I felt the same way. My friends and I obsessively waited for it to come out back in high school, but were all pretty disappointed when we actually played it. It was kind of nostalgic when No Man's Sky essentially followed the same trajectory a decade later.

No Man's Sky had an epic redemption story after its disastrous launch.

They added a lot of what was missing for sure, but No Mans Sky still feels like it lacks depth when I last played it (granted, I haven’t played it in about a year so don’t know what it’s like right now)

The space stage was pretty fun, although you may as well go play any of the better dedicated 4x or space exploration games out there.

I've made several attempts at play-throughs over the years. Each and every time, the game crashed shortly after getting to the space stage. I'd curse myself for not remembering to save, forget about the game for a year or two, and the process would repeat.