Recent reviews by not one iota

It just gets better, and better. Years of free updates and adjustments by Hello Games has given No Man's Sky a wealth of content and lore to uncover and be immersed in.

You can explore and trade, be a mercenary, be a pirate, befriend an entire fleet of space whales, build cities, build a freighter into a fortress, make a living going around and taking photos, massacre robots, rebuild civilizations, learn the nature of universes, be a pawn, be a dictator, become the strange anomalous iteration you were always meant to be, leArn about glasS glASs GLasS, figure out what that big diamond thing even is anyway, among so many other things.

The procgen can get samey after so much exploration, sure, but even seasoned players run into surprising and interesting stuff out there. There's communities out there all about finding and recording fun stuff for others to find. Want a specific pet? Ship? Weapon? Someone's probably found coordinates for something similar!

It's fun. With the settings largely being what you make of them, individual saves or sessions can be as cozy and chill or as relentlessly hardcore as anyone might want. Give it a try if you haven't. Give it a try if you have. The game's changed considerably over the years.

Hey, since this is on sale for $3 as of writing this, it's absolutely worth that. I snagged it for $10 on itch, and for $15 on steam, have gifted it to a couple folks, and still consider it worthwhile at those prices.

The GOOD:
Zen landscape designer, where you can tweak just about every element of the scene as you like.
It's a calm pass-time to play with the randomizer, see what you get, and if you like something, adjust it.
A fairly wide spread of assets, and allows you to import more if you have them.
The UI looks like a lot, but it's fairly user friendly and pretty easy to get in and start playing with all the toggles and options.
Great for aphantasia, and trying to get something that approaches a look for scenes that one cannot imagine up.
Fun for building visuals to accompany writing, roleplay, TTRPG, etc.
Has a top-down mode that can be useful for campaign map design.

The BAD:
If your first reaction is, "But with Unity or UE, you can make--" then this may not be for you. This is made with design-casual in mind, more like painting, in a way.
The creator has likely moved onto other projects, and has gone low-communication. This is a complete software regardless.
There's some occasional weird with custom terrain painting turning up sharp polygons. It's fixable by adjusting those spots by hand again, but often easier to cover spikes or drops with bushes/rocks/whatever when it happens.
Limited premade landscapes that feel too small--but if you scale assets down, zoom in, and adjust water levels, doesn't matter.
Limited assets. You can do a lot with scale, mix and match, and lighting, but there's still only so many trees, rocks, etc. Buildings probably suffer the most from this.

Overall? Fun to play with. Minor technical issues are minor.

don't