The anime most likely also brought many people that didn't even hear of the game at all. That's the best move they did to recover this disaster. The game is still barebone though.

You are on point imo. The game is no more than mid. They met zero of the expectations they set. A lot of cut content. There's still a very long list of disappointing things that make it the mid game it is.

On the other hand, no man's sky got so many fucking DLCs, like a lot, and they were huge. The game has completely changed since launch, TONS of NEW content, and an equal amount of QoL updates. There's no way one can compare the amount of work put on no man's sky and cyberpunk. The quality too.

Not pointing fingers at the devs, who had to crunch like crazy, we all know it's a problem coming from management, publishers and all that nice stuff.