Until there’s combat, I don’t think there’s going to be any significant risk/reward choices. Basically you choose the right gear loadout and head to an activity; you can try to optimize by planning a route, trying to keep your inventory from getting full, etc. There’s also low drop rate collectables, so it’s a risk to try to find it vs. spending your time on some guaranteed progression.
But at the end of the day, it’s a super lightweight step tracking game that gives me some cute in-game progress for when I have to run to the grocery store, or I can make sure I queue up something good before I run a 10k.
Your ship computer shows hints and places you haven’t fully explored. Alternatively you could say where you are and helpful internet people can give you a nudge.
Combat is a bit better after the first major patch, it added heavy attacks and some new weapon types. But if you didn’t enjoy the attack-dodge roll kind of gameplay, it doesn’t fundamentally change that.
But the updates did add a lot of little stuff all around the game
This could be the first major game to properly implement a truly infinite divergent quest system! There have been plenty of attempts in the past, but this team has a lot of experience with procedural generation. Looking forward to this one.
Probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was a great campaign that’s technically an FPS with a lot of RPG heaped on top.
Update 26th April 2024: As has been pointed out to me overnight by a thousand helpful, furious strangers, describing a Sega fangame (one with Saturn button prompts, no less) as “SNES-style” is a crime deserving of imprisonment in the deepest depths of the Labyrinth Zone. Speaking as a former Genesis/Mega Drive diehard, I can only hang my head.