I don’t see why it’s suddenly the best space game… The core mechanic seems to be the same as the original. Mine materials that are the same on every planet, so you can build space ships and better miners that take more materials and do it over and over again.

When I was playing on launch day, I had a really good first impression but it turned into disappointment, since all the planets had the same minerals. May as well stay on the first planet forever.

That is pretty reductive. Like, it’s a sim. You could describe just about any sim the same way. “You just do this thing to do that thing”. How is this any different from any other game?

I’m not saying it’s the best space game, but I had fun when I played it and it definitely didn’t just feel like I was mining materials just to mine more materials.

The problem is that NMS is very repetitive and bland. Learning alien words takes for-fucking-ever, finding freighter upgrades is one of the worst time sinks in the game, combat feels more tedious and padded out than that of Everquest, looking for “that one cool ship” or “cool looking weapon” is pure RNG and lucking out on it not coming as a C class, upgrading inventory space is either a system jumping time sink or “planetary exploration” time sink.

Nearly nothing you do in the game gives you a sense of accomplishment and, after 4-8 hours or so after first starting playing, you’re unlikely to look forward to any specific activity because “it’s fun”. There’s a lot “to do” but very little motivation to, like why even bother being the mayor of a settlement?

Even on permadeath the game offers no real challenge once you’re off the starting planet.