I played it in VR and it still does.
replyNo Man's Sky suffers from planets being "deserts", they have different attributes but it's still a fairly lifeless empty world.
Ironically this is realistic but also not terribly fun as a player.
They've added a lot of elements inspired by other games. One of the first things they added was base-building. Also a colony sim subgame, a pokemon-like subgame, fishing and cooking subgames, a roguelike subgame (exploring derelict dreadnought spaceships), as well as a lot more non-procedurally generated storyline/quests.
replyThe worst thing I can say about it is that it tries to be everything for everyone, and is relentlessly friendly - all the new mechanics are very forgiving, very optional and (from what I've seen) rather easy. But there is sort of an in game story explanation for why it sometimes feels more like Stardew valley than a space exploration game.
Indeed, I remember it being pilloried after release but the Steam reviews now are generally quite positive from players who've logged tons of hours.
replyThe original massive controversy was the founder of the studio claiming it had multiplayer when it very clearly didn't which was such an odd thing to claim and easy to prove false.
replyThat and the trailer was very different than the released game.
They apologized IIRC and then continued to work on it for like a decade - adding multiplayer and many large changes to the game