How I finally experienced No Man's Sky after 10 years of waiting

I remember being so hyped up about No Man’s Sky when I was watching the trailers as a 12-13 years old kid. This was quite literally a game of my dreams - infinite worlds to explore on a starship with no limits.

But unfortunately (or maybe not so) it was still a couple of years before the game release and my PC was nowhere near powerful enough at the time.

When the game finally released in 2016 I saw all the negative reviews and thought “ahhh too bad, I guess it was too ambitious after all”. And kind of forgot about it.

Fast-forwarding 10 years later, I finally picked this game up, after it has received (and continues to) countless updates and the rating’s changed to Very Positive. What a comeback! I think it was on the Echoes update at the time?

And still… I didn’t enjoy it. I was stunned by the planets at first, but the whole resource-gathering and inventory management system felt very grindy and overwhelming to the point I wasn’t enjoying the game.

I instinctively knew that I would love it if I dove a bit deeper, but I just didn’t have the energy at the time, so I put the game off for a while.

A year or so later I saw the news about the Omega update and expedition. And I just had to get the Starborn Runner ship, I mean how couldn’t I? It’s so gorgeous! So I decided it was as good time as ever to give the game a proper try.

I started the expedition on a new save and was given a nice starter Solar Ship (which I still have in my collection to this day), which I quickly repaired and off I was.

I’m not sure if they improved the tutorial or if the expedition milestones were just naturally guiding me (probably both), but I got a grip pretty quickly this time.

Well, except for me jumping into a black hole (which was one of the milestones) and attempting to reach the rendevous from millions of light years away (which would have probably taken real life months or years).

I few hours later I finally gave up (sorry Frost6970) and jumped to Steam forums to understand what’s going on. Luckily, the Teleporter (which is present on every space station) allowed me to get back to a previous rendevous and resume expedition from there. It then took only an hour or so to finish the expedition, since I already completed all other milestones during my detour.

And what can I say… This game is almost everything 13 years old me hoped it would be. Infinite, procedural worlds, you never know what you will get. And so many things to do! The hardest part was getting past the learning curve (and an endless expedition).

Of course it’s not perfect. It starts getting repetitive after a while (and my playtime isn’t even that high). But I still come back to it from time to time and enjoy it.

It’s honestly inspiring seeing Hello Games pushing this game forward even years after release. I truly wish them all the best and I’m excited to see what comes next!