As a new player with both experience in EVE Online and several other MMOs, I have to say that my initial impressions are not ones that have endeared me to this game.  Mind you, I can play EVE Online for free, essentially, using the in-game market to trade for PLEX, or I could play most other MMORPGs by paying $14.99 a month for a subscription.  This should color my perceptions adequately; as you read my notes, keep in mind that this game is cheaper than the usual MMO subscription, but it is not free to play - meaning, if I were going to pay for an MMO, would I choose this one at all over my other options?

Good Impressions
*The concept is intriguing; an open-world environment has many, many options by its definition and I think that with more options offered (such as agriculture, livestock) than simply combat and mining, Perpetuum has plenty of things to do in it (at least in theory).  I would like to see more high-level play to see what options are truly available to a player.

*The robot designs are neat.  I like the look and the feel of even the newbie robot as it skitters along.  The environment gives a really "big, wide open" sense, and the super-technical buildings set the sci-fi scene well.

*Missions are exceptionally easy to understand, although I've only played some of the tutorial ones.  Games these days often fail by having a poor mission interface or horrible quest tracking.  That isn't really the case here; I feel like I know what my missions want me to do without having to refer back to the mission log repeatedly, and I can locate the objectives swiftly and easily.

*I much prefer the spending of EP on Extensions to the actual queuing of skills a la EVE Online.  It means that no matter what, I can just distribute my skill points which accrue on their own.  No worrying over losing those precious hours not having a skill queued up while I'm away, I can just log in and pop in my points where I want them.

"Meh" Impressions
*This game is EVE Online on a planet.  It is in every aspect I can care to mention just a reskin of EVE Online.  The only downside is, EVE Online has had a few years to develop content while this game has just come out.  While it executes some things slightly differently, you may as well be playing EVE Online.  As someone who has played EVE Online, is Perpetuum unique enough to warrant a subscription?  No.

*The game's textures and shadows are, at times, pretty "meh" and occasionally run into some rendering problems like the shadows looking odd over hills or inclines.  While they look nice overall, it's not jumping out there and convincing me that this is a pretty game.  This isn't a massive point, however, because they're okay.  Not spectacular, not terrible, just okay.

Bad Impressions
*Holy crap, the avatar creation is a joke.  Is this Runescape?  Did I fall into a timewarp and hit some kind of bizarre rift in the void between the time I started creating my absolutely hideous-looking, poorly-rendered, cartoonish Agent face and when I entered the game to see relatively nice robot design and environment textures?  This game was released sometime in the last five years, right?  Even free to play MMOs out of a Korean programmer's basement often have better looking faces than this.  I would take the same 4 faces for male and female Agents if they were even remotely decent-looking.  Hell, I would take NO Agent avatars over this.  Holy crap.

*Trial players cannot find player-made orders in the market.  So, let me see here...I can't figure out if the player-driven economy is absolutely screwed or not, I can't reasonably purchase items or goods from the general market, and I have to rely on what appear to be NPC or seeded market orders that are ridiculously expensive.  This is a great way to draw in new players, guys: treat them like total criminals!  Before anyone jumps in and says "It's better not to allow Chinese gold farmers to make fake trial accounts to abuse the market!" let me just say, "Jump off a cliff."  There are better ways than to restrict potential PAYING customers for the possible illegal actions of individuals, like, I dunno, taking a proactive role in managing your game.

*The game hides 90% of its UI from the beginning.  Thanks, but no, I don't like being treated like an idiot by this game.  I'd like to be able to SEE things like my equipped modules, my ROBOT'S HEALTH, and the overview.  Sure, completing the tutorial missions will "enable" the UI elements over the course of ALL of them, but I have a better suggestion: TURN ON THE UI BY DEFAULT.  There is NO REASON to make the default behavior "You don't know jack" and expect people to turn on necessary knowledge, especially when the first 15 minutes of the game will generally be spent TURNING ON THIS KNOWLEDGE.

*Of all the things the game decided to do identically to EVE Online, it somehow managed to miss responsive or intuitive targeting controls.  When I have several targets selected, when my primary target dies, I likely want to move on to the NEXT target.  I don't want to have to double-click it in the overview or the battlefield or in my target list.  I want my focus to switch to that target.  Hotkeys or similar likely exist, but they are not made APPARENT in tooltips, the tutorial, or any other player interface.  IF they are customizable, the game has not yet mentioned these things.  If there ARE no hotkeys such as "Press CTRL+Click on a target to lock on," then this game is even worse off.

Also, the default newbie robot takes FAR too long to lock onto enemies.  I refuse to believe equipping a sensor booster on the NEWBIE ROBOT to target enemy drones in a reasonable window of time is a good idea.  Why does it take so long to select a target?

*The game is functionally BROKEN at the moment.  As of this writing, I have been disconnected, unable to log in, the game has crashed, the game has lagged out, and I have not finished the beginner missions directly following the tutorial.  Someone is going to post "Well they just received a lot of ex-EVE players, the servers are overloaded."  To that person or persons: Is this a beta?  Is this game still in stress testing or somehow expected to be unfinished?  I'm sorry, I was under the impression this was a 1.0 release.  I've seen Minecraft servers with better stability than this, hosted on some guy's laptop.  Lag and login troubles might be acceptable if this were, say, release day, or even release week, but isn't this game some several MONTHS old?

*Sort of related to the above, there is no petition system?  At all?  You have to find a GM ingame and PM them with a problem?  Guys, I've seen better support than this on private servers run by a guy out of his mom's basement.  You can't tell me a game got out of beta without a coherent way of reporting problems aside from harassing GMs in game.  PMs are the WORST way to track interactions!  What if you have a repeat issue?  How do you verify your GMs are providing adequate service or accurate resolutions?  How do you monitor ANYthing when it's all done via text chat interface without slogging through logs to verify it even happened?  C'mon.

Overall, I have to say that I am not subscribing to Perpetuum.  I am not suggesting it to friends.  If anything, I am pointing out the above flaws in the game and advising them to stay away from it.