The good: Expansive universe and strong engine. Terrain generation in particular is fantastic Unique style very "psychedelic" reminiscent of 70's sci fi. Control system in FP mode generally good. Storyline while subtle is genuine and gradually encompassing. Space looks good, 'roids are nice and varied good shapes sizes and materials Mod-ability so far looks fantastic, weather this was intentional is debatable but its certainly worked in the game's favor, if anything opening this capability up even further could provide a massive boost to the play ability and appeal of NMS The Bad: Runs poorly on less than stellar hardware, although the hardware when provided does give this game due justice. Soundbytes are boring and repetitive, suit alerts are purely informative, could have become a massive opportunity for immersion and plot development. Procedurally generated content is good but not varied enough, worldgen needs to be more unique as do ships and so on, some combinations need "exclusivity", make the player feel like this is really some place noone has been before instead of a cut and paste of the last planet with a few slider tweaks. Space flight very shallow, ship controls are poor, the mechanics have the potential to work well but need to be expanded on, planetary flight unwieldy, needs significant polish, and a focus on immersion Conclusion: The core of a fantastic game are here, if the devs maintain their velocity and manage to overcome the negatives, it more than has the potential to be a glorious success. The HG have balls being so ambitious. The only real criticism i can give is that more was demo'ed than was delivered, certainly its a matter of "get the core game out". Whats been delivered is good, but the average pleb who has no idea about game/software development will focus on flaming everything thats wrong without trying to focus on providing usable feedback to help the dev's ramp up their next set of bugfixes and features
