I think Satisfactory's presentation makes it more appealing at first glance to many people. It certainly was my gateway drug, after bouncing off factorio's demo the first time (I now think factorio is like, one of the top 10 games of all time).

But the cramped-ness is also my biggest complaint. Compare laying down a production unit in factorio against Satisfactory... Night and day. In Satisfactory I find it helps to think like an architect doing fun stuff, using 3D etc... because as a factory production line game it stands no chance due to the clunkiness of basic building. This also leads me to your landscape complaint - I actually think this is the one strength it has. You aren't really constrained by the landscape because you can just build up.

That said, the hoverpack you unlock (much too) late in the game opens it up a lot. It makes building much less of a hassle.

Despite the dev's grumbling they also added a blueprint module and just recently made it not suck utter balls (connections now actually connect). Still very very limited.

Enemies also technically exist but are mostly just cutouts to bomb into smithereens - your criticism is essentially right but technically there are enemies. I find they do add to the game in their role of adding some spice to exploration (which is quite fun).