My experience playing No Man's Sky is best described as a shallow and tedious journey chasing a nonexistent horizon. This bug plagued game creates an illusion of progress that doesn't last long.

From here on I will discuss my reasons for not recommending No Man's Sky, be warned spoilers.

Procedural generation is the technology that allows No Man's Sky to have billions of planets to explore and lifeforms to investigate. However, the minuscule pool of assets given by Hello Games yields planetary systems that look extremely similar and lack the smallest bit of personality. After a few hours, you'll start recognizing assets from previous planets, frequently even finding the same lifeforms and terrains. To make things worse, there's not a single animal that doesn't look either goofy or aberrant. The few types of NPC buildings that exist are also procedurally scattered throughout planets. This means in most planets you'll have little to no interactions with these buildings and the ones you have consist of repetitive and rewardless puzzles that a child could solve. Basically, after exploring a few planetary systems everything becomes predictable, ruining the fun behind exploring the unknown.

Combat is dull and easy making it an inconvenience rather than a challenge. Enemy variation is unexistent which means you'll not need to improve your offensive tools. Dying from weather conditions is also extremely difficult as the cost of recharging your shields are minimal. This all results in even more boring gameplay and the occasional laugh when an insignificant creature attacks you or a pirate demands half of your money.

The freighter system looks cool at first. However, a series of poor game design decisions by Hello Games makes this system a chore. Any interaction with the freighter requires you to be inside it, meaning each time you want to check your expeditions or access its inventory you'll have to call it in. Worst of all is that if any of your up to 30 frigates damages during an expedition you will have to fix it manually. All these factors mean most No Man's Sky players ignore this system overall and use their freighter as a garage for their ships.

Main and secondary missions are a pain in the ass and yield insignificant rewards which once again mean most players will just ignore them. (I won't even get started on character arcs or story coherence)

Base building and land vehicles are some of the additions the game received after launch. These systems are good enough yet don't offer anything you've not seen in other survival games. However, the main issue is that in an exploration game with infinite planets to explore there is no point in having a base or vehicles that move slower than you're ship. Hello Games should have focussed more on improving the exploration and the combat which are more important to the fundamental features of this game.

The game has a fake idea of progression. Everything you do adds more currency, reputation or recipes. However, all guns and ships are the same but with different stats, all aliens have the same flat conversations and crafting is barely used.

Overall, No Mans's Sky is a shallow game that becomes repetitive and predictable very fast. Most of its gameplay systems are ruined by small bugs or unnecessary mechanics that make them tedious. Although developers have tried very hard to improve the game since launch, most of the improvements they have made have been in new or irrelevant features and have forgotten the main theme of this game, exploration.

My experience playing No Man's Sky is best described as a shallow and tedious journey chasing a nonexistent horizon. This bug plagued game creates an illusion of progress that doesn't last long. From here on I will discuss my reasons for not recommending No Man's Sky, be warned spoilers. Procedural generation is the technology that allows No Man's Sky to have billions of planets to explore and lifeforms to investigate. However, the minuscule pool of assets given by Hello Games yields planetary systems that look extremely similar and lack the smallest bit of personality. After a few hours, you'll start recognizing assets from previous planets, frequently even finding the same lifeforms and terrains. To make things worse, there's not a single animal that doesn't look either goofy or aberrant. The few types of NPC buildings that exist are also procedurally scattered throughout planets. This means in most planets you'll have little to no interactions with these buildings and the ones you have consist of repetitive and rewardless puzzles that a child could solve. Basically, after exploring a few planetary systems everything becomes predictable, ruining the fun behind exploring the unknown. Combat is dull and easy making it an inconvenience rather than a challenge. Enemy variation is unexistent which means you'll not need to improve your offensive tools. Dying from weather conditions is also extremely difficult as the cost of recharging your shields are minimal. This all results in even more boring gameplay and the occasional laugh when an insignificant creature attacks you or a pirate demands half of your money. The freighter system looks cool at first. However, a series of poor game design decisions by Hello Games makes this system a chore. Any interaction with the freighter requires you to be inside it, meaning each time you want to check your expeditions or access its inventory you'll have to call it in. Worst of all is that if any of your up to 30 frigates damages during an expedition you will have to fix it manually. All these factors mean most No Man's Sky players ignore this system overall and use their freighter as a garage for their ships. Main and secondary missions are a pain in the ass and yield insignificant rewards which once again mean most players will just ignore them. (I won't even get started on character arcs or story coherence) Base building and land vehicles are some of the additions the game received after launch. These systems are good enough yet don't offer anything you've not seen in other survival games. However, the main issue is that in an exploration game with infinite planets to explore there is no point in having a base or vehicles that move slower than you're ship. Hello Games should have focussed more on improving the exploration and the combat which are more important to the fundamental features of this game. The game has a fake idea of progression. Everything you do adds more currency, reputation or recipes. However, all guns and ships are the same but with different stats, all aliens have the same flat conversations and crafting is barely used. Overall, No Mans's Sky is a shallow game that becomes repetitive and predictable very fast. Most of its gameplay systems are ruined by small bugs or unnecessary mechanics that make them tedious. Although developers have tried very hard to improve the game since launch, most of the improvements they have made have been in new or irrelevant features and have forgotten the main theme of this game, exploration.