Back when Spore came out, I was too young to know about most of the hype around it. It was short, yeah, and the end game was odd, but otherwise I remember really enjoying it.
Man I loved Spore!!
Some of the later parts are not as detailed as I'd hope for, but the space segment nearly makes up for it!! Never fully finished space though as a kid.... Need to go back and finally do it haha.
Hah, I remember the space end game seeming like an endless slog of fighting the intergalactic evil race that occupied all the systems surrounding the center of the galaxy. Rather than spend forever slowly taking each and every system over, I just made a mad dash for the center to see what was there. I think the strategy was to take my ship into a system as I'm being chased by enemies, down to a planet, lay down a respawn point without dying, then leave the system and race closer to the center, and repeat. I eventually made it there with this strategy. I won't spoil what's at the center in case you don't want it spoiled but...I found it underwhelming lol.
Sidetrack: I loved it so much I bought a preorder for Spore: Galactic Adventures, yet my attention span hadn't grown enough and I forgot to ever redeem it 😔
The problem with that one was that they overhyped it so much. It was supposed to be an everything simulator, and it just wasn't (although I never actually played it).