Is No Man's Sky Worth It In 2023?

I've been regularly trying to return to No Man's Sky for about five years, constantly promising myself that the next update will be the moment when I'll cast myself back into the game on PS5 and and revisit my game saves from 2016 to see how the game with tumultuous past has changed. Years have passed, and finally the day has come to jump back into the procedurally generated worlds of No Man's Sky and see what's what in 2023.

When ambitions aren't enough

For the longest time after its release in 2016, No Man's Sky firmly held onto the title of the biggest gaming disappointment of recent times. Sean Murray's promises that turned out largely empty and the relentless hype train that was going on before the premiere were a disguised foreboding of things to come (with the song Debutante by 65daysofstatic still being one of the most hyped game announcements). "Every atom in the game world is procedurally generated", "every planet/plant/creature/pebble/[insert whatever] is unique" – these promises sparked the imagination. In addition, the stylistics inspired by the sci-fi classics of the 70s, such as the works of Ralph McQuarrie or Chris Foss, directly mentioned as inspirations, made it impossible not to fall in love with the concept.

So when the game launched, I dove headfirst right into it and sunk in for several dozen hours. And let me tell you, it was not a bed of roses. The shortcomings were glaring, mainly great monotony of gameplay loop and shortage of tangible content. If someone wasn't crazy about flying through space and discovering new planets, they quickly abandoned and forgotten the game. There was some residue of a story, but few people were engaged enough to pay attention to it. Unfulfilled promises did the most harm, especially the once concerning multiplayer, which was nowhere to be found, despite best efforts.

A tough fight to win trust back

Hello Games faced a tough position, and returning to the Joe Danger series might have been tempting. However, they took up the challenge and immediately set about fixing the game and delivvering new content. It arrived in waves. Over the course of seven years, the game received as many as 25 major updates that expanded it to dimensions that seemed unimaginable at first. We got the ability to build our own bases, terrain vehicles, multiplayer, finally (later expanded with new options), revamped storyline, additional side quests and activities, completely reworked interface, support for VR, releases on new platforms with crossplay support, trade and space battles, own ships and fleet building. Accurate description of all the news would take me three times as many characters as I can spare here.

If you're wondering why such a lengthy introduction, let me explain. I wanted you to get, at least to a small extent, the sense of the confusion that accompanied by return to No Man's Sky in 2023. After starting a completely new game, I was greeted by: third-person perspective, a completely new interface (for the better!), and a good -morning tutorial that told me how to build my first base. Moments later, I became familiar with completely reworked side quests, along the method cataloging the flora and fauna of the planet that was my first one in the new No Man's Sky adventure. Over the next hours, I unearthed artifacts buried in the ground, expanded my base, and set off on my journey, pursuing a thread of story-based quests. It wasn't all that different from what I remember.

However, when I first reached the cosmic anomaly, now called the Nexus, a whole new world opened up. Selected weekly tasks that can be completed alone or in cooperation with other players. Vendors selling blueprints for the things I needed. Additional stories related to the main storyline. I spent the next hours getting to know the new systems in No Man's Sky. These systems were introduced at the right pace and explained very thoroughly. The right "flow" of the game is one of those things that has been tremendously improved over the years. Some systems were first added, then expanded, and finally completely rebuilt, so as not to stand out from the new core of the game.

The more the better?

The more time I spent comparing the game to how it was a few years ago and how it evolved with subsequent updates up to the Interceptor from April this year, the more it dawned on me that I didn't even see a quarter of what the developers from Hello Games had ultimately prepared. There were frigates waiting to be discovered, depths of oceans waiting to be explored. At some point I asked myself if the current No Man's Sky is the best version of this game – for me, personally. The original edition, despite many shortcomings, had something very magical. An unpolished freedom. The lack of a linear approach to storytelling may have diluted its sense, but it also gave it a certain sense of actual exploration of the unexplored. Of course, we can still completely ignore the story and fly wherever we please, but we still have to complete part of it to unlock some stuff that was added in the numerous updates.

Don't get me wrong, objectively, No Man's Sky in 2023 is light years ahead of its original release. It's richer, more refined, closer to the vision set out by Sean Murray and his team years ago. They deserve big kudos for supporting their game without charging a dime for all these updates. However, I felt that the magic offered by this game at the very beginning had somehow evaporated. And I'm not really sure where we crossed the "too much content" line.

Nevertheless, I fell in love with space all over again. The visual leap that No Man's Sky offers on PlayStation 5 compared to the PS4 release is gigantic, and as soon as I hit a properly generated planet, I just couldn't get out of the photo mode. I haven't checked the game in VR on PSVR2, although after the new update, I heard a lot of good things about it. And if I had to pick on one thing, it would be the lack of new tracks from 65daysofstatic on the soundtrack. Seriously, Hello Games, get something new, okay?