No Man's Sky is one of the biggest gaming disappointments of my life. It was always a grindy, pointless game about exploring a dull, repetitive universe.
I did give it an honest try, and even enjoyed the first 30 hours or so. This was about a year ago, though I did buy the game at launch and promptly give up on it, like many others.
A true mile-wide-inch-deep game. Once that initial spark fizzles out the idea of picking the game up again is painful. Bit of a shame really, because the actual game parts do work well enough.
Just a long way of saying “I hate to say it, but I completely agree”
NMS's planets are enormous and completely devoid of any content. They're just an endlessly repeating pattern of the same outposts, resources, etc. They couldn't even be bothered to add a map feature so you can see where you've been, probably to hide the fact that it's just a bunch of identical tiles. No landmarks, no biomes, no reason to venture past a 5 minute radius from your landing area because everything on the planet can be found everywhere.
God what i would give for a modern reimagining of Freelancer 2...
I wish that game the best, and I so so wish for it to actually shape into something great, but at the same time I have given up all hope on it, and I still cant imagine investing a single dollar into it (I think they got more than enough money to make a solid game already).
I wouldn't suggest people go sign up or anything because of that but as someone who has followed dev pretty closely, they look to be in the end phases for the singleplayer and probably like 50% into the open world game mechanics. I would bet on a singleplayer release in the next two years, and I would not place a bet on the open world because who knows. Their biggest risk is just running out if money and needing a publisher.
The gameplay loop is fun and the combat is incredible.
My starfield experience has been great. The metagame with newgame+ doesnt interest me at all however.
It seems like crafting has gone downhill in terms of UX since Fallout4, but that would be easy for them to fix.
Unless you like playing hello kitty :)
Instead you're Buck Rogers