I'm in the camp of it's what you make of it really, yes the ui and inventory etc. are a bit pants and buying/selling is clunky..
But there are little nuggets of great joy to be found.
I decided when I arrived on Mars to sneak into the UC secuirty office and open the case next to them, got myself a lovely legendary rifle..
Also got arrested, chose to fight, got jumped by 6+ UC security, died a few times
Then managed to get to my ship, got attacked by level 32 cruisers, died some more, then managed to boost out of combat and grav jump to my next mission planet, found that was also UC and got killed a few more times..
So grav jumped to a random planet, found an outpost with a bounty board which was 15k credits (which I didn't have), so explored the planet and found an abounded research facility with pirates all over, cleared the place, looted it all, went back to the outpost, sold my loot, paid off my bounty..
Back to Mars and I'm now a clean and lovely citizen on re-entry despite killing several UC secuirty 3 hours earlier
Now that to me was intense great fun.