The story is simple. The Starlink Initiative flies out to the Atlas Star System looking to find one the homeworld of one of it's members, Judge. Upon their arrival, they're attacked by the Forgotten Legion, lead the leader of the Initiative is abducted. The goal is to rescue the Initiative's leader, and rid the Atlas Star System of the Forgotten Legion. It's a simple story, nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done.
Exploration is actually a lot more in-depth than I expected. There are seven planets total, all with their different environments. On the planets, you forge alliances with the residents there, and work to push back the Forgotten Legion from the planet. The system to doing so is simple to understand, but more in-depth than I thought it'd be. You seamlessly travel from planet to planet through space, where there are asteroids to avoid, hidden caches to discover, and outlaw hideouts to raid. However, things may feel a bit repetitive if you're playing for long stretches at a time, or trying to 100% the game.
Combat is simple, but I found it fun. You start off fairly weak, but get stronger through applying mods to your ship and weapons, as well as investing in your pilot's skill tree. There your weapons can come in one of four main elements, being Fire, Frost, Gravity, and Stasis, with a fifth non-element, being Kinetic. Your enemies can either be neutral, or have Fire, Frost, or Gravity elements to them. However, your tactics don't change much regarding the enemy you fight, as the best way to deal with any enemy is DPS spam until they're down.
Though I was weary of the game having Toys-to-Life elements, I bought the physical edition because the Arwing model was too awesome to pass up. The physical toys were fun to mess around with, but you don't have to play with the physical stuff the entire time, as once they're registered, you can play with them digitally. The Toys-to-Life stuff was actually executed very well, as buying weapons, ships, pilots, etc. aren't necessary and are just enhancements to the game itself. Whenever you need the element of a weapon you don't have, there's almost always an explosive canister of that element you can use instead. I just hope the toys haven't put too many people off, as because of the stigma against Toys-to-Life, the game may have been better off without.
Lastly, the Star Fox content was fantastic. The amount of love and respect Ubisoft gave the Star Fox franchise was touching. Fox is hands-down the best pilot, with a great skill tree and borderline OP pilot ability, where he calls in another Star Fox member to help out. The Arwing ship is a blast to play with, as well. The Star Fox missions were also a blast, with the team's goal being to hunt down Wolf. Portrayals of the characters were fantastic, with great voice-work, and the characters' interactions on-point. There's also a few remixed Star Fox tracks, all of which were fantastic.