Sentinels are a great source of resources early on, and with some basic upgrades to the mining laser, quiet easy to kill! Just do them 2 at a time :D
Not the prettiest ship, but at least it has the right colours! I had to ditch an uglier but better ship for the pre-order ship, as the message kept popping up to claim it, overriding all other messages, and I missed two plot messages because of it already. This means about 5-10 more jumps without anything happening at best! After a lot of mining, I managed to grab this one, as every crashed ship in this system is the same small useless ugly boat!
It's the prettiest, most "normal" planet I've seen so far from about 15-20 planets. Normal weather, floating islands, tons of resources including dongs of emeril and gold, and even some trading platforms thrown around.
The Golden Dong!
The neighbouring planet, with extremely cold weather, and storms that deplete the enviro resistance in about 40 seconds! Not much around, except for the floaty creatures that do not register on the scanner as anything...
There were some other animals, but one of my issues* (*one of the lies told to us) is that the ecosystem has nothing to do with the planet. You get the exact same kind of dinosaur or blob creatures no matter what the weather is on the planet, and ofc the total lack of any food chains or relationship between the creatures. Same thing with plant life. I've seen the generic palm trees on a frozen planet as well as on a water planet and on a "lava" planet. Also, why no lava flows/lakes on overly hot planets? Would it be so hard to associate a recoloured texture for the "water" with hot planets? Why can't I hide, or get killed faster in a lake on a constant toxic rain planet? There are so many small things like this that would increase the immersion and make the world work as a whole. Currently it feels like random assets thrown together in a constrained way so every planet feels the same in the end. This sameness is sadly a necessity of the survival part, otherwise ppl could get stuck on planets unless they implemented an NPC helper, but that may have ruined the whole "exploration" bit for a lot of ppl... So there lots of things to consider, something that a small indie studio clearly couldn't pull off.
The Proper way to come in for landing as a Test Squadron member :D
Balls. Balls everywhere! (it says exotic, but only in appearance. it takes ages to mine and it's worthless)
I HATE SPACECOMBAT in NMS! I really really hate it! It's the most unplayable feature in the game. You can't run away because neither the boost nor the warp drive works, the ship slows to minimum speeds for no reason during combat and won't keep it up, the guns are silly week even with 2-3 good upgrades, and most importantly, the ship is near uncontrollable. Every ship controls the exact same sluggish "oil tanker" way, once you start rotating you better keep it up because changing direction will take you a lifetime, and will be uncontrolled. It's all way too unresponsive to be playable. Without the auto aim and the enemy ships flying exactly in a circle around you at the exact distance so you can hit them when turning fully, you would never in a lifetime score a single hit. Oh, and you can't dodge enemy fire. They Will hit you at regular intervals, no matter what. My biggest problem with this whole space fighting is that you cannot avoid it. If you are carrying any cargo worth more than a 100 credits, you will get attacked from time to time, and nothing can change that. You just have to die, go back for your stuff, and start again, and you probably won't get attacked again.
Apart from the useless space flight part, the game is quiet enjoyable. I learned to like it after coming back from vacation. That slowed me down enough to appreciate the simplicity and beauty of the game from time to time. It's most certainly not a game for everyone, and not for every mood. But if you can look beyond all the fake promises and the insane bs hype, and accept it for what it actually is, a 15usd indie walking simulator with generic minecraft/survival elements in an early access/half finished state, then it's fun. Pity that I payed the full 60 bucks, it most certainly wasn't worth it, and should have been spent on a Dragonfly and some beer.
TLDR.: Without the Molyneux levels of hype and lies, it would have passed under the radar and it would be no-ones-sky after a few months, like any other indie procedural survival crap. But I kinda like it despite it's mediocrity.
