If you liked Freelancer, you are most likely going to like this game!
Fighting compares well to freelancer in my opinion, same mechanics and all. Regular fights against pirates shouldn't be too difficult, but throughout the game you have the possibility to go after different groups of pirates where a fight can get quite interesting vey fast, especially if they use weapons you are confronted with for the first time.
There are many things you can do, you can go against the authorities or start your own mining operation or be a regular trader, maybe a smuggler? Or a Jack of all trades? Basically you are free on how you play the game.
You don't need purchasing ships here. It made sense in Freelancer cause that was the only way to get a stronger more powerful ship. Here on the other hand you get exactly that by absorbing alien artefacts. After you absorbed a number of those you can basically choose in what way your ship is upgraded, go for weapons and you end up with more gun placements, maybe you need a stronger hull to withstand more punishment? Or faster engines to get out of trouble fast? So there are basically three groups of ship characteristics that you can upgrade and each of the upgrades results in changing the shape of your ship in a certain way.
So do i miss purchasing ships? not really!
The cash that you make can be used for buying goods as well buying weapon systems and what not for your ship.See the upgrades through the artefacts only decide how much of a certain and what level of it you can equip your ship with, so you still need cash to buy the weapon system that you can mount in your new slots.
All i can say is: it is nice to see a competently made space sim after such a long time!