It has lots of systems that are entirely optional and irrelevant to the main game/story, and it's not good at telling you this. Yes, you can go for long hikes to chart a random planet's flora and fauna, pretending this was NMS, but at best, you'd do that for the enjoyment of that.

It is definitely less focused than eg. Skyrim, and being able to instantly jump to any point in the galaxy that you've been before works against the game's attempts at being a huge weighty sci fi life sim.