Made space travel meaningful and dangerous: Running into baddies, dangers or simply out of fuel was always possible, but the further you went it was possible to gain better resources.
Flying was also challenging (but fun) when you had to consider gravity and the fact that the ship won't break unless something stops it. So fuel conservation was juggling between all these things.
In fact, landing in a high-gravity planet was not only hard, but in some cases gave one ticket to Pancake'd town.
In Starfield, ships are only there as fast travel vehicles. In No Man's Sky, they are more meaningful, though it still feels like a magic plane in a vacuum.
Resource gathering felt like an adventure: In most of these games resource gathering is a chore, something I need to do to build X or buy Y. Starfield had resource-rich planets that were actively dangerous, be it by creatures or by natural phenomena, the buggy would start to take damage and it was a gamble with knowing when to pack up and leave.
NMS gets close but if I spent more time inventory sorting, pressing X for mining a resource and scanning for further resources, I'm not enjoying my time with it.
Alien encounters were tense: The first time I met an alien in Starflight, it was as nerve wrecking, as I could "raise shields" and start combat, but also try figuring out if I could understand them. The crew may (or not) speak partially their language, so they may seem helpful but actually be plotting to shoot you down while your shields are down.
The crew could help these cases when simpathetic aliens were found, or the oposite when they scanned the ship and found their foes.
The problem I have with new games is the lack of urgency, I can't believe the main quest if the game invites me to play looter simulator or yet spend another hour mining iron.
@FMT99 thanks. It's nowadays very rough around the edges. The genesis version (the console, not the band) is the easiest one to get into but a bit shallow.