I would say it's closer to Minecraft than a sci-fi exploration game or something like that, but I enjoy it quite a bit for what it is. And they push out tweaks/content constantly, I've replayed from scratch a few times since I bought it and the journey was different with new stuff to find each time. I bought it for like $15 or $20 and never regretted it.
If you don't like designing your own buildings/ships, there are blueprints in the game to use to resources to build pre-designed stuff, plus all the blueprints on the Steam workshop.
It's absolutely a better game than NMS, but it doesn't quite fill that explore-the-galaxy itch yet because there's a limited amount of in-game planets for now (dunno if this changes in the future... it might since the planets themselves use random generation already). I don't really know of any game that fulfills that promise.
Much like Minecraft, it's more fun coop with some buddies, but there's plenty to do.
