I'm liking the update, but some (many) things still need to be improved in some (many) aspects of the game.
1) Animals still don't do much around other than walking, stopping, walking and stopping, turning, and walking and sometimes running when you're getting too close (or attacking if they're "hostile"). They don't even have 'sleeping' cycles or stop and rest a moment (even during the day). They don't look like they're looking for food or water either (nor do they 'acknowledge' presence of nearby water even if they spawn right on a beach). And flying animals are probably the worst ones when it comes to (not) be 'life-like' (or at least 'believable').
There's still flying animals staying exactly at the same spot in the sky, flying in circles constantly without ever once landing to rest; and the "best" (funniest) part is whenever you're on a harsh planet (very low or high temps, or highly toxic or highly radioactive) with super storms they're STILL there flying in circles at exactly the same spot, when the visuals and sounds try to give you the impression that the sky is essentially falling on your head and the planet is about to snap. But those birds? Nah, no shits were given that day, man.
I know, they're a small team. But c'mon, it's been two years by now. I'm not asking for Skynet-level of A.I. sophistication. But can you at least create some 'branch' in the A.I. system that leads them to have new animations and behaviors based on certain conditions? If there's a storm, at least make them land? Or better yet (yes, it'd be better) just make them disappear from their spot in the sky if animating them would be too hard or coding new A.I. would be too costly or complicated (or heck, if it's a super storm powerful enough to vaporize ships on the spot why not just KILL those damn birds and look at them ragdolling their way all around the place?). But PLEASE just use some tricks and logic here for animal behaviors.
To this day I think that in general, animals in the game and their A.I., along with their "variety" (not just visually but behavior-wise) is probably still the worst part.
2) Planets STILL have a fixed sky box for day and night cycles. There's no dynamic / real-time planetary rotation on its own axis. There's no planetary revolution / orbiting around the system's Star. And, speaking of Stars, they're STILL just some image in the system you're in, not a real 3D object at the actual 'center' of a planetary system. It was like that on day one, still is two years later. They didn't do it for this update which took them more than half a year to work on... so I don't see why they'd be doing it in the future (ok, let's give them another two years; we'll see).
Additionally, speaking of 'belivability' of some physical elements; planets (as far as I'm aware of) don't have variations in gravity. I don't have the memory in my two years of playing this game (on and off, mind you; not actual two years of dedication) of doing Moon-styled low gravity walks and jumps. Maybe those planets do exist (correct me if anyone actually found one, and WITHOUT mods by the way). That's not to mention that the day and night cycles that we do have on some planets right now don't even seem to vary in duration / speed at all. However, if planets could have actual rotations on their own axis the algorithm could for example also create a variation for the rotation speed (even the angle could change) which would in turn create planets with very slow or rapid rotations (super long days, or nights).
I DO remember some article where the author asked some questions about that stuff in general (planet rotations, Star at the center of a system, planets doing their revolution around the Star, etc) and Sean I think replied something along the lines of "It would confuse players", referring then I believe to how it would be "difficult" to find our ways around a system if planets were to change places. Allow me to say that would be complete bullocks. The real reason, of course, is because (at least at the time of the interview which was a solid year or more ago by now) they didn't have the resources or time to work on that stuff, and had way more other (certainly more important) things to fix first. I can understand that. But don't go around pretending that I'd be too stupid to find my way around a planetary system. Additionally, "moving" planets would be done VERY slowly in general. You'd probably have to stay in the same system at least for a full WEEK or even more to have planets positioned at completely new locations.
Besides, even if it was the case, even if planets would do their revolution around a Star in real time WHY would it be a problem to start with? Low speed or not, doesn't make sense that people wouldn't find their way around. They're PLANETS... sort of difficult to miss. You don't look around a Star system on a MAP onboard your ship showing you WHERE those big dots are and thinking "HHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMM... damn man I wonder what this big sphere on my radar is, especially considering that I am currently playing a sci-fi themed space exploration-focused video game, also wasn't that big sphere on the horizon located somewhere else two days ago? JESUS CHRIST THIS GAME IS CONFUSING."
Sean, we need to talk man.
3) I'm not 100% certain if this update changed anything to Biomes diversity on planets, but the four planets I've been on by now since yesterday with this update are exactly the same type of planets I'd see prior from past updates, all the way to the original version of the game. By "biomes diversity" here I'm referring to how planets in No Man's Sky (at least the ones I've seen since the two years I've owned this game, and I've been on about 250+ planets or so since then) that have ONE set of "assets" (chosen by the algorithm during the procedural generation) and applies those assets EVERYWHERE on the planet. Meaning that there's no planets with PARTS of it being a dense forest while another PART of it (say to the north) would be colder and would have snow, while PARTS of it would be a giant desert.
Essentially, planets have ONE Biome that repeats itself uniformly planet-wide, and the only variations you'll see in terms of environments are the "spawn points" of those seeds chosen by the algorithm, along with some terrain layout variations, animal spawn points, settlements and so on but that's it. Basically if there's 4 Biomes in a system it's because there's 4 planets to explore each with one. Now, OF COURSE I know that it SHOULD also happen to have planets here and there with just one biome. I do not mind finding a full desert planet, a lifeless rock of moon, or a giant ocean planet or a perpetual winter planet. But when it comes to "Earth-like" / temperate / calm weather planets that look almost too good to be true then it's usually a disappointment.
It does not remove (ironically) my desire to explore to OTHER planets (indeed, to discover new biomes and seed arrangements I'd never seen before)... but it does severely hurt my desire to STAY on the same planet for too long (usually I'm "done" with a planet after about 2 or 3 hours max). The visual repetitiveness weighs heavily at some point and I absolutely have to GTFO of there to see something new.
4) There's still no system in place to help explorer players (players who mainly play to find and scan) finding that LAST ONE species that ALWAYS eludes us. It could be something VERY straightforward and right to the point. Let's say... you get no hints or cues at all until you have ONE species left to find. At which point you'd have a new marker (or several, maybe) on your map (checkpoints / points of interests) that would indicate that the last species you have to find is located AROUND, somewhere 'in the vicinity' of those markers and you'd maybe have 2 or 3 to travel to, MAX. Some sort of pointer would help.
There's a lot of issues with that (not being able to find the last species on a planet, which happens to me VERY often; at least 6 out of 10 planets cannot be 'completed' because of that). The first problem goes exactly in line with the lack of Biomes diversity on planets. Meaning that you wouldn't be able to think "Ok, one last species left... OH... maybe I didn't check on the snowy regions of this planet; maybe it's an animal that needs colder temperatures and only spawns in those environments!". NOPE... too bad buddy, because this planet s'gonna be the same everywhere you look and you have no indication whatsoever of what type of animal you need to find next (flying? cave-dwelling? submarine? living in herds only? lone wolf type of predator?). And to "complete" a planet ("completing" in this case only means finally scanning everything on the list of scannable Fauna and Flora and getting the 'final' credits reward) you NEED to scan EVERYTHING on the list, otherwise you don't get the creds.
It's a complete nightmare for completionists. I've been literally 'forced out' of planets because of that. I just could not stand having to look around and landing randomly and taking off again, and landing "somewhere, anywhere" and crossing my fingers that I'd finally see moving red dots after pressing F to look around and call it a night. After 3 hours or searching on a planet that's actually planet-sized and looks the same everywhere I just cannot take anymore of it and leave. But it leaves an after taste of dissatisfaction knowing that I've done it for the wrong reasons. Because it's not balanced and the devs just didn't put thoughts worth two rats' asses in the concept of "finishing tasks" in their EXPLORATION-FOCUSED GAME ... * clears throat * ... ah, feels better now. I had something to let out here.
Conclusion
Looks like I'm bashing the whole game above. The thing is I'm bashing those points. There's indeed certain things, specifically, in this game that do frustrate or disappoint me (considering by now it's been two years, some of the things I'm seeing that can and should be fixed SHOULD indeed have been fixed or improved at this point, seriously).
BUT... despite this blitz of negativity on my part I can genuinely say that this update is good - overall. And that in general the game IS currently a major improvement coming from its original state two years ago. It's going in the right direction pretty much every time a big update hits. I only suppose that since they're a small team that anything they undertake needs to be worked on three times longer than it would in any other bigger companies. Maybe I'll finally be able to talk about my real-time day and night cycles due to actual physical planetary rotation in some update sometime around 2022.