No Man's Sky

Literally every other platform, Steam, Epic, consoles, even VR, are all cross play compatible with each other. For some reason, the GOG version can only be played with other GOG users. I had to buy another copy on Steam to play with my friends. Multiplayer adds a lot to the game, so the lack of this feature is a serious detriment to this version of the game. Don't buy this unless all your friends use GOG, or you intend to play solo.

I bought No Man's Sky (NMS) shortly after it was released (on Steam). Not the pre-release hype, but the "holy shit this is a dumpster-fire" hype. I'm not sure when NMS started to deliver on it's promises, but I'm glad I waited until the 2nd Expedition to find out just how much had changed. And after the Prisms update, it's downright beautiful at times. Now players can interact with other players, which was, at least in my memory, the single-greatest fault of the game. The interface is still quite obtuse, and it feels best with a gamepad, but there are some benefits to using a keyboard (namely: hotkey options for Multi-Tools, which is non-existent on a gamepad). The overarching story-line has a new tent pole and is grander now. Giving you more reason to explore the galaxy, with plenty of rewards. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with over 50 hours now logged. I'll save going into too much detail and just say this: the game is very much worth checking out now, it's an enticing survival game to delve into and has some things that I hope to see in more games in the future. Jumping around the galaxy, effortlessly entering the atmosphere of dozens of planets in an hour scouring for resources or clues to the mystery you're currently looking into is a very pleasant experience. It's exceptionally game-ified, and you'll unveil the inner-workings of how to do things quickly, however, it has yet to grow tiresome for me. It has a feel of a game that makes you wanna stay up until the wee hours of the morning, and doesn't grow bothersome. Give it a shot. Fly on a creature (new with Prisms) and breed it later. Check out the singularity, and do some quests for folks in the anomaly or space stations. Choose a side in the galaxy and find the mystery at the center. Enjoy it... I really can't believe how close they've gotten to their original promises but I'm very happy to play it today and it feels like it's only going to get better as I unlock more.

Lets face it the launch was not great. However that was a long time ago. The game is good now. If you like exploring, building and meeting interesting galattic beings then give the game a go. It gets 4 stars becasue Im reserving 5 stars for the one perfect game that has yet to be made.......this is getting close though.

I just got this with the 1.2 Pathfinder update (content patch really, lots of stuff added) and this game really is a nice experience. I was looking for a game out of my usual genre that I could spend time in and just "zen". Yes there's a little bit of grinding and at first you might wander around trying to squeeze out your limited inventory space. However, you can easily sink 3-4 hours into this game at a time and not even notice. As more online features are being added and a good variety of user-created mods to manipulate the game rules as you wish, this is worth getting for the sandbox space explorer fan. The survival aspects are not too unforgiving as others in the genre, so you can go at your own pace. No technical issues on my 5 year old computer, either they fixed a lot of the bugs or I just didn't have any of the launch problems in 1.2

I'd like to begin by saying that Unity was a mistake, and here we see yet another game that shows us why. Yes, it looks pretty, but optimization isn't even a thing with this junk engine. As others have pointed out, the same PCs that can run Witcher and Skyrim at max graphics with fluid animation get bogged down by this clunky, garbage engine. Once in game you've entered a world of endless grind that would make a Korean F2P MMO otaku cringe in terror and boredom. Endless possibility? Wrong! The difference between one planet and another are literally cosmetic only. Every planet has the same ratio of plants, rocks and animals. Every planet is either toxic or radioactive and yet every planet has both plant and animal life. Every planet has the exact same bases, trade centers, and artifact sites. Which means that every one of them is, once you look beneath the pain, exactly alike. There are no Earth-like, perfectly inhabitable worlds. There are no truly barren worlds devoid of all life. There are no gas giants, no asteroid colonies, no major cities, no different types of space stations (again, cosmetic changes only). Which means that not only is every planet alike, but every star system is exactly alike as well. Each will have one perfect copy of the one space station that exists in the game and bunch of functionally identical planets. Space combat is cringeworthy. Running a freighter is as pointless as everything else. Exploration has no meaning when there is nothing noteworthy to discover. The "mystery" of the plot is something anyone with an IQ over 50 will figure out within the first hour of the game. Worst of all is this is coming from a late buyer. I waited until the rumors came around saying that this mess of a game had finally been fixed, that the missing features were finally added and that it was actually fun now. Those rumors lied.