I kind of have the opposite opinion after this weekend. I started a brand new game too see the changes. I think Hello Games has done an admirable job of updating the game, and they’ve certainly made it better than at launch, but I still find the core gameplay is pretty awful. The exploration stuff is bland and annoying because the planets still feel alike (just palette swaps with different toxicity/ice/heat levels) and ship flight is clumsy and limited. Flora and fauna have no sense of biology or purpose other than supplying crafting materials. Crafting is uninteresting because it’s just clicking on menu items and playing inventory shuffle, with the primary gating mechanism being the number of your ship and suit slots. The story, such as it is, just reads like pretentious twaddle to me.
I guess what I’m saying is that if you weren’t jazzed by the core gameplay loop before, I don’t think any of the updates really did anything to address that. The game is much improved, and I applaud Hello Games for continuing to work on it through all the negativity, but it’s just not a game for me.