I saw the concept of "open world, seamless procedural planets, wander around and gawk at the pretty scenery", and I was pretty much sold. Any promises past that were either obviously over-hyped, promo bs that could not possibly be delivered in time, or ads/interviews/videos that I never saw.

I wanted a modern take on Noctis, saw that NMS was offering something pretty darn close to that, and was happy with what I got.

This is not to detract from the misleading promotion, but I do think the whole thing would have been so much better received if NMS was published as the beta/early access procedural survival/exploration game that it so clearly actually was on release, instead of the AAA Sony/PS4 flagship must-buy that it was marketed as.

But it wasn't just 'misleading'; it was outright fraud. It wasn't "looks how awesome this feature is!" and then "oh, well it's not quite as awesome as they said". It was "oh, that feature isn't even in the game."

That one. I was interested and followed development closely, but I waited and then passed.

What you call "salty" I call sharing my opinion on the topic of the article. Similarly, I suppose I could say you are an apologist, but I don't see how that gets us anywhere. I play video games and despise the way the industry is going. NMS was one of the worst offenders.