Rather poor, lazy and generic survival elements covered up by shallow and boring exploration. The game certainly is pretty when you're ignoring the 30fps frame cap, annoying pop-in and graphical bugs, horridly pulled in FOV and other graphical nit picks. But aside from gorgeous music and selectively gorgeous visuals, the game doesn't have much to offer.
Your super limited inventory space (even after upgrades) makes exploration a chore that you simply can't partake in as you'll have almost no inventory space to spare when you factor in upgrades and resources for just maintaining your redundant hazard and life support meters. Your best hope while exploring is finding some super boring wildlife that simply runs away when you get near it, or looking at plants that look like slightly different than real world counterparts (trees, cacti etc.). Its also not very fun discovering planets, wildlife or plants when you have no one to show off too. Sure you could post pictures around, but that would only remind you that everyone else has probably seen a permutation of your planet, and that sort of kills your experience and sense of accomplishment. Discovering doesn't feel fun, isn't rewarding or worthwhile, so why bother?
What about survival elements? Well you have a health bar that refuses to deplete no matter how much enemies shoot you (read: its impossible to die this game is so easy) and a lazy, generic "Life support" and "Hazard suit" gauge that depletes based on planetary conditions that when depleted decreases your health. The way to refill the gauges is simply using the insanely common resources around you, meaning they never deplete. So survival is a non-issue at all times, and death doesn't set you back at all... Nice...
Combat is equally frustrating, with poor aiming mechanics and lackluster enemy variety and design, even when in later biomes closer to the center of the universe. There is no depth, there is no fun to be had in on-foot combat, and ship combat doesn't really change much at all. Fighting enemy starships is a tedious "blown one up blown em all up" affair, and outside of pirates occasionally trying to blow you out of the sky (while failing to put up a fight might I add) you'll probably forget your ship even has guns attached to it.
The trade and economy system are lackluster. Galaxies have different values for items, but with such limited space and no way of knowing what the next galaxy's trade rates are, keeping your selling items (indicating by green boxes) in-between trips is sort of impossible when you're always bleeding for inventory room. Trading with NPCs is sort of pointless as well, seeing as how they all behave the same way and you always get the feeling like you're paying or losing out on trades to get next to no benefit.
What's my incentive to explore any of these planets when my inventory is basically full of resources I need to refill my life support, radiation suit, lift-off power, gas, mining energy, blast bullets etc. knowing that I will probably find literally nothing of worth there?
What's my incentive to buy the dozens of ship, gun and suit upgrades when they take up inventory slots that I can't afford to lose as is?
Why the does the gun itself take up a gun inventory slot?
Why does dropping things from my inventory make them disappear forever?
Why have I been to 2 space stations and not found a single inventory space upgrade for my suit or ship or even a suit.ship salesmen?
Why are the alien lifeforms so drab and boring? Why are the interactions with them so pointless and generic?
Why does this game have such a useless reputation system with alien races that is so black and white it makes Fallout 4's system look complex?
Why is the auto-aim system and shooting things so damn clunky and garbage?
Why does my screen flash red as if I'm about to die everytime I take even minor damage? That's so misleading and annoying. Getting hit hard looks just as jarring as being hit a little, what the hell?
Why doesn't any enemy I find offer me any remote semblance of challenge or danger?
Why does exploring planets that don't offer anything interesting take eons due to slow walk speed and run speeds and limited sprint?
Out of the 3 planets I've visited (each with 9-11 species each) why have I run into almost the exact same monster design multiple times on each planet for different species and why does every monster behave the exact same way (just run away when I'm near even after feeding them)?
Why does the game feel the constant need to remind me the controls of the game with no way to turn them off?
Why does the game feel the need to shove waypoints that I didn't choose down my throat without a way to turn them off?
Why are the 2 resource bars so annoying and forcing me to constantly open up my menu and shove common as hell resources into them? They aren't building tension, they aren't even remotely difficult to manage, they're just annoying and lazy
Avoid like the plague
