Personally I love Elite Dangerous, but have still only spent ~50 hours in it.

It’s a fantastic flight sim. But IMO it’s just not as captivating as a purposefully created narrative. It’s good for different reasons. I know they’ve added ground/walking stuff since last I played. I know you can discover alien stuff and wander alongside the ‘story’ in the game. But it’s closer to FromSoft style reading text descriptions and forum posts to follow the story than it is playing an RPG.

I played the original Elite on the BBC, and then Elite 2 & 3 on the Amiga. Elite Dangerous on the PC was just plain dull by comparison.