Star field couple have been a lot of things if people who haven't picked up a controller in decades hadn't decided to try and make it as generic and casual as possible.
And maybe it's just me, but the second I
spoiler
finished the portal and restarted the game
, I lost all interest in playing the game itself.
They made the content of individual plays not matter to me, so once I did a few speed runs to the finish line I just deleted the game and haven't played it since.
Also i could never figure out their base management system. I was hoping for something like "fallout 4 settlements in space" but all I got was "way less complicated Satisfactory".
I stopped playing about a month after it came out, so there's a chance they fixed some issues that I didn't know were issues, but I still haven't had the desire to try playing it again.
As far as I know there have been no meaningful changes to the game other than the addition of a ground vehicle and the dlc everyone seems to hate.
I really really really really wanted to like the game, but the bean counters won again and had an incredibly soulless safe product released for all audiences. As they say, a game for everyone is a game for no one. :/
The way I got around what you mentioned in the spoiler was to just save my second playthrough as the "real one" so what you do still mattered.