I am rewriting my review now with 3630 hours of play time for a full blown and honest review.

Starbound is probably and will almost certainly remain my favourite game of all time and it truly isnt even close. Saying the game is a masterpiece is simply wrong because it definitely isn't, but what makes it so good is its modding. I am going to be talking a lot about modding.

To start off with a completely vanilla copy of Starbound, if you bash only the main quest you can probably be done in 3-5 hours. If you take your time however, exploring all the different types of planets, making farms, doing all quests, making pets, building, making outposts (etc, etc) you will be looking at the same level of replayability as Terraria, complimented by the enormous universe. It is definitely worth playing for, and i highly recommend it.

But then you open the steam workshop for the first time..

I can say without a shadow of a doubt, there is not a single game that even comes close to how perfect the starbound modding ability. They provide you with tools to create anything using real programming languages with user-friendly syntax to let new people with enough patience still create something they love. It is the greatest feature in any game I have ever played. With around 2000 hours of being an active Modder, I would say I am probably one of the better modders in the whole Starbound modding community, and the creativity I can express to make things of all different visuals extents and uses is what has brought me back every single time i have a break. Not only this, but the modding in starbound introduced me to REAL programming, and my fluency in the chosen modding language "Lua" has helped me with Computer Science in school as well as other passion projects at home.
But becoming a modder is not the only good thing about the modding community, it is also the things available to the public to experiment and have fun with. The extents that people go to add so much content it essentially creates a whole new starbound is insane, and with the megapacks of mods you find on the workshop, you will NEVER run out of things to do in this game.

To briefly touch on music, the orchestral perfomances are beyond masterclass and capture perfectly the tone of the game that the Devs try to create. My current two favourite songs are "On the beach at night" and "Planetarium".

Extra info:

The multiplayer implementation is pretty good too. I recommend for anyone looking for a good server to start on, "iLoveBacons" is the most popular one. with a port of `7777` and an id of `sb.ilovebacons.com` ( no username and passwords required )


TL;DR = The modding community will stop you from ever getting bored of this game, and I recommend pick it up and give it a try.