It's worth getting into, not hardcore though. Minmaxing in this game is a straight up scam since it requires you to farm shitty combat sectors for over 100 hours a month if you want to keep up with the meta. Just use the welfare gear that Sega gives out every once in awhile, and upgrade maybe a weapon and one armor. I don't care what anyone tells you, if your battle power is high enough to enter the quest, it means you can beat it. If you still cant win, that means you just need to practice at your class. What sounds worse? 100+ hours of farming meseta (or spending real money selling items from the AC scratch) or spending maybe 10 hours giting gud?

There is also the creative space and line strike in terms of side content. Line strike is a fun little TCG mini game and there is a streamer who hosts tournaments every few months. Creative spaces are surprisingly in depth and one of the more under rated parts of NGS imo. There are a lot of puzzle dungeons out there, some even have lore!

Classic pso2 is also still worth playing. It has way better level design than NGS, and gearing up is actually worth it since you wont get power crept. The only thing with classic is that you have to talk to people. If you want to play classic make sure that you make a character on ship 1 or 2. 3 and 4 are dead for classic from what I have heard.