Agreed. Been finding the main story, dialog, companions, etc. to be spectacularly unengaging, but have found myself to be surprisingly addicted to surveying life and resources on planets, which is typically not my kind of gameplay loop.

Just hit a planet with one predator and one prey species - the prey species were these Dimetrodon - looking lizard things the ended up one shotting me a bunch of times by breathing fire. Seeing a little bit of repetition with the animals but in general I’ve really been enjoying this aspect of the game.