If you're looking for a tech-savvy, realistic terraforming Mars type of experience, look elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a game that is absorbing, but that you can just pause for a while to just look around in, then this is it.
In short, it's just beautiful. In fact it's the most beautiful game I've ever played. The designs for the plants, the animals, and the forests and plains that grow from them are wonderful.
Relaxing? Yes. Busy? Yes. Do you feel like you've really achieved something as you progress? Oh, hell, yes. You've grown a world that is so lovely you'll wish that you could leave this one behind and live there.
And I've only spent 132 hours playing it ...

This is truly a unique gem of a game. Something refreshing in the Open World Survival Crafting genre where you're working towards something and there is an end. I'll admit at some points it dragged a little bit, but finding new areas, watching my world evolve and creatures spawn was incredibly satisfying. I enjoyed my time terraforming my planet and uncovering some of the light story elements that were scattered through out, if you look for them. I'd highly suggest this game.

After having seen this game on Youtube and all the good reviews I'm just left wondering where those came from after playing it myself. I mean, I can totaly see that this game is awesome to play with a whole group of friends, since there aren't a lot of games like this, but as a single player experience, it's just tedious - to the point that I considered just letting it run like an idle game.

The gameloop basically looks like this: run around to collect ressources, always being forced back to base because you run low on oxygen (or collecting more ressources to make O2 tanks, which will reduce the place in your inventory, which will make you run back more often). With said ressources you build machines that increase different planet stats over time. There's no thinking involved here, the more, the merrier, just make sure you have enough energy. With raising stats you get new recipes, a bunch just higher tier versions, so you will be constantly tearing down the stuff you build to rebuild the next tier.

Building is another topic - the snapping is horrible, stairs won't align with the foundations correctly if you use more than one, foundations have a kinda strange size compared to the buildings (like 1.5 foundations for a basic living quarter) or stairs (which are about 0.5 foundations), drills and stuff seem to never sit straight on the ground and most annoyingly: later buildings just get effing huge. So the place you selected for your base might be to small by far, which means - yeah, tear down, rebuild... . Oh, also, if you haven't informed yourself beforehand: waterbodies will be created and waterlevels rise during terraforming. So if you just build your base right here and there instead of highground...you know the drill.

So I played to the point where I got a vehicle, hoping it would serve as an oxygen replenisher like in Subnautica to explore further out (since ressources around the base started depleting and completly new ones needed to be found) - but no luck here either. Or maybe I would've needed to explore some far away crashed spaceship and be lucky to find the blueprint, no idea. but I was done at that point.

But the game wasn't done with me, giving me a final kick to the groin while I was allready down: you can exit the game without prior saving, without a notifaction that you didn't save and - without an autosave on exiting.

Yeah, so I don't have a vehicle anymore anyway, but even if, I really don't feel in any way intrigued to further explore this planet and see what upgrades I could've found. What the game managed to archive was making me feel like a genuine prisoner being punished.

Oh, about the story: yeah, there is one. Well, at least after you collected enough ressources to build an enormous satellite dish and a screen for it. So you are a prisoner, and your charges will be dropped if you terraform the planet. They will be scanning the planet for progress and supply you with fitting recipes. The easy way to explain why you suddenly know how to build a nuclear reactor after planting enough grass. You also get some mails from a friend and another convict asking for help, but you can't respond and while I got all of those pretty fast after installing my spacemail system it went dark afterwards (which is IRL hours).

I loved the premise of bringing a barren rock to life, I loved the way the terraforming actually showed, I loved the graphics - that moon looks awesome! - and I loved the things to explore, I was even interested in more communications with my friend and the other convict, or about the stories of the crashed ships. Heck I can usually just spent days building a base in games like this.

But you messed up every single point.

The basebuilding is infuriating to a point where I just gave up trying to have a cool looking base.
The planetcrafting is just grinding.
The story isn't progressing - or at least not fast enough. And not actually involving me, like sending that other convict a rocket with supplies.
The exploration is a chore; run for minutes, maybe find something - or not, If you do, play inventory management with your food, water, oxygen and the loot. If not - spent minutes running back, get new oxigen tanks, run into another direction.
Missing QoL features (seriously, which game has no autosave/notification on exiting? Or what is that beacon I placed on my base actually being displayed in the world instead of just on my compass?).

The graphics are good to great and I didn't have any bugs, but for me, this game wasn't worth the money.