Some of the quest chains are very good and interesting, but the exploration part is just tedious and basically consist of running in a straight line with your scanner until you get 100%. I swear, the only reason they made it so that you had to scan creatures multiple times was to stop people from 100% a planet in 5 minutes. They probably wanted the planet to feel bigger that way, but honestly it doesn't and it only makes you feel like you're wasting time running through nothing-landacapes looking for yet another tiny animal to get closer to completion.
I have yet to understand the point of outposts and why I should be interested in that mechanic, but maybe they will tell me at some point...
Honestly this game is at its best when you play from quest to quest. The ryujin quest was good, and the Vanguard quest feels like a substantial quest that you could base an entire game on. All of that's nice, but it doesn't really feel like a space exploration game. Space feels very small when you're tasked by NPCs to get them a drink from a bar in another solar system...