Angry Joe review is rude, but spot on with many aspects. I liked the game and I got the platinum. But after 10 hours the superficiality starts showing, I continued trusting the narrative would advance, it never did after 30 hours of gameplay. They removed features at launch because they were confusing to some players or maybe plainly didn't work, I can sympathize with that. It's a project so much bigger than such a studio could make, it's already an exploit the game exists at all. Narrative brickwall is less excusable. I side with a faction and fuck all ever happened.
I have a very good track record buying games I like, for the last 20 years. Blanket statements about not trusting anything other than reviews is bullshit, as I got much more games I loved by dismissing reviews, and trusting that the game is a genre I usually like, and the studio previously made games I enjoyed, or the game designers presented a very interesting concept. I am not mad as I took a chance which I sometimes do. My experience is that most game reviewers don't understand shit about games that aren't already their fetish genres, and they are rushed to write their reviews. Trying to get a concensus from them is stupid unless you are part of that crowd. I am not.
This game absolutely looked like a modern successor to StarFlight-2 from early 90's, it's all I was hoping for, renewal of a forgotten genre. I can't recall any game which wasn't what the game designers interviews were showing in direct gameplay videos (at least no game I ever bought). I expect they will add more depth, but this should have been a $30 game and everything would be fine. I was very surprised when I saw the price tag because this was obviously from a small indie studio. Impulse buy, that's my fault.
Still hoping they are working on all the features they talked about, but the writers are (at the point I am in my decoding of themes anyway) intellectually bankrupt. I would need to be blown away with complete theme reversal to accept whatever happens at the end game. Getting to the center just to see the ending is so tedious I gave up. I am only 1/3 of the way, shitty maths punishing my advancement, and have the platinum. Fuck it.
I don't regret buying it, but the game deserves some criticism. Hopefully they will deliver what they wanted to do with NMS2.