When comparing Starfinder with Numenera, I kept returning to the sense of wonder and the unknown. There is very little of the unknown in Starfinder; magic is magic, tech is tech, and I get the feeling "everything is known." If it isn't tech, it is magic - and we know both, so everything (outside of a plot) is known.
With Numenera, most of everything is unknown. You can pick up a strange artifact, know nothing about it, and be amazed when something incredible happens. Every time you play, the world could be dramatically different.
A lot of science fiction games fail this test. Star Frontiers, Traveller, Space Opera, Alien, and many other mainstream science fiction games have this "modern-day" in-space feeling, and the sense of mystery and wonder feels lacking. The Traveller game is a sort of; they have a "mystery of the ancients" subplot, but its effect on the game and mechanics is minimal.
Star Trek or GURPS has a sense of wonder if you play them right, but they feel like they default to an "everything is known" state and the effect on mechanics is minimal. I would put a lot of OSR games in this middle category, just since GM fiat with "strange magic effects with custom rules" tends to be a more significant thing in old-school modules.
Numenera, The Strange, Cypher System, Coriolis, Gamma World, Tales from the Loop, Call of Cthulhu, and surprisingly Dungeon Crawl (and Mutant Crawl) Classics have that sense of mystery and wonder, and this is reflected directly in mechanics - some more than others. In some games, there are corruption mechanics, or insanity can drive your character mad. Magic and technology are unpredictable. Some have strange artifacts you must examine to figure out what they do. In Numenera, the entire world is strange and needs to be discovered, and every game and interpretation of that world can be different.
Numenera kills it when it comes to wonder and amazement. It was so different; it felt like logging into Minecraft for the first time, not knowing what was going on, being unable to figure anything out, and quitting in frustration. This happened to me once, and then I learned things and fell in love with the game.
With many games, the only surprise lies in "what players don't know" in the treasures and monsters. We see book after book of "monsters we haven't fought yet" and "treasures we haven't seen." It feeds a content addiction, but also, this tells us the base game is devoid of rules for mystery and discovery. If all the mystery and discovery in a game is "how do we kill the next thing," I lose interest.
The game becomes a game of lifeless lists.
And many games die here for me.
Too many books, too many lists, and no room for imagination.
A lot of the fun and wonder has been lost. The feeling of discovery. The unknown. I get why some recoil at the genre when it gets too challenging and speculative. We want to return to the cave of our 5E builds, familiar rules, and our "sure things." It isn't easy or comfortable to "not know" anything. But to me, that is the heart of science fiction.
Many science fiction games are just math.
That isn't science fiction; that is math, rules, charts, and random tables painted like science fiction.
Starfinder sits in this strange space. Everything can be explained by magic or technology. It is fantastic and adventurous, but other than surprising me with a new race, item, or monster, it doesn't feel like much of the unknown is here.
And the blank space for my imagination feels filled in or quickly understood by magic or a skill roll. I can find it in a book if I don't know something. The game doesn't encourage me to make it up on my own, and free me from the chains of explanation.
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