I'll start with the pros
I enjoy the visual style and the magnitude of the game all with no loading screens, very impressive. The soundtrack is also pretty decent.
Cons.
That being said this attitude quickly wears off when you realize the game is so large that it is rather empty. Planets that seem like they should be teeming with life have little to offer. Occasionally you come across a outpost or space station and expect some decent activity but only find 1 alien. Where are the cities and general everyday life activity? It seems they just throw in a space pirate attack here and there and thats about it. The novelty of naming planets and species quickly wears off as you begin to realize that nobody will ever see what you have named and you will never come back to this planet again because your goal is to keep traveling towards the center. Granted things will become more populated in the Center but all those planets/species will be named by people who are racing to the center and there will be nothing left to name for the everyday gamer. There is no multiplayer, Apparently its rumored to have less then 1% chance of running into another player and apparently people have tried to do this and couldn't even see each other. I would enjoy exploring things with my friends and maybe fighting a few giant monsters with them but sadly this does not exist.
You can't crash your ship, when on planets it will force you to avoid obstacles and in space you can literally fly through other ships. This makes no sense.
The combat is boring, and there is hardly any. There is often the sound of a large creature lurking around over your shoulder that makes it seem like you are about to get into a epic battle, and yet there never ends up being anything. The Combat/fps controls and overall gun are pretty poor. Worst part is there is no reload button, you have to open your menu and refill your gun, which if your in the middle of combat will surely get you killed as opening the menu does not pause your game.
From the lifeforms to the space ships everything kind of seems like a mix and match grab bag of things. While each thing is "different" you'll soon start recognizing the same body parts or plant parts or ship parts the more you play. You'll see the same building blocks over and over.
This game is just gathering things to make things so you can gather other things on other planets to make more things to eventually make your way to the center of the universe. Normally I wouldn't mind that if there was a good amount of action thrown in or things to distract you but no you pretty much mine and scavenge and manage your inventory for 99% of the game. I've played for 10 hours and thats all I've done. You can't even make things like your own space station or home, its all just shooting inanimate objects for ship upgrades suit upgrades and guns. There is also way to much focus on managing inventory space. Supposedly the game gets harder the closer you get to the center yet the pace in which that happens is incredibly slow, at least from what I've seen.
In my opinion No Man's Sky is overhyped, rather boring and not worth 60$. I really want to give this game some love because It sort of ground breaking with the scale and no loading factor, + the amount of effort put into this game by a small team of good people but I can't justify spending 60$ on this one. It's just too boring, there is no background to really get you invested, no rising action or climax, just a potential conclusion/surprise of something in the center that sort of makes you want to play to find out for yourself but the boring factor makes me just want to google it and sell it. I would say 20$ Indie game would be a fair price and it would be a highly rated game in that bracket, but asking 60$ for very little content that is masked by "Infinite possibilities" seems like a bit of a stretch. If you really want to play it maybe buy it and Ebay it a month later, but I'm sure those prices will go down quickly as there will probably be a lot of returns on this one. Maybe wait a few months for a price drop I guess if you feel like you just need to check it out, but your better off just skipping this one, a few decent games will come out in Sept/October.
A lot of people are giving this game a 10 because "theres 18 quintillion planets, so much content/variety/no load times/beauty/unique/groundbreaking/etc". While I agree those are the games strengths but it's also the games weakness. There is so much content, its so spread out making it rather lifeless, and you'll never see it all! There are no alien societies, just 1 NPC per station/outpost. You just wander around and look at similar things with different colors or parts. Some people will say "oh thats the whole point, its an exploration game", well its pretty much the same thing over and over x 18 quintillion. If you want to explore you'll find more in your own backyard. This game would be better with only around 1,000 planets, strong multiplayer content, large scale battles, space societies, space monsters, galactic wars, any kind of conflict you can think of. This game is just unrealistic for how a universe would work, there are only 4 races that are hardly shown that all trade together and a race of robot police that care for all life in the galaxy? How many times can you come to a new planet and be in aw? probably not that many as the novelty will eventually wear off quickly as it does with all things in life.