Starfield

 PC
User Score
5.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 5711 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,635 out of 5711
  2. Mixed: 612 out of 5711
  3. Negative: 2,464 out of 5711
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  1. Bogdan47
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Enough lies from Todd Howard to make this game deserve a higher rating, optimization on a high-end PC is terrible going to 50-60 fps and dropping sometimes, it gets boring after several hours of play and doesn't bring anything revolutionary , I don't recommend it to anyone and you'd better play Baldur's Gate 3 for something of quality in decisions and that can really make the gameEnough lies from Todd Howard to make this game deserve a higher rating, optimization on a high-end PC is terrible going to 50-60 fps and dropping sometimes, it gets boring after several hours of play and doesn't bring anything revolutionary , I don't recommend it to anyone and you'd better play Baldur's Gate 3 for something of quality in decisions and that can really make the game interesting as you go through it, not like in Starfield where whatever you choose doesn't affect anything.… Expand
  2. Valia_Zaika
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    The game is top, don't listen to anyone. Super classic bethesda game, if you like the bethesda, you will like it, if not, then no. Most of all, the game design looks like oblivion, but a lot of mechanics from fallout four. Well, this is their biggest game, even if we exclude randomly generated content.
  3. Spctate
    Sep 7, 2023
    8
    Starfield is a Bethesda game through and through and the experience is similar in a lot of ways to other BGS games. The big difference in Starfield is with scale, the scale of the game in locations is just absolutely massive! Even with 70+ hours in the game I cannot say I have even come close to exploring everything.

    A lot of people out there are either rating the game as a 10 or as a    Starfield is a Bethesda game through and through and the experience is similar in a lot of ways to other BGS games. The big difference in Starfield is with scale, the scale of the game in locations is just absolutely massive! Even with 70+ hours in the game I cannot say I have even come close to exploring everything.

    A lot of people out there are either rating the game as a 10 or as a 0-3. None of these, I think, are truly honest reviews. Starfield is a game that has strengths and weaknesses. There are parts of the game that are really good and there are parts that are flawed.

    First the strengths:
    - Exploration in this game is something that truly feels like exploring. With the massive scale of the game, differences in the environments, and alien nature of those environments Starfield really does make you feel like you’re visiting another world. - Customization is something that exists in multiple areas of the game with you being able to customize your spacesuit, ship, weapons, outposts, and houses. The customization is non-trivial here! The shipbuilder especially gives you a lot of freedom in how you do things and you can build anything from a smaller fighter craft to a massive cargo hauler. Starfield also introduces research to the game which is interesting and makes you work to unlock powerful attachments.

    - Quests, I find that the story and quests in Starfield are more varied and interesting than in previous BGS games. There’s something for everyone with quests delving into stealth, horror-combat, investigation, and spying. - Weapons in Starfield are interesting and there are some cool weapon types that are very fun to use!

    - RPG systems in the game are an improvement. Your background, factions, and accomplishments all give you new dialogue and sometimes even ways around things! - Progression in Starfield is varied and you can to build your character how you want while still needing to actually fit the play style to progress with the perks you are choosing.

    - The world built here is interesting and it shows that BGS has not lost its chops for this kind of work!

    - The New Game+ mechanic is refreshing for a BGS game allowing you to start in a new game while keeping your characters progression (though not their items!)

    And now, flaws:

    - Quests. While overall I say the quests in Starfield are well written, the first part of the main quest line is a little boring and the very first quest doesn’t make much sense. After the first maybe 1/4 of the quest line it gets a lot better but that what’s really missing is a hook to grab your interest.

    - Exploration in Starfield can sometimes be frustrating! You land on a planet to go to a location or even decide to go exploring and everything is 500m+ away! I understand that this is realistic for a sparsely populated planet but you’d think there would be some gamification of this so that it wouldn’t be as frustrating.

    - Enemy AI is dumb! Enemies do not fire enough at you and they react poorly. This can make combat too easy and you don’t get to use all of the fun guns in interesting ways.

    - Bugs! Starfield has all the same types of bugs as every other BGS game. This can be funny sometimes, even charming, but it is something that loses its charm when you see it too often. Starfield isn’t bad for BGS but you’d expect better given the work that went into this game.

    - Nothing in Starfield is explained well! Starfield introduces massive scale and multiple new systems to gamers but it doesn’t explain most of it. This includes how the planets show up on the map, to ship part power requirements, to some of the UI functionality. Now that I have almost three days of play time I understand things but it was frustrating at first.

    - The economy in Starfield is unbalanced. You get huge amounts of credits for everything so that you can pay for starships and their mods but it makes everything else laughably cheap. I currently have over 400,000 credits on my character and the most expensive guns right now may cost 20k-40k. Resources are even cheaper costing only a few ~300CR per resource meaning that outposts, research, and equipment upgrades are easy to do and very cheap.


    Overall:

    Common complaints about Starfield are trivial in my own view, such as flying planet to planet (which you CAN do, it just takes hours). If Bethesda made flying planet to planet gamified where it takes no time at all people would complain about realism but BGS made them far apart and now people are complaining about warp loading screens. A lot of the complaints about Starfield are people being very harsh on the game and these complaints should not alter the overall perception of what is a solid game.

    Despite its flaws and because of its strengths, when I sit down to play Starfield I have a very good time and I see myself playing it for hundreds of hours. I think that some fixes are in order but I am confident when I say that Starfield is an 8/10    … Expand
  4. Darthmullet
    Sep 7, 2023
    9
    Excellent game. Slow start, so much to do you have to find what you like or get into a side/faction quest chain which are the best. Ship and outpost building are immensely deep.

    Some annoying bugs and lacks some QOL features, but the game is clearly good and at a point where it is better released than being fine-tuned more. If you love Bethesda RPGs you'll love this. If you've never    Excellent game. Slow start, so much to do you have to find what you like or get into a side/faction quest chain which are the best. Ship and outpost building are immensely deep.

    Some annoying bugs and lacks some QOL features, but the game is clearly good and at a point where it is better released than being fine-tuned more.

    If you love Bethesda RPGs you'll love this. If you've never tried them you may love this. If you hate them then this is probably not going to be different for you.    … Expand
  5. discraider
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    I love Starfield !!! Don‘t show on ratings here …to much PS5 mimimi. Buy it an enjoy
  6. Userbob
    Sep 7, 2023
    5
    I have played Starfield for approximately 40 hours since the early access release. And I can't even call it a Bethesda game. Bad:
    They gutted the exploration, added this leveling system that is constantly janky especially with the enemies (you may get clustered of level 5s with 75s), combat is marginally improved, story is no different than the usual almost A.I. type writing from Bethesda    I have played Starfield for approximately 40 hours since the early access release. And I can't even call it a Bethesda game. Bad:
    They gutted the exploration, added this leveling system that is constantly janky especially with the enemies (you may get clustered of level 5s with 75s), combat is marginally improved, story is no different than the usual almost A.I. type writing from Bethesda games, graphics are Fallout 4 with massive heaps of duct tape to cover the issues. Space in this is a joke and should never have even been advertised. There are definite performance issues that I can only conceive as the reviewers being paid off to say they don't exist: heaps of buggy models, animations, and visuals. For the first 10 hours I was crashing every hour. Lots of walls can simply be walked through as well as some npcs getting glitched requiring you to reload your save. A.I. is also the worst yet from a Bethesda game.
    Also, New Game+ is barely anything different than the main game.
    Good:
    Some specific side quests are good and should have been the main story instead. Ending is definitely intriguing and I almost felt pulled by the story to figure it out until they do a B.S. handwave of most of the questions I had. The non-procedural worlds are much better and invoke some of the good times from Fallout 4. Cool system that allows photos taken in-game to be placed as load screens. There are a lot of things to do, but this leads into the issue of most of those things are dreadfully boring. Middling:
    The dialogue will either captivate people or bore them because no one dares to express a solitary emotion that isn't subdued or muffled by low audio when recording their lines which leads to the music drowning them out at points. Music for me was just stock standard space tracks. I really don't understand the praise for it when most is very subtle rhythms that are too close to Fallout 4's. The 1000 planet situation... I've explored about 25 planets and after the 5th I started to encounter the same areas procedurally placed onto others again and again. This may be alright for some because there are quite a few variations but it wasn't doing it for me. Load screens are an issue but don't kill it. There are at times 4 loading screens to go through which may take between 2 to 3 minutes to complete. Much of the game is done through the menu and inventory system, more so than even Baldurs Gate 3 which boggled my mind. In the end it's meh, get it for free with gamepass if you got it already but definitely don't go out of your way to purchase especially the $70 version. I can't even recommend this for Bethesda fans because the ability to just walk in a direction to see what you can find is fundamentally not here which was paramount to my enjoyment of Fallout 4, which although I enjoyed, was very middling as well.    … Expand
  7. Arsh_kh
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    The best game ever made
  8. Soranthx
    Sep 7, 2023
    2
    Un juego mal optimizado, repetitivo y que se siente de hace diez años. Un ejemplo buen visible de por qué Bethesda no puede pretender seguir viviendo de Skyrim, incluso si ese Skyrim tiene una alineación espacial.
  9. siksik81
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    This game is so boring, its like another empty open world where you won't feel like you are in a space or may be its a themed space game without life. Big youtuber and twitch streamer are praising this game for what, are they being sponsored by Bethesda or Microsoft. People are mad to see these guys and change their opinion and perception.
    too much communication, question answers, dumb    This game is so boring, its like another empty open world where you won't feel like you are in a space or may be its a themed space game without life. Big youtuber and twitch streamer are praising this game for what, are they being sponsored by Bethesda or Microsoft. People are mad to see these guys and change their opinion and perception.
    too much communication, question answers, dumb enemies useless exploration, boxed space travel makes this game a disaster of 2023    … Expand
  10. Grownmangrumble
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    Ignore the fanboy review bombing. This game is an instant classic that will draw you in like nothing you have ever played before.
  11. iSokolov
    Sep 7, 2023
    7
    Worst perfomance even on Nvidia 3k series. This game forced me to buy a new RX 7800 XT to have some fun but now I have to wait when the card will come.
    No russian language! "Thank you"
    Ru community must do own translation because Bethesda and Microsoft show their faces. Not all russian live in Russia and not all stay with its political decesioins. The game is boring and loading screens    Worst perfomance even on Nvidia 3k series. This game forced me to buy a new RX 7800 XT to have some fun but now I have to wait when the card will come.
    No russian language! "Thank you"
    Ru community must do own translation because Bethesda and Microsoft show their faces. Not all russian live in Russia and not all stay with its political decesioins.
    The game is boring and loading screens made me sad so game was deleted before it will be playable by community.
    I do not recommend to buy the game in its current state.    … Expand
  12. ulvido
    Sep 7, 2023
    4
    the game beginning is worse than all their previous games. don't like the story unfold. not interesting. played two hours and don't have the motivation to continue.
  13. Aramar01
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    Exactly what I wanted, bethesda games are always unique and there is no other company that can give you this type of experience
  14. loiter_lobster
    Sep 7, 2023
    2
    A bland mess of poor technical optimization, shallow mechanics, and uninspired writing. It's a game that feels fifteen years old, looks five years old, but runs like it came from ten years in the future even on top of the line hardware. The performance issues cannot be understated: this game relies on frame generation (FSR2/DLSS via mods) to achieve anything near a playable frame rate.A bland mess of poor technical optimization, shallow mechanics, and uninspired writing. It's a game that feels fifteen years old, looks five years old, but runs like it came from ten years in the future even on top of the line hardware. The performance issues cannot be understated: this game relies on frame generation (FSR2/DLSS via mods) to achieve anything near a playable frame rate.

    Even if you have the hardware to run Starfield at an acceptable level, there's not much here for you. Starfield time gates its limited content behind grind at every turn. Lockpicking, core to the worn out Bethesda formula of looting, is gated behind perk points and a required amount of containers/doors lockpicked. Trying to pick this perk late in the game will leave you looking for Novice tier locks for hours, as everything you find is Advanced, Expert, or Master tier.

    Most of the character progression or even core game features are similarly gated behind perks. To name a a few, these include: targeting for space combat, access to weapon mods, the jetpack, parts for your ship. All of them are perks, requiring you to both grind out the experience points as well as the perk-specific challenges to advance. While this isn't a terrible system, too much of the game is gated behind this. You want to build a network of outposts producing something for you, fully unlock shipbuilding, combat or social skills? Expect to sacrifice all other character progression for dozens of hours to do so.

    The economy is similarly time-gated, and there seems to be no way to earn credits legitimately in-game that's faster than looting drops off enemies. While you can capture other ships and sell them, you'll need to register them first. This registration fee will eat up 90% of your profits, leaving you with 1-3k credits for selling off a ship. A amount comparable to selling a single weapon or space suit dropped from an enemy. Considering that you would've also looted a couple of enemies when taking of the ship, you earn more from them than the ship itself.

    Speaking of things that don't make sense outside the context of wasting players time: planet exploration. This consists of an instanced zone with a handful of points of dubious interest and a dotting of resources for you to mine. These points of interest are several minutes of walking in a straight line apart, giving you plenty of time to take in just how empty the world feels.

    The outpost system is just as half-baked as it was in Fallout 4. At least you're not getting called up to defend them every five minutes, but that's about the only good thing to say about it. While it lets you ship resources between different outposts, you're not given any way to filter items from arriving shipments. This means you can at most receive three types of resources per outpost. While you can theoretically set up a series of outposts to automate production and make credits this way, I'd expect that you'll make more by looting enemies.

    Finally, a brief word on quests and companions. The writing assumes that the player is always willing to meet it more than halfway, that the player will always be interested in whatever exposition is being spouted at them. It feels equally lazy and arrogant, as if it expects you to happily engage with whatever nonsense is presented to you. From assuming player motivation in the presented context, to player interest in cardboard characters, all while expecting the player to disregard massive plot holes.

    To wrap this up, Starfield is an iteration on the same game Bethesda has been trying to make since Morrowind. This time it has a space skin, uninspired writing, massive grind and terrible technical performance. Save your money and time.    … Expand
  15. Customds2
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Most disappointing major release of the past 5 years. Copy paste laziness, masquerading as something new when it’s nothing more than a single dense environment fractured into 100 lifeless boring (main)planets. What’s shocking after 40 hours of play is how empty everything feels. How is it possible that not a single planet in the universe has more than a central hub and 3 non centralizedMost disappointing major release of the past 5 years. Copy paste laziness, masquerading as something new when it’s nothing more than a single dense environment fractured into 100 lifeless boring (main)planets. What’s shocking after 40 hours of play is how empty everything feels. How is it possible that not a single planet in the universe has more than a central hub and 3 non centralized (pointless) locations. You run forever to discover a building with 2 people in it. The graphics are sub par for 2023 and poorly optimized. There’s no reason why a 13600k (20 threads, 5ghz turbo on 4) and a 4070ti should be struggling to maintain 60@4k and (worse yet) 120@1080p. Character models are all soulless drones with dead eyes. Color filter is unnecessary and removal is the top mod people download. The menus are terrible. You spend 1/3 of playing this game in the menu system or watching 6 second cut scenes of your ship moving. I’ve probably watched 2 hours of my ship taking off, landing, entering space, entering warp speed… so painful and no way to skip it. Besides the massive amount of time you’ll spend in the menus, they’re also poorly designed. The best description I heard was that they’re like a messy room. You know where stuff is but you can’t find it.

    The most infuriating aspect for me is a lack of inventory item count when buying resources. I constantly over-buy or forget to buy items because of the arduous process of menu hopping to check. There are parts that are fun, but they’re spaced out(pun) and locked behind 5 min of pointless dialogue followed by menu hopping and glorious cutscenes of your ship… lol. If another game I’m anticipating came out right now, I would drop this like a hot potato. I would also struggle to recommend it to anybody as the “you just need to get past the first 10 hours for it to get good” caveat, in an elevator pitch is too big a hurdle. This game is simply, “ok”. It’s good moments are often overshadowed by the frustrating aspects. You will groan a handful of times per gaming session.    … Expand
  16. BoNeS47
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Really just terrible. The most bland boring gameplay wrapped in a boring space art style wrapped in lies from developers. So much for a 100 worlds to fully explore let alone 1000. What a waste of time, thank god it was on gamepass. Don't waste your time like I did just play Fallout New Vegas. A game made by a real game development company and not Bethesda. **** Todd Howard
  17. month32
    Sep 7, 2023
    6
    It's a Bethesda game, with all it's glorious glitches and problems. The map is simply atrocious the gun play is at the very least entertaining. There are many, many, MANY sidequests, as always, meaning that you can level up fully and never finish the main quest at all. Not a bad game at all, if you like Bethesda games, more like a solid "meh".
  18. cakeboxx
    Sep 7, 2023
    1
    Bland, dull, current day califonia **** everything is segmented behind an loadingscreen, most of the planets have nothing but minerals, and can't remember anything from the quests because as said bland.

    Long between combat and when there is its over in about 10-20sec both planetside and in space. After 36 hrs i fired up skyrim and had more combat from that game in 15 min than in 36hrs of    Bland, dull, current day califonia **** everything is segmented behind an loadingscreen, most of the planets have nothing but minerals, and can't remember anything from the quests because as said bland.

    Long between combat and when there is its over in about 10-20sec both planetside and in space.
    After 36 hrs i fired up skyrim and had more combat from that game in 15 min than in 36hrs of starfield. This game has made me respect no mans sky alot more and will most likely play that instead..    … Expand
  19. GregorSamsa91
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Like a game from 2010. Loading screens, bad writing, ,bad questing, no exploration.
  20. Berserker_98
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    The worst RPG from bethesda's game ever made in years, once more again Todd Howard is a complete smoke seller.
  21. Garfeild69
    Sep 7, 2023
    10
    Le meilleur jeux de bethesda à l'heure actuelle, n'écouter pas les rageux et autre console warior le jeu est superbe...
  22. n3verplay
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Why is there such an arrogant gaming company，Faulty game loading, poor optimization, why not upgrade your computer？
  23. concussion
    Sep 7, 2023
    6
    Unfortunately terrible optimization on nvidia systems.
    The game does not natively support dlss but only fsr.
    Speaking of gameplay, it is a game with good potential but poorly exploited, it wants to be many things but does them just enough, sometimes not even. The thing that pissed me off the most is that they advertise the game as if you had the freedom to do anything, that's not the    Unfortunately terrible optimization on nvidia systems.
    The game does not natively support dlss but only fsr.
    Speaking of gameplay, it is a game with good potential but poorly exploited, it wants to be many things but does them just enough, sometimes not even. The thing that pissed me off the most is that they advertise the game as if you had the freedom to do anything, that's not the case, the game is very linear and gives you a false idea of what it actually is. In 2023, having a game like this where you have loading times to open a door is just shameful. The experience is in fact created in watertight compartments, each with its own loading sequence, quite fast in reality but which does not give continuity to the experience. The take-off and landing cutscenes become heavy and repetitive after 1 hour, let alone after 200 hours. And finally Tod Howard who encourages everyone to upgrade hardware if the game runs badly, to this statement I would add that they wrote the requirements, thus deceiving people. After 8 years of work, much more was expected than more intelligent answers    … Expand
  24. Diablorate
    Sep 7, 2023
    4
    Another unoptimized game this year, feels like devs are doing this on purpose or something.
  25. doggerxd
    Sep 7, 2023
    9
    This game has it's problems but those didnt affect this amazing game at all.
    Console war is ridiculous, and is kinda sad to see people review bombing py frustated people that didn't even play it.
  26. Rrusciguy
    Sep 7, 2023
    8
    Extremely captivating game, just can't stop playing it. Performs very well on my PC and haven't had a crash or major bug as of yet after 78 hours. Easy to get lost in a branching path of side missions and completely forget what you were doing before.
  27. vxxd
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Bethesda once again release a boring and unfinished game. I was naively hoping F76 will be last fail of this company.
  28. EstebanRLS
    Sep 7, 2023
    1
    A re-skin of Fallout in space but without space. The optimization is very bad. 30-40 FPS max.
  29. tyco_08
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Full of bugs, devs don't want to fix them. Boring exploration, almost no story in it. It's horrible,
  30. Wynn36
    Sep 7, 2023
    0
    Disappointed. Outdated. Unoriginal. Basic. Waste of time and money. Not optimized. Meh.
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Awards & Rankings

30
#30 Best PC Game of 2023
3
#3 Most Discussed PC Game of 2023

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
85

Generally favorable reviews - based on 75 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 75
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 75
  3. Negative: 0 out of 75
  1. Riot Pixels
    Jan 28, 2024
    76
    There's a lot of flaws in space in Starfield. But that does not prevent me from exploring our galaxy again and again.
    Read full review
  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 22, 2024
    80
    I fell in love with Starfield. It's my cup of sci-fi and I can't wait to spend the next thirty, fifty, maybe seventy hours here. I enjoy the exploration, the shootouts, the art style, the ship building, and the diverse worlds. I gratefully acknowledge the good optimization and the absence of major bugs. But I can't overlook the flaws. There are bad animations, ugly faces and repetitive moments.[Issue#329]
  3. RPGamer
    Oct 23, 2023
    60
    In a year dominated by sequels to franchise favorites, there was a hope that Starfield would carve its own path to success. While the team at Bethesda should be commended for taking such a big swing, there’s no denying that the game doesn’t feel like a cohesive work. Maybe continued support and future sequels will make something more meaningful out of a work that is clearly deeply enamored with both science fiction and space exploration. Unforunately, this first launch has had far more mixed results than desired.
    Read full review
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