoyed exploring the Nebula, it was quite relaxing and pleasant to the eye.

• Now for the not linear adventure game, the store page states: Progress through the game in any order you choose - the game's fully adaptive narrative remembers every choice you make, every discovery and every action you take, influencing what happens next. Yes, you can go whenever you want to go. At the beginning you are quite limited (two choices), but as you uncover more artifacts more places become available. In my second run I have held off from visiting an important story wise place as long as I could and sadly it showed off that the adaptive narrative wasn't working that well. In this case Aliya was making an assumption based on knowledge she couldn't have had yet as I haven't visited that specific place and acquired the needed item from which she stated the facts.
  I realize that it must be a tremendous amount of work to connect all the possible dots through all the different scenarios that the player can take, but it certainly doesn't leave a good impression if the game apparently knows more than the player.

• You can see three different endings and let me tell you that all of them are extremely underwhelming. I wished for some after credits scene or summary of the events… nada.

Because I like exploring and uncovering secrets in games my first run in Haven's Vault took me around 32 hours. I have been on every moon possible in the Nebula. I also got pretty difficult translation lines later in the game as I had already learned many words (in the new game+ you are supposed to get more complex lines, well no change in that for me). And I have to say that the way the game is made, that you can see everything in one go, is a bad choice. Maybe I shouldn't have played it like that, but nothing was stopping me. Once you have seen it all, what is there for you to uncover? Few different lines aren't going to save it. As I said there is so much information that you can't possibly hold on to them in the next runs. I quickly became lost of what I have seen already, what I have learned through my translations and were just my assumptions, what was new… I believe that if you were allowed to explore little at the beginning and with the found artifacts you would open new routes for you to take in New game+ it would have been much better, because the lore, the history of the Nebula is interesting and deserves to be uncovered.

Even though I feel that my experience with Heaven's Vault was a little bit painful, I think it deserves my recommendation. If you find enjoyment in history, archeology, old dead languages you may find it appealing.