The Sky Ain't for Everyone

The last few weeks I have been trying to puzzle out how I actually feel about No Man's Sky.  I've spent 93 hours playing, so that says something, but I'm just not sure the amount of time that I've played automatically qualifies it as a recommendation.  I do think that it's enough that I've gotten a good feel for the game and what to expect if I was to continue playing...which, at the moment, I'm not.  After 93 hours, I've decided that I've had enough of the Sky.

Pros:

--The universe feels massive and the promise of having countless galaxies with almost infinite worlds to explore is absolutely amazing.  I don't know that I've played another game that has managed to capture the same feeling of the size and scope of an entire universe.

It's hard to tell from this shot, but this guy is huge.

--The procedurally generated fauna makes for some bonkers space creatures.  The part of discovery that I enjoyed the most was trying to find the many different species that populated different planets.  One planet I found was populated by these giant, bird-like creatures that stomped around.  Another one seemed to be entirely populated by different species of slime creatures.

One of the more bizarre critters I found.

 --Freedom to choose how you want to play.  There are several storylines that you can pursue and they are completely optional.  I did a few missions on one of the stories, but just couldn't get into it.  I opted to spend much of my time exploring.  There are plenty of ways that you could spend your time in-game--there are a ton of unlockable base building blueprints and someone who is into building massive, complex bases could probably spend hundreds of hours creating an amazing base.  There's an economic part of the game that could also be attractive to someone who wants to figure out the best way to earn money.  One area that I found enjoyable was looking for new ships or upgraded ships.  It's exciting to finally locate a class S ship.

--Runs reasonably well, even with an older PC.  I turned most of the settings down to low and found that everything still looked nice.  I know that there have been complaints of performance issues for people who are trying to keep things on the higher end of the spectrum.

--Multiplayer.  This was recently added, but now it is possible to explore the universe with friends.  It still has some kinks that need to be ironed out, but it's something that people have been clamoring for since the botched release.

--Finding a truly unique planet is awesome and is the entire essence of the game.  In my 93 hours I found two that were standouts.

This weird planet was made up of floating rock pillars.

--Nice built-in tools for taking screenshots.  There are a ton of options--different filters, the ability to move the lighting to different angles, and a movable camera that can be relocated to almost anywhere.

The blue grass planet took me by surprise.

--Customizable character.  This is also a relatively new feature, but you can choose exactly how you want your traveller to look.  You can choose to be the default "anomaly," or you can make a character from one of the four different species found in the game.  You can further customize the colors and appearances of your gear.

--Ships have a cool, space-y look and you can choose one that best fits your playstyle (if you can afford it or want to put in the time and effort to repair it).  There are several different classes and once you've acquired a freighter you can store up to 6.

--Exocraft are fun to drive and make exploring much quicker.  It's fun to plop down a geobay and then just drive around finding cargo drops or knowledge stones.

--Naming your discoveries offers a chance to put your own mark on things.  Or not.  I tended to only name the interesting planets and fauna and let the game name the flora and rocks.

Cons:

--The same massive universe that I mentioned as pro can sometimes be very repetitive.  There are basically four different types of planets--ice, toxic, desert (which is spiced up into a few different labels in-game--scorched, arid, radioactive, etc.), and paradise.  The minerals and rare items (like albumen pearls or gamma root) are found on the same planet type.  In my game, I found that the flora and minerals on the planets were almost identical--every tropical planet had palm-like trees, every desert planet had several cacti varieties--so, while there's an entire fun premise that everything is unique...well, it just doesn't feel that way after you've landed on your tenth ice planet and you're seeing the same rocks and trees.

--Side missions are boring and repetitive.  Fortunately, many of them involve doing tasks that you're probably doing anyway.  You don't necessarily have to do them, but they are one of the few ways to raise reputation with the specific species or guilds.  To unlock some merchants you must raise your reputation to a certain level.

--Main storyline is uninteresting.  I tried to get into it, but there was a lot of flying to one place, finding a thing, flying to a different place for one minute to find a holo-tower, and then rinse and repeat.  If you're hoping that there is some sort of engrossing story behind the entire universe...I don't know if it's really there.

--Ship buying/selling.  The only way to buy or sell a new ship is to park yourself in a location like a trading post, freighter, or space station and negotiate a trade.  You cannot sell a ship outright and must trade ships.  It's a bit of a pain and would be much easier if there was a ship merchant or console.  I wanted to use my best ship at all times, but I also wanted to try to upgrade some of my other ship classes.  Negotiating a ship price can be very hit or miss--some sellers are reasonable and others want a fortune.  I feel like this is needlessly complex.

--Exocraft aren't summonable like your ship.  You have to build an exocraft bay on each planet where you want to utilize vehicles.  For me, this really limited their usage.  It would be much, much more fun if you could summon them anywhere on a planet.  I also was irritated at the fact that you have to exit the exocraft in order to scan--why can the craft have the equivalent of a signal booster, but not a scanner?  It doesn't make a lot of sense.

--Bugs.  For awhile there was some weird stuff going on...especially with freighters.  My frigates would return from a mission damaged and then the components that were damaged wouldn't be marked.  Or they would simply fix themselves (which I didn't mind).  Another confusing bug happened when the marker for my base computer kept getting moved to my freighter.  Most of these bugs were fixable with a save and a restart, but I still don't think they've been fully resolved.

--Can feel grindy at times.  All aspects of your equipment need to be refueled/reloaded.  This means that you are constantly gathering to recharge your stuff.  I tried to plan my gathering during my exploring and it helped, but I still had moments where I was tired of running out of ferrite dust and having to gather a bunch more.

For me, the part that stopped me playing was simply a sense of repetition.  I realized that for those two awesome, unique planets that I found that I would be slogging through many that were basically the same.  I would be doing the exact same things on every planet--scanning for unique features, travelling to them, gathering items, scanning flora/fauna/minerals, etc.  Several of the reviews that I read used the term "a mile wide and an inch deep."  I definitely felt that, but I do think that with some of the additions to the game (things like base building) that there has been some depth added.

I can't completely condemn No Man's Sky, I have had a lot of fun discovering strange fauna, beautiful planets, and managing to buy the Qwib-Qwib 2.0.  I think some gamers will really love the exploration and discovery component of the game--in reality, I think that's a pretty niche group.  I think the game does deserve some of the scorn that it received for the botched release, but that Hello Games seems to be working to make it into the game that they originally pitched to people.

In the end, I can't say I fully recommend NMS and would urge any potential buyers to think about what they need in a game to stay entertained.  If you're turned off by repetition...it's probably best to skip.  If you're content in games that are open and exploration oriented...it might be for you.

I might return to NMS at some point in the future.  There is still so much to discover.  I am just not sure that I have the patience.