August 9, 2016: a date which will live in infamy. No, it didn’t quite ignite a conflict or grind the Earth’s rotation to a halt, but it did, for a small Guildford, UK-based game developer, seem very much like the beginning of the end. On that day, No Man’s Sky—a game which had generated so much hype that titles like Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Half-Life 3 nearly paled in comparison—was released to an audience of soon-to-be-disappointed gamers.

In a now famously unfortunate turn of events, Hello Games would maintain near radio silence as their credibility was decimated by a hoard of angry online consumers. The game was extremely barebones compared to what had previously been shown, and accusations of manipulation and deception would very quickly make their way to Hello Games’ head Sean Murray’s doorstep.

“It was as bad as things can get,” Murray would comment in an interview after the fact. “The internet is really good at knowing when somebody has made a mistake.” Yet, Murray’s mistake was more of a bold faced lie in the minds of many, and the poor quality of No Man’s Sky at launch would leave plenty of early adopters irrevocably spurned.

Hello Games wouldn’t give up on the project, though, and No Man’s Sky continued to receive support which would ultimately culminate in the recently-released No Man’s Sky NEXT update. This major patch has given plenty of players a reason to come back to No Man’s Sky’s cosmos, yet a few core kinks remain which still taint the experience.

30 Worth Returning: A Helping Hand

No Man's Sky Periodic Table
via: reddit.com

As concurrent updates have continued to add new features, resources, and items to the game over the two-year post-release span, fans have voiced concerns relating to the sheer amount of undocumented content available in-game. For months, it was up to the players to categorize and organize the resources in their inventories. The NEXT update changes this, and every element of crafting material can be found in a comprehensive guide alongside blueprints and other helpful tidbits. While some players previously may have been turned off by the game’s relatively hands-off approach to resource management, many of these issues have now been addressed.

29 Remaining Issues: Random Number Generation

No Man's Sky Weird Animals
via: rpgcodex.net

No Man’s Sky is, at its core, still a game about interplanetary exploration. Though it now places an emphasis on multiplayer and toutes a relatively-engaging storyline, Hello Games has still built a survival crafting simulator very much reliant on the random generation systems which dictate the title’s inner workings. While stumbling upon a resource-rich planet or duking it out with some randomly-generated terrestrial fauna may be fun, it is equal parts frustrating to players who aren’t often afforded these experiences. Space is still a vast, unforgiving vacuum, and many players know all-too-well the sting of poor RNG.

28 Worth Returning: Character Creator

No Man's Sky Character Creator
via: youtube.com

One of the most disappointing aspects of No Man’s Sky circa 2016 was the stunning lack of even the smallest amount of character customization. In fact, prior to the NEXT update, the game’s camera was tethered to a first-person perspective, and there was nary a player character model of which to speak. This has all been changed, thankfully, and the addition of a relatively-robust character creation system has come tandem to a new third-person camera option. Now players can explore the boundless cosmos as one of several different aliens, and they can deck their new creatures out in plenty of different colors and outfits.

27 Remaining Issues: Save State

No Man's Sky RPG
via: bgr.com

Though this quirk has by and large been patched out at this point, a few players are still experiencing issues related to loading saved games. A few foul-ups and issues are to be expected for a patch of this size and scope, but it is unfortunate that hours of work and exploration could unceremoniously be corrupted and erased. Hello Games, to their credit, have mostly addressed this issue, though dedicated NMS players may want to take the old adage “save early, save often” to heart for the next couple of weeks.

26 Worth Returning: Cooperative Story Progression

No Man's Sky Multiplayer
via: rockpapershotgun.com

At launch, the story present in No Man’s Sky was by and large considered to be pretty underwhelming. Though immense in terms of scope, there was hardly any sort of incentive aside from a vague direction to reach the center of the galaxy, the payoff for which was unimpressive, to say the least. However, though a majority of NMS’s new story beats have been added in previous updates, the NEXT update makes the game’s newly-robust campaign fully explorable in co-op. This means that players can squad up and take on the infinite together, and it adds an incredible amount of depth and replayability to a game once thought to be dead in the water.

25 Remaining Issues: Ship Customization

No Man's Sky Space Ship
via: primagames.com

While plenty of players have been boasting about the impressive new fleet system by which explorers may amass an armada of ships for trading or combat purposes, the customization option available for the players own ship are still shockingly limited. In reality, there really is no way to change the cosmetic aesthetics of your ship without the use of a mod or two, and it’s a disappointing oversight given the amount of attention Hello Games has payed to other aspects of their title. Now that other players can join in the fun, it would be nice to allow players to show off their unique, flashy, custom-designed ship exteriors. That is, at the moment, not possible, still not possible.

24 Worth Returning: Biological Horror

No Man's Sky Biological Horror Detected
via: imgur.com

No Man’s Sky was essentially devoid of any meaningful PvE encounters at launch, much to the chagrin of many early adopters. However, this has been amended in the two years since initial release, and Hello Game’s universe is now teeming with interesting and unique forms of life. Most captivating would be the new xenomorph-like monstrosities the game refers to as “biological horrors.” These strange extraterrestrial entities will swarm unsuspecting players and overrun those unprepared to fight. Not only do these weird beings pose a significant threat, but they add a much-needed level of intrigue and fear to the game.

23 Remaining Issues: This Place Seems Familiar…

No Man's Sky Planets Familiar
via: imgur.com

One major complaint which persists prior to the NEXT update would be the issues of biome variety. The game has been updated to deliver more interesting and varied terrain, though that doesn’t change the fact that, on the whole, there really are only a handful of different environs players may come across. No Man’s Sky veterans will quickly become familiar with everything the game’s random generation can develop, and, despite offering a major improvement to the base game’s mechanics, things can still sometimes become dull in a hurry.

22 Worth Returning: Ancient Aliens

No Man's Sky Alien Landmark Polygon
via: polygon.com

One of the most interesting new inclusions to planetary geometry may be the new ancient alien relics players may stumble across. These strange monoliths are beautiful while suggesting a faint hint of mystery and fear. Lucky players may be able to scavenge some valuable loot from these structures, and they break up the monotony of coming across crashed spaceship after crashed spaceship as was the case in previous iterations of this cosmically kaleidoscopic space extravaganza. New players would do well to keep an eye out for these things.

21 Remaining Issues: Seen One Alien, Seen ‘Em All

No Man's Sky Aliens
via: player.one

Though vastly improved from the freakshow present in the initial version of the game, No Man’s Sky still doesn’t offer a ton in the way of terrestrial animal variety. Players had tons of fun jeering at the bizarre monstrosities the game’s engine would cobble together when it was first released, and, while much less laughable these days, we aren’t quite at the jaw-dropping level of creature design present in the 2014 E3 demo. Just about every No Man’s Sky player has subtly been hoping for that awe-inspiring moment of biological discovery akin to that scene from the first Jurassic Park movie. For many, though, that just hasn’t happened yet.

20 Worth Returning: Free Of Charge

No Man's Sky Foundation Update
via: forbes.com

It would have been a headline for the ages had it not been handled this way, but it is worth noting that Hello Games has offered the entirety of No Man’s Sky’s post-launch content updates for absolutely free. Had they had the gall to charge for most of these fixes, it would have been nothing short of a total scandal and would have likely caused the studio to shut down, but it is likely that larger, greedier, less-scrupulous studios like EA or Ubisoft are not beyond pushing out some broken software and charging for fixes in the form of DLC. Hello Games may still be in the doghouse for many, but their tenacity is appreciable.

19 Remaining Issues: 4K Is Still Shaky

No Man's Sky 4K
via: gameranx.com

No Man’s Sky has been able to run at 4K for quite a while now, but, ever since it became an option, players have struggled with issues relating to framerate. While chugging, inconsistent frames are and will remain an unfortunate side-effect of gaming in 4K for the remainder of this console generation, things are particularly bad in Hello Game’s infamous production. In certain instances, the game simply cannot maintain 30fps at 4K on consoles, which can result in a stilted, nearly unplayable experience. While some players may prefer the increased visual fidelity to a consistent frame rate, it remains an issue for many.

18 Worth Returning: Heavenly Bodies

No Man's Sky Planet Rings
via: pcgamer.com

While it may seem like a relatively minor addition to the overall experience, NMS faithful have been losing their collective minds over the fact that some planets are now orbited by rings. It really is a thing to behold, and witnessing it on a 480p YouTube video doesn't quite do it justice. Sure, at the end of the day, it is a video game, but No Man Sky’s galaxy has nonetheless been made so much more believable my these added details. Gazing out into the night sky on a new planet and seeing a neighboring planet adorned with cascading, gold-tinted rings is an experience which, to some, redeems all of Hello Games’ previous wrongdoings.

17 Remaining Issues: Outdated

No Man's Sky Crafting
via: reddit.com

This will be a point of contention among most No Man’s Sky players, but the fact remains that Hello Games’ epic galactic adventure was conceived and developed during a time in which survival crafting games were much more popular. Before the likes of Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds showed up and ushered us all kicking and screaming into the era of battle royale, games like Minecraft, Day Z, and Terraria had everybody scavenging for supplies and pursuing some nebulous, nearly-unreachable goal. Hello Games is certainly allowed to pursue whichever creative ends they see fit, but it must be said that the core identity of No Man’s Sky is a bit behind the times.

16 Worth Returning: It Finally Has (A Lot) Of Content

No Man's Sky Space Combat
via: unilad.co.uk

We all know that No Man’s Sky was a painfully barebones, shallow experience when it launched back in 2016. It may have delivered on the vaguest of promises and been an all-around functioning title, but it was so devoid of content that many players simply gave up before ever reaching the center of the galaxy. Much has changed over the 24 months since the game was first made publicly available, of course, and the game is absolutely brimming with content when compared to the build released at launch. It may not be the most gripping sci-fi title available, but No Man’s Sky is and has always been about player-ordained entertainment. Players are invited to make their own fun in No Man’s Sky, and, after NEXT, that is much easier to do.

15 Remaining Issues: Performance On PC Is Still Lackluster

No Man's Sky Underwater
via: technobuffalo.com

If there’s one thing that grinds the graphics cards of most dedicated PC gamers, it’s the rampant console-ification of the video game market. In generations past, games were developed with PC in mind and then downgraded and ported over to consoles. Today, the opposite is true, and many products arrive on Windows and Mac lacking in many necessary PC-centric features. This is, to some extent, still true of No Man’s Sky, and game performance varies wildly depending on the player’s setup. This is to be expected given the hundreds of thousands of unique systems on which the game could be run, but it is a shame to see that, even after this massive update, major issues persist.

14 Worth Returning: Squashing The Bugs

No Man's Sky Next Update
via: engadget.com

Not only was the original version of No man’s Sky a completely underwhelming and mostly uninteresting experience, but it also came riddled with weird bugs and glitches which made the experience nearly painful to play. To the minds of many, the first versions of No Man’s Sky simply weren’t worth the effort they required to push through, and plenty of players simply requested refunds rather than doing their best with what was given to them. Two years later, the NEXT patch has by-and-large ironed out many of the recurring issues which sidelined many fans, and Hello Games’ cartoony space-sim is all the better for it.

13 Remaining Issues: Not Built For Combat

No Man's Sky Combat
via: bgr.com

Despite new and unique PvP elements present in the game, No Man’s Sky still obviously wasn’t built from the ground up to implement deep combat systems. While players can certainly make do with what they have, the game’s singular weapon, though infinitely customizable, just doesn’t provide enough visceral sci-fi firepower to make these segments of the game really all that memorable. This is a shame, as many new story elements require the player to get their hands dirty, and a new set of menacing alien monsters leave absolutely no room for peaceful negotiations. This will vary on a case-by-case basis, but the combat in No Man’s Sky just isn’t all that compelling.

12 Worth Returning: Brave New World

No Man's Sky Terrain
via: amazon.com

Planet terrain generation was painfully dull and uninteresting at launch, and most heavenly bodies available to explore in No Man’s Sky were ludicrously boring. Aside from the occasional biome made hazardous by either extreme cold or ridiculously acidic environs, most worlds felt much to homogenous. In a game largely centered around the joys of galactic exploration, it was very disappointing to hop from planet to planet only to play spot the difference in each new section. NEXT has made No Man’s Sky’s worlds much more interesting and individual, which, in turn, makes for a vastly improved overall experience.

11 Remaining Issues: What is NEXT For The GOG Version?

Gog Logo
via: gog.com

Though it must be a relatively small fraction of the total No Man’s Sky player base, those who saw fit to purchase the game from CD Projekt Red’s famous Good ol’ Games service may be disappointed to learn that many of the updates featured in the NEXT content patch will not be making their way to the platform until later this year. This would be a major bummer for newcomers to the game, and CD Projekt Red has, independent of Hello Games themselves, started offering refunds to players spurned by this seemingly unfair practice. CD Projekt Red is covering these costs themselves, which is a great gesture, but it would be even better if their benevolence weren’t necessary in the first place.