After having had a blast playing through the Subnautica games back-to-back I still had a craving for more and No Man's Sky seemed to be the closest thing to it, and after having kept reading about how they turned the game around from perhaps THE biggest flop in gaming history to a "masterpiece", I thought it would be no-brainer and a safe pick. Now, I first played this game at the date of this review so I have no idea about what they supposedly have fixed, but I can tell you it's still not a good or fun experience and that hits you right off the bat. I spent the first half hour trying to get the game to not have such horrible frame pacing and mouse lag (...to no avail) and then finding a way to make it first person again like in all the promotional material I've seen. After having had to struggle with that to limited success, turns out my character is dying of atmospheric "toxic poisoning" (while in a space suit mind you) and I'm hit with a metric ton of hints to read guides hidden in menus within menus with semi real-time switching, I couldn't manually save for some reason and died. "You died and lost some items", ...excellent first impression. Well the game doesn't get better the more I play and understand it's systems either, I'm constantly having this growing feeling of "Why? This isn't fun. I'm not having any fun. I want to do something else". There is so much friction and distance between what is supposed to be fun and rewarding and the entire moment-to-moment gameplay you actually end up doing the whole time that it quickly accumulates to a wholly negative experience, this isn't helped by the fact that the game outside these constant tedious systems is very basic and shallow in an incredibly generic way, ensuring there is no hope for immersion driving you through the grind (like Subnautica managed to balance so well). My first impression is so awfully off-putting that I'd rather spend my free afternoon writing up this bitter review than playing the supposed "masterpice" I've paid money for and wish to never start up again. If you haven't yet, I'd rather say just play Subnautica, or just go out and grind away at a real job and balance your budgets in excel spreadsheets instead, it will be a lot more fun and infinitely more rewarding. This game seems like it's made by people who don't actually enjoy playing games and is not a fun way to spend your time, some will probably like it but I personally can't recommend it as it's poor in technical performance, gameplay and entertainment-value.
Quite frankly, it plays horrible with keyboard and mouse. There's mouse acceleration with no way of turning it off exacerbated by the fairly above average input-lag this game has and actions are mapped out with gamepad controllers in mind making it unintuitive and cumbersome using a keyboard, driving is also entirely made with analog input in mind making steering with a keyboard feel ultra touchy to the point of feeling near broken and certainly not any fun. Remapping keys also seems to be limited and/or broken, can't toggle crouch or aim. There's quite the list of options to toggle in settings though, but lacks any AA options and you're stuck with TAA with no way to turn it off, creating fever-haze like oddly blurry visuals with the frame pacing/input feel issues that are common tradeoffs with TAA, ultimately baring you from setting the option that will have the most impact on the visuals. I've only played 2 hours of the game, but it's been an unpleasant struggle with the issues above to the point I will now attempt something I've never done with over 140 GOG games to my credit, request a refund. This game turned out to be a disappointment I did not see coming.
