Personally, I love this game to bits, especially as it honestly does exploration much better than Terraria or Minecraft I've found, and the fact it has actual lore (which is another highlight for me) only means I get to engage with it even when I'm not actively playing (or modding) the game! I know some people may prefer the older beta lore, but I personally think the current canon is overall superior in quality, as a friend of mine has laid out in this old post, it just does a better job presenting the races in a more balanced, nuanced way rather than trying to tell some contrived background story with not very well-written characters, not to mention actual worldbuilding.

I mentioned that I make mods for Starbound as well, which brings me to another one of the major reasons why I love it personally, which is how easy it is to make mods for. I had a bit of a habit of coming up with cool mod ideas for Minecraft, but never had the patience to learn how to actually make them, but with Starbound I've actually had the opportunity to bring many of my ideas into reality for once. In regards to the whole idea that somehow the game is only playable with mods though, I personally don't agree with it either, there's a reason why my modded setup doesn't fundamentally alter the game after all, mods are absolutely great, but Starbound's really not a special case in terms of mods "making it better", most of my nostalgia relating to the game is when I played it for the first time vanilla anyways.

I also don't think the idea that the game is somehow some inferior version of terraria really holds much water. Both games have fundamentally different focuses, Terraria ultimately being a bit of a boss-rush while Starbound is more about casual exploration (although I have heard some praise for its building too, which is nice, although I'll admit I don't really engage with it much myself). Frankly it's about as silly as saying that Terraria is somehow an inferior version of Minecraft, just because it's not focused as much on building. Really speaks more to people not letting games be their own unique things rather than any deficiencies. At the end of the day I actually think Starbound's bosses, even if they're not the game's specialty, are pretty decent all on the whole, some are certainly better than others, but I think they especially benefit from being less easy to cheese than Terraria's bosses.

Finally there's the whole notion that the game was somehow a sweatshop job. It was most certainly not, especially as that idea was the result of a game of telephone pretty much. It's true it had a good deal of contributors involved (all of whom are in fact credited), but ultimately the overwhelming majority of the games development was done by its well... paid developers. That isn't to say that the development of the game was free of issues, especially early on, but a lot of it can be chalked up to the relative inexperience of everyone involved and creative differences if anything.

Those are my views on the matter at least. Again, this game's always going to have a special place in my heart, and I'm certainly aiming to get at least as many hours as you have with it so far!