I want to pick this up, but I think I might hold off a bit.
Yeah, I don't blame you.
Incoming negative review.
I've put about 12 hours into the game on PS4. My friend is waiting for the PC version, so he's been interested in my experience so far. He even watched me play for a few hours today. Needless to say, he's no longer buying the game. We're still convinced that the game hasn't "opened up" to me yet because the game seems very simplistic and devoid of things to do.
Go to planet > Resources > New Star system > Rinse and repeat. All the planets look the same but with a colour swap, same with the creatures and plants. Trading is very...bland? It's just buying and selling resources. You can't buy upgrades, or blueprints, or weapons. There's no real encounter type stuff, or missions, or anything really except for "You go to a computer, solve this easy puzzle" "Congratulations. Here's the location of some Alien Language/Useless Outpost/Random Building. Maybe there's an NPC or another computer at that location." NPC's don't really do anything except offer to heal you, recharge your shields, give you a random resource, or teach you one word of their language. Not to mention it costs resources to talk to them.
Ship battle are pretty meh. Just fly in circles trying to aim at a guy while your shields take damage. Quickly navigate menus to use yellow resources to manually recharge your shields while being shot. There doesn't really seem to be a story. So far the paths you can take are "Explore on your own. Follow the Atlas path, which helps you follow other paths or continue the Atlas path. And the Centre of the Galaxy Path, which is just the same as exploring on your own, but going towards the centre." And that's the entire game. Explore, see the same thing in different colours, gather resources to warp to the next star system. I'm not surprised that guy finished the game within 30 hours, because there's really nothing else to do except keep moving. You could take the time to explore and find locations that teach you one alien word, but every thing else is just there to help you find blueprints or to help you get more resources.
There needs to be more to this game. It feels like an Early Access game before they start to add the meat of the gameplay. Give me the ability to customise ships, to get different weapons or equipment for both my person and my ship, to build simple things, leave messages for other players or markers. Give me a map so I know what I've discovered and where it is. Maybe the ability to capture wildlife to sell or release on another planet. Missions. Missions like go to X planet/station/system and deliver Y. Capture X amount of wildlife for a guy. Help X by giving resources. Find resources for someone and tell them where it is. Scout a location/planet. Build item/thing X. Take a guy to a location. Form a crew to take care of things. A god damn storage device on space stations or something for items or resources that I don't want to sell but are taking up precious space. Actual bartering. Buying services, like ship repair. I still don't know how to repair a partially damaged ship except for dying on purpose.
More variety in locations and creatures instead of just colour swaps. Every planet is basically "It's this colour. Has these 10 out of 20 animals. Has hazard toxic/radiation/hot/cold. Water? Yes/Probably not." Those are the four things that are different. I'd like to see something like a huge crater, or a city, huge crashed star ships, ancient civilizations, an ice planet, a lava planet, a desert planet, lush forest planets, some sort of character to the planet, a half destroyed moon, planetary rings, more than one sun. Mind you, I've only been to 24 different planets, 6 moons, and 9 star systems, so maybe I'll see something wildly different someday. Honestly the unique planets was something I thought we were going to get, not the blandness we have now.
After saying all that, I'm still going to continue playing to see what else is out there. I refuse to believe that I've seen most of what this game has to offer. I will probably just end up playing it in small pieces maybe once a every day or two. If that day 0 patch has taught me anything, it's that they might be able to add things that will drastically change the way the game is played and what it has to offer.
So far I give this game a 4/10. If anything, being able to explore a universe is a really great idea...provided there's a reason to explore.
My copy of the LE will be arriving tomorrow and will post pics 
