I can't articulate why, and I'm not even a big fan of Minecraft, but it honestly feels way deeper than NMS.

I think it's the fact that NMS has a lot of systems, but they are just separate, and they have a lot of limitations. Ships are separate from bases which are separate from freighters. They sometimes interact if it's explicitly coded, but nothing is allowed to be emergent.

In Minecraft I can put 100 nether portals in my basement if I feel like it, and I can set up a sheep farm in hell. I can pour water into my base and have a mini pool with fish. I can make copper golems that move items, and that opens a whole can of worms.

In NMS, it feels like I have no freedom to experiment at all. For that reason, it's been pretty hard to get into. Everything feels so baked in place. The only thing that really scratched that itch of mine was making big farming factories. But I was not interested after that.