I've played both.
Empyrion I've played about 10 hours, it just hasn't hooked me. It has an interesting building engine, and the way all of the systems work together with power and processing. It can be a little janky at times. If one really wanted to get into it you could probably build some cool things. But I'm not sure there's much to do with the cool thing you built.
I've played a fair amount of NMS, I stuck with it from the Kickstarter, even after they were doing refunds. I never seem to get very far though. A new major update will come out, I'll start a new game, play for 5-10 hours, then get distracted and not come back to it. They keep adding more to the game, so I think there's plenty of entertainment to be had.
I don't have anything against either game, I wouldn't put them in the top of my list, they're both just OK.
I'll probably buy Light No Fire, the next game from the NMS guys, because I like the studio and want to see what they do with that.
The original One was underpowered. I did upgrade to a One X and it was decent as consoles go. It's still my goto for couch gaming. But I've never even considered buying one of the new ones with the increasingly confusing names, and mostly play on PC these days. I have such a massive library of Xbox games though, between Gold and things I bought, I don't want to abandon it entirely.
I combined a couple that were well known band leaders who went solo.
The Police/Sting, Billy Joel, Volbeat, Alan Parsons Project, Psychedelic Furs, Cake, Soul Coughing/Mike Doughty
MN locals: Alex "Crankshaft" Larson, Gear Daddies, Arcwelder
We watched it. It was weird. It was basically a kids movie with juvenile jokes, but that kids wouldn't get and delivered by old comedians that kids wouldn't recognize.