I highly recommend this game. It is one of my all time favorites. Here is why and toward the end I will provide a little cons regarding the game for those who might be looking for pro vs cons to decide to get this game or not. I'll just say after its initial release, Hello Games has become the shining star of how to do games right. I bought the game and they have kept adding to it, for free!! Not only is this a redemption for them but shows their actual passion for the game.

Pros:
1. Open ended sandbox game. You pretty much make your own game play as you play. I guess that might be a con for the unimaginative, but I will admit I don't write this for gamers who need their imaginations held like little kingergarten hands in order to play a game.

2. Space done right! If you play it in its standard settings it is like the real deal. What do I mean by that? I mean space is VAST. Imagine yourself out in the middle of the Pacific ocean floating in an inner tube. Your chances of running into another person or vessel is really tiny. Now take that tiny change and multiply it by 10,000x. That's how vast space is in this game. I do applaud the developers for adding in Multiplayer support for those people who need to play in a vast empty setting and have it feel like a crowded shopping mall, but that isn't why I like the game. I feel like the lone traveler when I play it without the multiplayer. There I am, witnessing all of creation, most times seeing things no player has ever seen before (cuz if they beat me to it it has their name on it as being the discoverer). I exist so that the universe can experience itself. This might be lonely for some. But personally, I have never needed other people to validate my own existence and happiness.

3. Combat is smooth. Whether on foot or in space doing a space dogfight, combat was easy to pick up, relies on my reflexes, and is one of the most enjoyable games out there. Sometimes to relax I just pick fights with the Sentinels (automated jerks who get uppity any time you try to exploit the natural world). I have ended up going total space pirate against one of the races. I have like a negative rating -150 beyond hated. It is fun and profitable.

4. The economic system is fun and varied. I can either do space missions with my by now huge space fleet of ships, or can hop from planet to planet buying and selling trade commodities. Each star system has its own economy, some with healthy and plentiful commodities others with a struggling economy. I find myself playing the game blending the various styles together with a little bit of space piracy tossed in to boot!

5. Spiritual depth in a scientific setting. I don't know if they intended it or not, but to me this game has always felt like it packed a spiritual and mundane message about life and existence all at once. It really draws my imagination in to be able to be moving from planet to planet, star system to star system while in the forefront of my mind I am thinking about the nature of existence.

6. Fully exploitable and destructible environments. One of my favorite things is landing on a planet and immediately going to work strip mining it and harvesting what I can out of it. When I say I strip mine things, if another player comes along behind me they will see the huge holes I leave as I extract the mineral wealth out of the planet. If you want you can even go hunting and killing creatures to make neat cooking things or if you feel like it, you can figure out what the creatures like to eat and even tame and ride them. Imagine that, ET lands on your planet and feeds your mom some food and is riding her around. That's me visiting your planet!

7. More than just a survival game. So many survival games can get boring fast. Once you learn the min-max strats in knowing just what you need to survive you can just metagame yourself to IWIN. In No Man's Sky the surviving is multi-layered. Not only do you need to physically survive but win on that curve, you also need to get your head around your situation. Who are you, why are you, what is the purpose of it all? There is an element of psychological survival. I believe that those who cannot stick with NMS long enough might have failed that part of the survival game. I don't know if Hello Games intended that level of meta to the game but it is there. Even once you get your act together and can survive in the most harsh and dangerous planet and you think you have your place figured out in the universe, Hello Games adds some new content and you are often forced to take a look at your role. To top it off, if you feel like you have done it all, head to the center of the galaxy and end up in a new one deserted on some forsaken planet having to scramble and make sense of your surroundings all over again. It is literal rebirth. I'm currently in my 3rd galaxy. And when I say there are other galaxies, keep in mind I have only seen a fraction of the stars in each galaxy. This game is HUGE.

8. The game is mod-able. Because there are no dumb mechanics like PVP it really doesn't matter if you have mods that change your game play. I used mods that change my EVA suit's voice, make the space between planets look more real (not so many dust clouds etc) and speed up the time it takes to learn languages so I learn 3 words at a monolith rather than 1. Even if not mod-able I would still like the game, but the fact it is, makes me love it all the more.

Cons.

1, If you have a behind the 8-ball machine this may not be the game for you. The planets, the flora and fauna on them are all procedurally generated. This can put a lot of strain on some CPUs. I use a liquid cooled machine and even I hear my machine cranking in when I am entering an atmosphere and the distant terrain starts to load up for the very first time.

2, I dont suffer from this, but I can imagine a some people struggling with what to do once they get past the bare basic survival aspects. Luckily, Hello Games as built on the game so there are a lot of mysteries and quasi-questlines to track down, derelict freighters to raid or explore, a story line about the ATLAS (the ATLAS is akin to either an existence simulation runner or God or both). There is a multiplayer hub offering daily and weekly challenges to complete for currency to get spiffy cosmetics. There is always something to do. So all one really needs to bring to NMS is a love for space based adventure.

3. Because of the nature of RNG and the games tendency to generate within a limited pool, there can sometimes be a sameness to planets. This has been improved upon and is a lot better than it was. I am finding much more variation then every before. But I still do have the freedom to mod that RNG and get a mod to add even more assets to change it up to where no two planets are alike. But even with that, because of the vastness of space (this game is HUGE) the changes of repeating patters even in an RNG setting is possible. With infinite time and infinite possibilities even a random string of numbers can appear to repeat in a pattern.

This is one of my favorite games and I am sure I have left out a lot of what I like about it but these are my main points for sure. Well worth the cost.