I enjoy sandboxes. I like Minecraft, Terraria, etc. "Make a gold axe so you can dig further" is something to work forward. Make an anvil so you can craft new equipment to explore, sure.
Here it's "make a qreblz machine because the voice tells you to". And then you can craft a wewrkz. Why.
There are a few storylines that you can try to immerse yourself in, but they're very heady, ambiguous stories that seem intended to make you wonder if the universe is a simulation running on an unstable computer, without ever committing to any concrete explanation for anything.
The endgame is mining lots of metals and making warp fuel and diving into black holes repeatedly to get to the center of the galaxy, after which you can traverse to the next galaxy, which has different distributions of types of stars and planets, and differently colored galactic nebula. There are 256 galaxies in total.
But I still think you've missed (or are just ignoring) the point of my original comment. I didn't claim it's an objectively good game that everyone enjoys.
It's an objectively good demonstration of taking a shit launch and turning it around into a success story.
In Minecraft/Terraria/Subnautica, I can actually do something with the new equipment. Go to new places, fight new enemies, conquer new bosses.
In No Man' Sky, it's already all there. In fact 10 minutes into the game I was crafting a wooden shed right next to a busy alien base with constant spaceship traffic. Can I interact with them instead? Can there be any storyline involving the sci-fi base right next to me? No, like most of the game it is just for show. You are supposed to look at the pretty scenery and ignore it while do the most boring crafting game ever. Those two aspects are not connected at all.
Here it's "make a qreblz machine because the voice tells you to". And then you can craft a wewrkz. Why.