This will be as spoiler-free as it can be, and anything I discuss here is so minimal of a spoiler that it should be disregarded.

So, I've reached the center. For now, I'll just keep it a secret. I realize it is "the secret" of the game and I'm sure other people will spill the beans for clickbait sooner than later, so fear not fellow spoiler hounds - someone out there will feed your appetite I'm sure.

I just want to dispel some misconceptions right now and clear the air on a few things before I (finally) sleep.

    The Atlas Stone thing is not an "exploit." I was careful to word this so as to not spoil some stuff surrounding it, but please stop insinuating as if I found some game breaking cheat/exploit and abused it. This is NOTHING of the sort. The location of the Stones/Fuel is VERY specific, it's a VERY important location / theme in the game, none of this is by chance and they clearly meant to make it special. I said I PERSONALLY disagree with the design choice, but it's there for now and it is what it is.

    The free Fuel doesn't bother me nearly as much as the units gained by the Stones. The pacing was going okay until I ran in to these and then it just skewed everything for me. Here, I'll give you hard numbers - I was selling stacks of rare resources for 20-30K. Uncommon ones maybe 5-10k. Atlas Stones sell for 275K...

    Yes, there was life on every planet. Every single one. But, keep in mind, the life itself VARIED dramatically - when I found life on the "Fauna: None" planets, it was seriously stupid shit like prairie dogs. I wasn't encountering giant rhinos or anything. I THINK, although I could be wrong, but I THINK Sean's "90% of planets are bone dry" comment was in reference to planets LOADED with life. Or they just changed their mind last second - who knows.

    Contrary to what a lot of people think, I have done A LOT of what the game has to offer. I actually intentionally took time out of my warp jumping over the course of going to the middle to explore planets to break up the monotony of it. This does not mean I have done all of the major events, however - I am still yet to swim to the bottom of a big ocean. I am still yet to destroy a space station. I definitely still have stuff to do.

    Another gripe I have right now with the claims on the game before release is this whole "it gets weirder the closer to the middle you get." If you're like me, you expected some seriously obvious inclinations that this was happening as you progressed, and for me... I haven't seen much in the way of difference as I went. The ONLY ONLY ONLY big difference, and honestly the only reason I pushed it so hard, was the weapon crates you saw in the Trade video with the guns for trade improve in quality as you go further in. So, for me, my basic logic was... the sooner I get to the area at the middle, the sooner I have the best multi tool, so why wait?

    Here's a HUGE gripe for me at the moment. I'm going to list some bugs at the bottom and I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but holy shit has this been annoying. I've "upgraded" my suit to unlock all available inventory slots possible. I've found and bought what I "think" is a multi tool with the maximum amount of slots available in the game. However, ships HAVE NOT IMPROVED AT ALL throughout the entire course of the game. This is not a joke. I am at the point now where my PERSONAL SUIT has something like 3-4x the total inventory / module slots as my fuckin ship. That seems wrong to me.

    There are bugs. Quite a few in fact. In some moments I really start to feel as if this game would have benefited from a beta test. PRAY for a Day 1 patch, not only to nerf the sale cost of Atlas Stones but also to address some of this shit too:

    Currently, Beam Upgrades for your multi tool seem broken and ass backwards. Upgrades that are supposed to slow down the heat up of your beam, actually speed it up. Upgrades that are supposed to speed up the mining speed of the beam, actually slow it down. Essentially, your STARTING beam is as powerful as it can be, and if you upgrade it with +1 +2 +3 beam upgrade modules it becomes UNUSABLE. This would, in theory, mean that the fully upgraded beam is actually the beam you're supposed to START with, which would mean my early exploration would have gone a LOT slower.

EDIT: Uploaded a quick video highlighting the beam "bug" http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4mnp5i

    Sea creatures spawn in shallow water completely vertical stuck in the ground. This isn't like a one time bug thing either, 80% of the large sea creatures have spawned this way, which is a super bummer for me because sea creatures are my favorite and I can't even appropriately scan them or even naked eye view them when this happens.

    I've had the game full on crash to PS4 menu something like 20 times now. Usually when I'm warp jumping. No joke. Save your game a lot kids, you'll be pissed if you don't.

    Again, not finding ship upgrades has been super frustrating. Is it a bug? Is the game not spawning better ship module inventories like it's supposed to? Are we actually just supposed to have ships with 1/4th the total inventory of our suit? What gives HG, c'mon.

This entire post isn't even actually a review or anything, this is just addressing a lot of major points people keep bringing up. Once I complete other things like engaging in big scale battles, I'll make a final review.

Oh, and I didn't even pop a trophy for hitting the center. C'mon man...

EDIT: Some people want some quick positives, so stealing some I wrote down below:

    While I still haven't found a planet flush with Plants and Fauna as some of the trailer planets (I'll attest this to Sean's claim of those super full and awesome planets being a REALLY low chance to find) I will say that the terrain and overall vibe of the planets has been surprisingly refreshing. I never really have moments where I land on a planet and say, "Oh no, not this one again." They have a lot of variables in the procedural - even the most mundane things like coloring can mean a world of difference. One planet may seem VERY different from another simply because one is purple and another is yellow - you don't notice the similarities as much this way.

    Everything is very smooth. The space combat, the entering / leaving your ship, the warp jumps, all of it just feels really sharp while you're playing. I really enjoy the space flight, it's quick enough that I don't sit around twiddling my thumbs but it's long enough at times where I legit feel like I'm traversing a realistic space-distance.

    The noises and sound in this game are some of the best I've ever experienced. The animal noises are incredible. They set the mood in such fantastic ways - you'll hear them from quite a ways off and it really sets the tone for that planet. It's very immersive.'

EDIT: I've spent some time responding to comments but I really gotta hit the sack for a bit. Super tired. I'll respond to some more when I wake up.

I've decided I'll post a review when the review embargo is lifted and when other websites post them. I'd expect all the major websites will post reviews, so I'll post my own as kind of a "reddit review," but I'll respect the review embargo before I do and wait for that to lift. So when my review goes up it'll be parallel to all of the other reviews and hopefully you'll see I'm not crazy in some of the things I say, be it good or bad, if other publications agree with me to some degree on any of it.

(This is a safeguard so you don't hate me if I say anything too negatively, ofc ;) )

ANOTHER EDIT: One thing I want to stress is that this post was my NOTES AT WHERE I'M AT RIGHT NOW with the game, and was never meant to be a definitive final say in any area. I'm still learning, I'm still figuring things out. These notions will evolve with time. This is just a process - I was just sharing where I am in my game state with what I've managed to figure out so far.

EDIT: There's another weird thing I've noticed, and Kengi01's version has the same thing.

Your Photon Cannon is supposed to be charged up. It's supposed to take Oxides. Right now, it doesn't. There's no bar to charge it, it doesn't use up a resource, it's infinitely usable.

This seems... weird. The Beam on your ship needs Isotopes to charge; why is the Cannon infinite use? There's even a tooltip while flying / fighting that tells you to use Oxides to charge the Cannon.

I checked his stream specifically to check for this because I knew I'd be able to identify it early on and sure enough - his Cannon has no charge bar and is infinite use as well. I am CONFIDENT he is playing the same version. And this is yet another indication that we may all be playing a pre-launch version, with a Day 1 patch imminent.

EDIT: I'm considering spoiling some aspects of the center, while leaving the mystery in tact. Basically, I want to explain what it is mechanically speaking, but I want to leave the spoiler of what lies for you in wait at the center in tact to keep the mystery. I think this would be a fair compromise, people would still have a mystery waiting for them unspoiled, and all the people wanting to better understand the fundamental framework of how the game works would have a better idea. What do you guys think?