No Man's Sky is the ultimate comeback story. In a world where so many games are released half-baked, with Day-0 patches, and sadly broken for most users for a very unreasonable amount of time (that so many "complete" games are sold full price and yet are so broken or unplayable at launch for many is damning), it's rare to find one which not only bounces back so completely, but without nickel-and-diming those who purchased the game on the backs of so much hype.

In it's current state, NMS is worth a full-price purchase; if you find it on-sale, it's a no-brainer.

Over a dozen full expansions to the game (not little cosmetic DLC, but proper game-changing (for the better almost every time) expansions) were released 100% free. The playerbase - after all these years - is still going strong. It looks visually amazing, and especially so if you've upgraded your rig once or twice since it game out several years ago. And gameplay-wise, the feedback loop is satisfying and rarely gets boring (at least to me).

Add on top of this a thriving modding community and you have a rock-solid game which deserves and earns its full-price purchase.

Below is my original review for historical purposes.

...especially when Hello Games is still using marketing material on the STORE PAGE that clearly is not in the game (see, well... everything: the screenshots, the video footage, and even much of the language in the "About This Game" section).

As someone that's half-heartedly followed this game during its development, only to give into the hype and preorder it the night before it released, I am very disappointed in Hello Games for vastly underdelivering on a game that was shown to have so much potential - and disappointed in myself for giving in to the hype behind the game to begin with.

The one saving grace for No Man's Sky - at least on the PC - is the mod scene, which has already "fixed" some aspects of the game that I found very annoying, such as the need to hold your mouse or keyboard button to confirm a command, or not having full control over your ship when you fly over a planet's surface. Do these valient efforts of modders warrant the $60 pricetag though?

If you really want to spend money on this game, please wait until it's on sale. Like, until it's below $25.

At this point, I have no intention on giving these devs any more money, in the event they create games in the future or release paid DLC for this game (oh yes, apparently they backtracked completely on their "all future DLC will be free" statement). I was hoping for a game that, based on all that I read about it ahead of its release, would give me hundreds of hours of entertainment and fun - instead, I got a game that bored me to death after just 24 hours.