(March 2021) The underwhelming, overhyped space exploration adventure from Sony and Hello Games redeems itself

Note: This review was originally written and posted in March 2021. This is much later than it's original, critically panned released after many updates were added which improved the game significantly. However, there are updates made after this date, meaning some of my criticisms and praise may or may not be invalidated.

A certain class of gamers will get lost in No Man's Sky for hours thanks to the countless discoveries, but it's depth is somewhat shallow, and many design choices keeps it from being legendary.

No Man's Sky launched as a near failure. Sean Murray of Hello Games and Sony HEAVILY marketed the game, selling it as an ambitious, revolutionary, incredible space faring experience that was expected to mesmerize and awe it's audience. Instead, NMS was an unmitigated mess, lacking many promised features, crashing regularly, and was sold on an overhyped lie. It became a perfect cautionary tale for players to not become overhyped by heavily marketed games, but Hello Games was able to make many improvements to NMS to this date.

No Man's Sky was able to partially scratch an itch I had to get lost in a fantastical, science fictiony space universe and just explore.

Exploration is the most critical aspect of NMS, as some other aspects of the game are disappointing, annoying, or partially underwhelming. However, Hello Games does a decent job of giving you breadcrumbs to lead you into other discoveries of the world. Gathering resources to help you survive the elements allow you to explore more, earn units and the premium currency, nanites, by discovering alien creatures, plants, and minerals. You'll find yourself running out of inventory space with resources, encouraging you to work towards building a base with storage containers, completing quests to earn the exocraft vehicles, repairing starships, or hunting down drop pods that increase your inventory. Until you reach the end game, there's always one more blueprint, one more multi-tool or starship upgrade, one more inventory slot, one more next tier of starship or freighter to get to make your journey to the center of the Galaxy or the Atlas path

The quintillion planets of NMS means the game world is practically infinite. It's honestly too much, but I suppose that is the point of NMS, to show that would be foolish to explore everything, and that every player can experience their own set of planets and stars completely uncharted by others.

NMS has a robust variety of creatures, plants and rocks, but you will soon start to see repeating patterns in certain creatures, especially in birds and fish. Planet variety is strong, such as mountainous planets, volcanic planets, planets that look like deserts or winter tundras, planets based on hexagonal shapes, planets based on bubbles, planets based on weird rock formations with light pillars, or planets with strange, giant, mechanical, octahedron objects that look like they could be underwater mines if they weren't floating or buried in the ground and many more. There are lush, Earth-like planets, or barren Moon-like ones. However, many planets look similar or you will notice failures in the procedural world generation as waypoints and cargo crates are unnaturally clipping in the middle of cliffs

The lack of true civilization is strange and illogical. There's no such thing as cities or villages, but most locations to land at are small "factories", settlements with two TINY houses, trading posts, or their larger cousin, the Colossal Archives, which the big, hulking towers only offers a giant computer that rambles off a bit of alien lore. It makes no sense that there are space stations, frigates and freighters, spaceships, and multi-tools, but no place that actually makes them....they just exist and everybody just seems to have them. (The Frontiers update partially rectifies this problem)

The center of the galaxy quest ending is notoriously terrible and the Atlas path is obtuse, so NMS is a game you play for the journey and the infinite world to explore, and not for its ending. NMS is better suited for mellowing out, and discovering photography subjects, base building, or hoarding resources and star craft.

At best I recommend No Man's Sky on sale, due to play-time potential, but numerous issues. The current product at least more closely resembles a $60 product then it did at launch

Below is a list of my many annoyances with No Mans Sky

- Unfair start: You could start on a planet that is literally killing you due to heat, radiation, or toxicity before you've even had a chance to learn the controls

- Un-removable Message Terminals: You can place messages on large floating computers for other players...but you can't remove them, even on your own base

- Base building jank: Only some parts can snap to some parts and you can't snap parts to a grid. Only certain building structures and snap to each other

- God D**ned grenades: The Plasma Launcher shoots grenades that hurt enemies and destroy/harvest resources without changing the terrain. The Geology Cannon shoots a larger explosive that does the same, but resources are less harvested and leaves holes in the ground. Both have resulted in 98% of my deaths as they explode on contact with enemies or terminals you just exited dialog with.

- Freighter/Starship Hunting: It could take forever to find the ship or freighter you want and players rely on Wiki's and subreddits to find what they want, instead of the in-game systems. Even if you do, you can't edit your starship colors or shape, and there is a bug when recoloring your freighter that still isn't fixed in 2021.

- Nanites: Nanites are a secondary currency to buy various upgrades, blueprints for upgrades, base parts, or upgrading the class of your Starship or Freighter. 200+ hours in, completed the main quests, and finding ways to get loads of nanites, I have yet to earn enough nanites to up-class a starship or freighter. I have enough to up-class a multi-tool from B to A, but not from A to S. My multi-tool is an A-class I found early in my run.

- Kinda bad Interface: The UI is a bit annoying to deal with as a PC player, such as not having the ability to type a number of a item you want or the fact that using the quick button to send items to storage cubes and other inventories doesn't stack items properly, wasting precious slots

- Instability: Game stability has been improved over years, but expect the game to potentially crash when landing on a planet, going into certain areas, or loading from a death