Starbound is one of those games that really make me wish there was a "neutral rating" for reviews. At the time of this review, I've spent 554 hours in Starbound according to Steam. And I'm not going to lie: I really do enjoy playing Starbound. But I'm not playing Starbound. I'm playing Starbound with 250+ mods that, when combined, drastically change the shape of the game, and a non-insignificant portion of that time has been spent testing mods that I have personally made or worked on in collaboration with others. If I played Starbound - vanilla, post-release Starbound - I would have completed the "story" in approximately one rushed hour and then seen everything this procedurally-generated game reasonably has to offer in an other two hours. Much like Terraria and Minecraft, much of Starbound's depth comes from how extensively moddable the game is.

Snarky spoilers below:
Vanilla Starbound begins and ends with a generic "story" and quest-loop with about as much depth as your average Blue's Clues episode; your character escapes Earth being ravaged by an "ancient evil" that's escaping God's seal yet also still held in a single place somehow, and you're tasked with flying around a procedurally-generated universe to scan the dressers and bookcases of five races for clues to unlock five static, time-locked (repeatable) missions, then you surpass God by killing that which it could not kill, die, and then are resurrected. Your reward is a giant cardboard check for a small amount of money and a thank you card.

However, you can effectively ignore all of that, much like an Elder Scrolls game, No Man's Sky, etc. Wanna just explore the universe? Do it. Wanna build to your heart's content while "impending destruction" waits and checks its watch? Do it. It's like playing Morrowind and getting off the boat for the first time: "Ok, here's your papers, you should go speak to-hey, why are you exploring the nearest Dwemer ruin instead of listening to this really important information!?"

Starbound had a significantly larger depth to its planned (and existing) content during beta. However, mid-beta, a large portion of this content was cut or reworked, to the point that there were protest and restoration mods being produced en masse. Then, when 1.0 released, an arguably larger chunk of content was lost when numerous portions of the game, including racial storylines and a significant portion of associated lore, were streamlined into the current, bland production. Why this was done is anybody's guess, though Chucklefish's exploitative treatment of its talent[web.archive.org] might have been a factor in what stayed and what got cut. And this isn't even touching on a game engine that likes to have "lag spikes" in solo play and numerous bugs stemming from toolset shifts mid-development and simply retaining support for the legacy structure rather than porting it to the new tools (I'm looking at you, PNG dungeons), and a history of updates without extensive versioning systems that throw the very modding community Chucklefish has cultivated since beta into disarray.

This is why I really wish there was a neutral option for reviews:

• If you want Starbound as a vanilla game, stay away. It's really not worth it at any price when there are vastly superior similar options for the same price or cheaper. It should be noted that a vanilla player cannot play multiplayer with modded players/servers unless special care has been taken by the modded end to ensure all such mods are "client side", and installing many mods can corrupt saves when uninstalled.
  
• If you plan to play with mods and comprehend that modding is done at ones own risk (such is the mantra of any moddable game), this is probably one of the best "enjoyment per dollar hour" games on Steam. It has a passionate modding community that, after 8 years of use, reuse, and abuse, is still publishing new and updating old mods, producing mods is extremely simple to get into compared to many other games, and even the smallest mods can add insane amounts of appreciable content.