I've been dipping in and out for the last 4 years, and it really has come a long way. However some of what was in the video wasn't accurate of the game in its current state (fires on ships and NPCs on trams were the two that stood out on a quick watch). FWIW, I see the game takes about 26gb of RAM at the moment performance wise.

Lots of the performance issues can also be attributed to poor server performance - if you get on a brand new server then you can really tell the difference than one thats been going a while. Hopefully that will be fixed soon too.

I'd say loops are still somewhat lacking, like the bare bones of the loops is there, and there are some progression mechanics, but you can see what they're going for.

Pyro was great though, can't wait for them to add it to the PU.

And yes, the whole time I played Starfield I couldn't help but compare to SC. In fact, SC has ruined my enjoyment of lots of other space games because nothing comes close to that experience.

"Play through" might be a stretch. There's only a handful of gameplay loops, getting your equipment and ships out of storage is an endeavor, and you need to be prepared to lose hours of effort to random bugs. This is coming from someone who plays regularly and I'd still recommend giving it a try, it's on free trial until the 30th.