No Man's Sky was released 7 years ago yesterday (August 9th) on PS4 in North America, today (August 10th) on PS4 in Europe, and August 12th on Steam.
How long have you been playing and how many hours have you played?
I started around Beyond (2.0) and have almost 3800 hours played.
That's like saying a sandbox is only sand. It is what you make of it. It doesn't need to be deep if your imagination is. Granted, that won't be the type of game everyone enjoys. But for those who do enjoy it, they end up putting in 2,000 hours like me, and I've seen plenty of people with more hours than me too.