🏆 Video Game Awards 2025 - Best Ongoing Game

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 ⬛ = ❤️

❤️ Steam Awards - Labor of Love nomination/vote 2025
❤️ Steam Awards - Labor of Love nomination/vote 2024
❤️ Steam Awards - Labor of Love nomination 2023
❤️ Steam Awards - Labor of Love nomination/vote 2022
❤️ Steam Awards - Labor of Love nomination/vote 2021

Below you will find my original reviews from back when the game first launched. I was quite critical of the game's performance and content vs it's price. I've left it all intact below.

Hello Games, whether due to a moral compass or as part of it's business strategy, has never let up on NMS. Once they tackled the bulk of the bugs from launch, they have added more and more to the game. Every few months there is a new content update, and never as DLC to buy or add. All the new content is released free already baked into the base game. They've been doing that for the last six years and there is no sign that they plan on stopping.

So when you look at the Store and see that the game is still regularly priced at $60, on sale at $30, after 6 years, now you know why. It hasn't been like an Origin or EA title with a few updates or tons of paid DLC.

If you want a space exploration game that can offer hours of enjoyment, NMS has a ton of it. Some of it the NMS community gets controversial about. And there is still an occasional glitch to the game.

This is one of the few games where I'd say it's worth it even at full price. Having said that, I'm far overdue in flipping this review from negative to positive. I've nominated this in to Steam's game awards for Labor Of Love for a couple of years now. It's about time that my review reflects that.

-- rawWwRrr

OG August 14, 2016 Review:

tl;dr: For $60, It's.... too unstable. Wait for an update.

I don't really want to recommend yes or no, but I have to go with 'no' in hopes of bringing about some improvements sooner than later. I am experiecing just about what everyone else has been talking about:

* Frame drops
* Hitching
* Soft crashes (can still reboot with reboot switch)
* Hard crashes (can't reboot, must shutdown through power switch)

I did finally get a decent few hours of play time but only after I downgraded the graphics to all low, removed any post-processing, etc. And that still didn't solve any problems other than delaying the inevitable crash.

The flight controls are funky but you get used to them after a bit. The worlds are pretty cool. I was able to jump around between two planets and a moon with a space station inbetween. The game is actually a lot of fun, but we need some updates to the engine so that it works better on the PC.

It was too frustrating having to repeat lost progress in the beginning. You have to fix your ship before you can really begin exploring the planet. The only way to save the game at this point is to enter the ship, then exit. Upon exiting, a save point is made. Once the ship is repaired and powered up, you can save the game progress at the outposts and whatnot scattered across the planet. So if you find yourself having to walk a long distance for a resource, make sure you can get back to the ship in time before the game crashes.

I'm sorry, Hello Games. For now, it's not worth $60.

OG August 21, 2016 Review Update:

Update: I've since been on the experimental build and it's very much improved. I've got all the graphics settings maxed out at 1080p except for Anti-Aliasing. That is set to FXAA as Ultra SSAAx4 was causing huge FPS drops, which is understandable. I have even re-enabled the Steam Overlay. So far so good, many more hours of exploring and minimal crashes.

There are a couple of bugs. Once I found myself falling off of a high platform after launching the game. I had exited the game while standing on it and clipped right through it when going back into it. I also had a moment where the reticle on the ship was off-center. Photo cannon would shoot towards the reticle but the phasers would shoot straight ahead. It wasn't until I warped out to a different system that it reset the alignment to dead ahead.

The one thing I would really like to see improved upon is the hijacking of the UI during events and achievements. The screen letterboxes and temporarily removes many of the things you can do during the sequence. It really slows the pace of the game down and can cause some issues with hostiles while you're kind of frozen in place waiting for the game to allow you to continue.

Another UI issue I find aggravating is how equipment slots can extend beyond the viewable screen, for instance when comparing ships or multi-tools. I often can't see the far left or right slots to get an informed decision about the entire object.

Lastly, the click-and-hold stategy to navigating the menus and configuration screens needs to be eliminated. It has a functionality to allow someone to stop just before making a mistake, or changing their mind, but anything in the Escape menus should be simple point and click. Save the click-and-hold to the gameplay.

That's about all I can think of right now. So far I've stumbled upon some ship-to-ship battles, took part in one, stumbled across some more interesting planets, and found a black hole. It's definitely a game with a lot to find. If it could clean up the UI a bit more, I wouldn't mind flipping my thumb from down to up.

rawWwRrr's raTiNg: 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 = 💯

I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already, but this has been, by far, the best game that I have played in a long time..

I was hooked into the story from the start. It had me enraged at the murder and destruction that the Mongols brought to Tsushima. I was brought to tears when that chaos took away a friend and ally. I was even consumed by loss when I watched one Mongol NPC murder a peasant woman right in front of me during a raid on a farm, becoming upset with myself that I wasn't fast enough to save her. I would find myself talking to them as if they were standing right in front of me instead of just displayed on my monitor. I can't say that I've ever involved myself with a video game's story quite like this one.

Every visual was stunning. From the wind causing grasses to ripple like waves in the water, to the shifting weather, to the moonlight illuminating the ground around me, it blended so well with the open world design. Darkened caves being lit just from the arrow's flame while knocked in the bow. The way footprints would be left behind in wet ground or through the snow. How fallen leaves would part as you past through them. The tall grass would shift oddly when you or an animal would maneuver through them.

Even the sound design was top notch. Imagine walking from one environment to the next, hearing different birds or frogs, or you walk through a bamboo grove and can hear them knocking against one another. You're traveling through the countryside looking for a special spot and the sounds of horses whinny in the distance alerting you of a Mongol patrol nearby. Lightning that causes thunder even takes a few seconds to reach you as it strikes in the distance. Simply amazing.

I grabbed it during the Black Friday sales. It was the only game that I bought because I was hoping it would be that one game that would grab my attention and keep it until I finished it. And it was exactly what I was looking for.

It took me exactly one month to reach the end credits between work and real life. I would try to put in a few hours each night and a few extras on the weekend. I didn't want to even look at another game lest it distract me from finishing this one. And I did what I always do with these kinds of games and took my time roaming the countryside to see what I could find along the way, the little secrets, the side quests, the random events, learning new techniques, grinding out the character to his max.

Now I can continue with NG+... but I've completed the story to high level of satisfaction. It's time to move on and find the next top tier game.

Thanks for reading.

-- rawWwRrr