No mans sky sets out to randomly generate life and planets at an almost infinite pace, and tasks you with doing the same handful tasks an infinite amount of times. You will mostly be mining resources, some of which take FOREVER to mine and some take seconds. The forever ones break off in small amounts,so gathering enough to make/repair or profit off of takes awhile. This leads to inventory which has to be managed on account of running out of space. This is upgradeable to add more slots but it takes time. Upgrades to your suit/ship take up these limited spaces as well.
The main problem is No Mans Sky tells you almost nothing, just fly around to a new place and see almost the same exact things. At the start it is interesting to see but after a few new planets it thins itself out. Creatures look almost identical to ones you've seen before, and many plants as well as the resources look identical no matter what planet you are on.
There are alot of resources to gather of course you will tend to find the same common ones and struggle to find others. You can buy/sell these items but finding a seller of the item you need is almost impossible. I've needed a simple element for repair only to find 5 elements I didn't even know about before seeing inventory.
The biggest issue is there is literally no map you get a line at the top of your screen that may show points of interest and a scanner that can locate things close by. The no map and not so much as a compass is annoying, almost telling you once you leave this planet there is no point in coming back. You can find waypoints which save your game and are locations on the planet that you can rename but you can not tag them to find your way back. This is annoying as a location may be heavy in a valuable resource and you will have a hell of a time finding your way back to that spot. There isn't even a proper way to look at the scenery and pick out landmarks. Theres about 3 types of buildings,3 kinds of monoliths and thats about it on EVERY SINGLE PLANET.
You mainly collect resources,craft items,explore and get upgrades. Ive been playing for over 25 hours and haven't discovered any new upgrades in probably 15 hours and I am not maxed out and I am moving along in the "story" which just seems like filler.
The replay wears out pretty quick because there is no variety in gameplay, its heavily repetitive. I'd compare it to minecraft but at least in minecraft you can build things and invite other people to see them. No Mans Sky doesn't even let you share planets you find with friends. There are occasional puzzles to solve, usually numeric ones and occasional starship fights but they are not very fun and can happen at random, you are also forced into them at times as even flying in warp speed the game will have pirates show up which causes you to slow down and fight, you can't even run away as the game won't allow it. The fights are easy if your ready but if your not than you'll die. One problem in the fights is that if your shield goes down, you have to open your menu,select the shield and than select the proper resources to charge it up. This clunky menu navigation in the middle of a battle slows the game down and kills the experience.
If you want to play a game where you fly through a generic looking outer space with randomly generated planets and almost no variety in gameplay or locale than No Mans Sky might interest you. if your looking for a game with depth and offering very diverse randomly generated planets and creatures this game is not for you. The Planets are like the guns in Borderlands theres alot of them but their appearances are very similar and only a small handful are ever worth keeping, thats the same thing with NMS. Rent don't buy this overhyped game.