The Outer Worlds is pretty much what Starfield could and should have been and was made by Obsidian, the developers behind a ton of other great games such as (in chronological order, with the best of all games ever bolded)

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
• Neverwinter Nights 2
• Fallout New Vegas
• Pillars of Eternity
• Tyranny
• Pillars of Eternity 2

There's even a sequel to it coming out some time this year so you don't run as much of a risk of running out of game any time soon!

There's always Star Citizen... :)

Okay but really I agree that Starfield is a mess. The thing is, nobody else has really delivered on the whole package yet. Ground and space combat, trading, and a narrative.

Mass effect and Freelancer gave two different sides of the coin and I think they're the next closest.

Try Freelancer. It's literally free / abandonware by Microsoft. It's a little old but perhaps it will scratch the "big space game" itch you're looking for?

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/freelancer-bbb

Microsoft themselves hosted it for the longest time but they don't anymore

There is even a mod called "Discovery" which ads an online MMO component ....buuuut there's a huge emphasis on Role playing and PvP so that might not be for you (it isn't for me either)

https://discoverygc.com/

For single player mods there is one called "Crossfire"

Elite Dangerous: Best space travel, strap on your VR, put on a virtual monitor playing star trek into your cockpit and stand in awe of how gigantic planets truly are. It has fallen under mismanagement and its mid to late game is terrible. But for the price it's great.

X4: Space sandbox game from the legendary studio behind... the x series. Fantastic galaxy sim where you can do whatever. Hunt bounties, be poor space trader who converts all their life savings to silicon wafers only to find out nobody is buying them or become ceo of the entire space. Only negative for me is it would be the perfect game if it had open space and orbiting planets and all.

Star Sector: basically mountain blade in space. Not on steam.

Space Engineers: Build your own spaceships and do whatever. The resources are more befitting of an automation game and you can automate.

More niche games: Astrox: Even online but singleplayer. Objects in space: Abandonware that takes an interesting approach to space travel. Delta v: rings of saturn: hardest sci fi space mining simulator around the rings of saturn. Starship EVO: very early access but has the best ship building system I've seen so far and ring worlds.

These are the ones I've played over the years. Hope I'm not missing anything:

Elite Dangerous - Highly reccomend this, it's basically a huge sandbox, with full size galaxy, "real" star distances and orbits, excellent flight model. It also has the most awesome community around it. Downsides are that while it has lore and ongoing background story, there's no quest, no interesting characters, no rpg elements. Also there's quite a learning curve, and quite a grind (albeit maneageable these days). There's also a new colonization feature in the works that will involve a lot of comunity effort. If you do decide to play it, join a group, a squad, or just buzz me so I can add you here and there. Friends make the game sooo much better.

Everspace 2 - This may be what you're looking for, as it has story, good gameplay, arcadey flight model and lots of rpg elements. Overall a great game. Only problem with it is that it's not particularly large. Its universe is far smaller than starfield's.

NMS - Another one with an immense galaxy. This one has a storyline, but not a lot of rpg elements. A lot of it is procedural and after a while feels very samey and shallow. It does have crossplay and a great community as well.

X4 - Not especially large, but great single player game, with a universe that feels lived in. Also no rpg and I hear the endgame gets a bit managery.

Spacebourne - Haven't played it long but iy gas good potential. There's a bunch of systems, there's quests, reminds me a bit of freelancer. The downside is that there's a single dev, so development is slow and there's a fair amount of jank.

Edit:

ME - I feel it is still king of story driven spage-rpg even after all these years. Maybe give Andromeda a try? The story is meh, but it has great gameplay, and far fewer bugs.

Lots, but only a few that are worth a damn. I've come to call them "Han Solo Simulators".

Its a genre that seems to attract a lot of half baked game designers. Make a big universe sandbox where you fly a spaceship to space stations and planets and moons and trade stuff and do pirate shit or anti-pirate shit. Lots of people have this idea, only a few make anything good out of it. Doesn't seem like it can go wrong, and yet . . .

Battlecruiser 3000 AD is a particularly infamous case of 90s Internet lore. By all accounts, it did eventually patch the game up enough to be decent, but it took years to get there. At release, the game's installer would crash for most people. However good it might have ended up, the Internet drama was better than the game ever could be. Look up "Derek Smart" if you're interested.

The X series is one I want to like, but it's been really buggy for me. Like rage quit when it destroys my progress kind of buggy. I haven't played X4, though.

No Man's Sky was an infamous mess at launch. Unlike Battlecruiser 3000 AD, it did eventually change its reputation, but it was a long, hard road. I played it a few years ago and found it uninteresting, but basically playable.

And then there's Star Citizen. I'll just leave it at that.

Anyway, the Elite series is probably the most successful for single player or smaller multiplayer, and Eve: Online for massively multiplayer.

Everspace 2 (first one was a rogue like, you don't need to play it to enjoy the sequel)

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (also a sequel, the first one doesn't have a Y axys so you may not like it)

Chorus

All three are a lot of fun, neither are AAA games so they lack a bit of polish but aren't vanilla as hell either. I enjoyed each one better than Starfield but neither as much as ME 1-3.

Also I've had some luck with https://www.50gameslike.com/ finding games.

Escape Velocity: Nova is hands-down one of the best space rpgs ever made, and it's a real shame that almost nobody talks about it.

X3: Reunion/Albion Prelude

X4

Elite: Dangerous

Spacebourne 2

Shit, even Star Trek: Online does what Starfield promised better, and it's basically just another dime a dozen MMOs with a high profile licensed IP behind it.

For the most part, it's either going to be missing a few things you're looking for, or will offer everything but not actually be good/finished (such as with Star Citizen or anything ever made by Derek Smart, and why none of those are in the above list).

Star Citizen will get a story mode called Squadron 42 witch should be feature complete and it has a star studded Hollywood cast. It looks worthwile but it won't be here for at least a year.

Prey is worth your time.

Perhaps Starsector? It's a top-down sandbox rpg. I personally find the lore and world-building interesting. Has great mechanics, and you can really get into the nitty-gritty when it comes to ship and fleet builds, you can basically do anything you want, whether you want to do solo stuff or form an empire. It also has a fantastic modding community.

There's the game that inspired them from the early 90s, Star Control 2.

It's free on Steam as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters, but the best way to play it today is Ur-Quan Masters Mega Mod. So many QoL features!

The game also had some sequels, including Star Control Origins, which is a more modern game, but the story isn't quite as good.

Star Control 3 exists, but sucks.

And then there's the series from the 80s that inspired this one, Starflight. That one was too dated for me to get into, though.

Elite Dangerous

if only elite dangerous had a campaign

I too wish for a game like this but apparently it's impossible to do it, either due to lack of vision, budget or expertise (or all of the above). Starfield sounded perfect on paper and it was a good studio to attempt it but in the end it was just a bland, soulless, boring mess of a game.

As for my suggestions, I just got smaller games, not larger ,and in that vein honestly: FTL. It's a 2d sprite roguelike and yet it's the best game at giving me the feeling of being a scrappy starship captain on the run, trying to scrounge together resources in order to complete my trip despite overwhelming odds.

The second closest game is Starbound but your mileage will vary, it feels unfinished and there is no real story to speak off, although the ship you continually improve and build in over time as you explore the universe does start to feel cozy and homely. It is also basically a worse Terraria in space so if you don't like gameplay like that, skip.

If you like Mass Effect you ought to try KOTOR1 and 2, oldies but goldies, but they do have the same weaknesses you already outlined for ME, it's very much a set story.

star trek online. you could technically warp to destinations rather than fast travel but it would be hard to keep that up and ignore them. It even has a race event where the ships have to visit major planets and locations and it even allows for transwarps but because of the race nature you at best can use it for a shortcut or two to optimize the path. They used to have events with hourly rotations and just being up and watching the space map was sorta neat as you would see all these ships trying to do the race. They switched to a format where people could choose it more whenever they want though so it lost that particular community effect.

Throwing Elite Dangerous in there as well. The learning curve is steep, and story is not driven by anything but you. But oh my god does it satisfy that “fuuuuck space is so big” feeling. The one thing that was fun in Starfield was the gunplay, which is the only thing missing in vanilla Elite, but they have an expansion that adds that. I haven’t played Odyssey, but supposedly it has gotten much better over the years.

Duskers. A game that seems to be inspired heavily by the aesthetics of the first Alien movie. Instead of one terrifying xenomorph, there are four (?) different kinds all working independently to exterminate humanity. You're at the point in the story where they've basically succeeded, and you're trying to figure out what the heck happened. You get to do some basic scripting as well!