User Score
5.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 5711 Ratings

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  1. Sep 9, 2023
    4
    This is somehow worse than Fallout 76 while being fully functional. Mods will save this game, but it's ridiculous that's the expectation at launch.
  2. Sep 8, 2023
    0
    Epmty world ,uninteresting same game same old engine. Bad graphics unoptimized game. Copy of cyberpunk abd no man sky
  3. Sep 8, 2023
    5
    60 hours in, and it may be the first Bethesda game I don't finish. It's... unfortunately just average. So average I'd call it often boring.

    Exploration is disjoint, and all of the planets require you to walk 300-1000 meters (minutes of walking) with absolutely nothing to do but hold move, press jump, and occasionally scan or use a random tree. Most of the areas you find are empty caves
    60 hours in, and it may be the first Bethesda game I don't finish. It's... unfortunately just average. So average I'd call it often boring.

    Exploration is disjoint, and all of the planets require you to walk 300-1000 meters (minutes of walking) with absolutely nothing to do but hold move, press jump, and occasionally scan or use a random tree. Most of the areas you find are empty caves or abandoned buildings with no one in them, or random "nature" structures (which while neat, get old quick with nothing to do with them). This is just what you do in No Man's Sky, which isn't a good thing. You can't avoid this; all too many mainline quests, side quests, and all power/ability unlocks require you walk these barren planets. No longer will you go from point A to B and find C,D,E,and F in-between or as a branch from that... you'll go from A, find nothing for minutes except "random" ore plants and fauna (No Man's Sky style "random" — basically just copy pastes), and reach B, and that's it.

    Combat is decent, and the weapons are plentiful and entertaining, but unfortunately enemy variety is very poor. There are other types of enemy than bandit or regular human, but you will almost never see them. Even when you do, most enemies have awful AI. I rarely ever see the robots, and I've only seen alien enemies in dungeons a total of.... once so far. None of the human enemies have any special abilities or items; just skin and weapon damage type changes (you don't even get the variety spells provided skyrim mages/summoners). It's a huge drop in variety from Fallout or Elder Scrolls so far, and while there "may" be more, they are far too rare for no reason. The lack of variety makes it become stale.

    Tutorials are awful, and menu guidance is bad. Did you know you could switch which direction you rotate items you are dragging around with shift? I didn't. You know what I bet? I suspect that most people don't even realize that the cover aim system from fallout 4 still exists. It was not explained there either, and 99% of people online don't seem to know that either Fallout 4 or this even has cover shooting mechanics (hint: get right behind the flat cover... now aim at it). The tutorial story also last very long compared to Skyrim (it's over after the dragon) or fallout (out of the vault/intro shack? Feel free to leave). Here I'm multiple main story missions in and I don't have powers, and I'm only pushing it now just to unlock them at some point.

    Ship combat is not very good (and its issues show when playing on very hard). Effectively just a stat check if there are no asteroids for cover (do you have the piloting/thruster.lock-on skills in the passive tree required to make the ship combat actually work? Do you have a good enough ship?). With ground combat you can take enemies well above your level or area, but in ship combat that is not the case with many fights. A lot of limits here too: Got a ship crew? Want to assign them? Need more crew space. Got more space? Still need a higher level social perk. Want to have them in a second ship for a fleet? Not possible. Also costs the most credits for the part of the game with the least content so far, as though you can steal ships, you can't seemingly swap their parts to other ships like you can just equip new guns on the ground.

    See this massive skill tree? You're going to spend a lot of time taking basic requires game perks to even play, such as: security/lockpicking level, basic ability to use ship movement mechanic (required to use better ships too), basic ability to use ship aiming/vats mechanic, basic carry weight (you start with the least of any Bethesda game), the stealth meter (seriously, the stealth meter at all). Mix this in with boring or completely useless perks like without flavor like "scanner range, mine extra ore, environmental resistance, grav drive fuel so you have to go through less fast travel menus... etc, and it gets frustratingly boring. Basic upgrades to crew member cap or the ability to put outposts on most special planets is locked behind over 12 skills points in the social and science trees... I just don't understand how we got there. Any of the fallout games legitimately have better perks and don't take basic mechanics and pretend they are perks. The basic mechanic ones could be fine if there were a ton of new special mechanics to unlock later on, but no, it's primarily disabled or limited existing mechanics. At least half of the tree is nonsense.

    It's just... so aggressively flawed. It's not a terrible game and I do enjoy various parts of it, but this year is filled with so many excellent games it's absurd. There's no reason to pay so much for something that's this average (unless you are or are in dire need of an open world game I guess). Just get one of those other games and skip this for a steep sale.
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  4. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    Starfield wanted to be Fallout 4 and Skyrim mixed with No Man's Sky and completely failed at all of it. Instead you get an average, soulless game that gets the bad parts of all three of those games and nothing of what made them good/great. And this is on top of classic Bethesda bugs, glitches, and performance issues that they will never fix. The modding community is literally the only hopeStarfield wanted to be Fallout 4 and Skyrim mixed with No Man's Sky and completely failed at all of it. Instead you get an average, soulless game that gets the bad parts of all three of those games and nothing of what made them good/great. And this is on top of classic Bethesda bugs, glitches, and performance issues that they will never fix. The modding community is literally the only hope this game has, because it's a massive flop at this point in all ways. Expand
  5. Sep 7, 2023
    1
    Graphics performance is disappointing, especially with such poor optimization, such as water bodies, vegetation, etc. The procedural terrain has greatly affected the enthusiasm for exploring the outdoors, and the severe black screen loading has affected the continuity of the game. If you are a typical b-RPG user, you can give it a try, otherwise I strongly don't recommend it!
  6. Sep 7, 2023
    1
    That Game is a Joke . When you played fallout or Skyrim don’t bother to even touch this boring piece of loadingsim . -Dialoge with no Impact . It doesent matter what you chose you will always get directed to the right answer - Engine from 2006. Ai is so dumb they never take cover or even try to avoid demage . Literally stand there to get shoot at like a sponge - NO SPACE EXPLORATION, youThat Game is a Joke . When you played fallout or Skyrim don’t bother to even touch this boring piece of loadingsim . -Dialoge with no Impact . It doesent matter what you chose you will always get directed to the right answer - Engine from 2006. Ai is so dumb they never take cover or even try to avoid demage . Literally stand there to get shoot at like a sponge - NO SPACE EXPLORATION, you have a ship where you can fly in a box of universe with literally nothing intersting happen , you can’t even explore a Planet because everthing looking the **** same . The only way you can land on a planet is to fast travel there .

    -Worst Story ever experienced in a AAA Game , Mainstory boring as hell and just 20 hours long . Side quest always the same **** Go collect/kill/steal and come back after fast travel and loading screen to hell . This game is utterly garbage and when you compare something like this to a Game like RDR2 and the immersion it gave you with his open World I can only say Starcitizen is a peace of Grabage and not worth the title of a good Game .
    It’s literally a reskinned Fallout with small improvements and even downgrades
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  7. Sep 9, 2023
    0
    Bugfesda strikes again, this time with a poorly executed wannabe mashup of No Man's Sky and The Outer Worlds. Todd "The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time" Howard's arrogant boasting of spending a $200 million budget on a 500 people team for 25 years of development is yet another blatant lie considering the game doesn't have the sandbox infinite universe that NMS provides, nor theBugfesda strikes again, this time with a poorly executed wannabe mashup of No Man's Sky and The Outer Worlds. Todd "The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time" Howard's arrogant boasting of spending a $200 million budget on a 500 people team for 25 years of development is yet another blatant lie considering the game doesn't have the sandbox infinite universe that NMS provides, nor the excellent storytelling, character development and narrative content that TOW managed to deliver, not to mention the humor. Hell, Starfield doesn't even have a proper ship-flying mechanic built into the game, considering it's a damn space FPS/RPG.

    The game is constantly cockblocking your immersive experience with loading screens in places where you would not expect to see one since Mass Effect 2 was released in 2010, a testament that Bugfesda doesn't care to update their gaming engine to modern standards and prefers to dump those resources in creating 100 variations of coffee mugs, books and cafeteria trays, or writing and incessant amount of completely pointless NPC dialog lines and an absurd amount of meaningless errands disguised as quests.

    Speaking of technology and its implementation, the game was released without Ray Tracing and DLSS, which took the community 1 day to create a mod for (go figure), with UI animations and interactions capped at 30 FPS on console and 60 FPS on PCs, which the community again took 1 day to increase to 120 FPS. On the UI part, the menus are convoluted and difficult to navigate with a 2-page list of shortcuts that change from one menu screen to the other. The main game UI, even though it is minimalistic and beautiful to look at, is badly designed with everything on the screen having the same white color and no animations. Clearly whoever worked on this, had no idea about color theory, visual perceptions such as depth and contrast detection, and generally how human vision and perception work. They tried to copy the UI of Elite: Dangerous, but again failed, hopefully, someone will create a mod to fix this in the near future.

    Last, but not least: the bugs. There are a lot of bugs: from NPCs flying in the air, to ships ejecting you in the middle of space, to NPCs talking with their back at you, to items disappearing from your inventory, this game has it all. I don't think any amount of additional development could have fixed it, the game could've been released in 2025 and still would've had the same issues. The problem is with internal resource allocation, feature prioritization, and technological innovation and implementation.

    In all honesty, Microsoft cannot save this company no matter how hard they try. The only way to bring Bugfesda on track is to completely reset and restructure them, starting with removing Toad Howard from any decision-making position. Every game he spearheaded in the last decade ended up a complete failure at launch and a blatant cash-grab during its roadmap, which sparked constant controversy and PR backlash.
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  8. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    Where do I begin? I was so excited when I saw the last gameplay presentation and I thought, finally! It's a good space exploration RPG! Boy, was I wrong.

    After spending about 20 hrs with this trash, I gotta say, this is the worst game I have played in a while. Boring fetch quests that don't make any sense. Time consuming boring tasks for the sake of extending the boring, uninspired,
    Where do I begin? I was so excited when I saw the last gameplay presentation and I thought, finally! It's a good space exploration RPG! Boy, was I wrong.

    After spending about 20 hrs with this trash, I gotta say, this is the worst game I have played in a while.
    Boring fetch quests that don't make any sense. Time consuming boring tasks for the sake of extending the boring, uninspired, empty gameplay. Did I mention that there are no vehicles while exploring planets!???!?!?!? That’s right, we don’t have the technology to have a vehicle to move around and explore when landing on a different planet. Insane! You have run on foot, your O2 runs out in 30 sec and you have to walk everywhere, it is beyond dumb! You walk for 10-15 min until you see something or find something useful. Major waste of time, just to inflate their gameplay numbers.

    Horrible NPCs and enemy/friendly AI.
    NPCs would get stuck in the environment all the time. They would float and clip through the floors or ceilings. Glitches, bugs and crashes all the time. Missing basic PC features, such as HDR support, FOV slider, Texture quality setting. Outdated graphics/animations.

    The lighting appears to be broken in most closed spaces, especially the ones underground. It will get dark, almost gray/tan and then when you move a bit it will get very bright. It is definitely broken.

    And there is the matter of the loading screens, oh boy. Pretty much every door you open will result in a loading screen. I am not joking. Let me tell you, you open a lot of doors in this game and pretty much every single one would trigger a loading screen.

    The sound design appears to be pretty good, but that's about it.

    The game was misrepresented in a huge way. They basically lied to us when they said you can go anywhere, explore everything...that's not true at all. You only have a set of points where you can jump with your ship, and for planet exploration, they are empty worlds with 5 randomly created creatures here and there...all buildings you encounter are all copy/paste the same design, no deviation whatsoever. Horrible.
    On top of everything the game will constantly CTD, with no errors. This game took them how many years to make???? What a joke.

    There is literally nothing of substance here. Boring, uninspired quests, ugly characters, horrible face animations, bad PC performance...and I can go on and on.

    Bottom Line, don’t buy this game! It isn’t worth your time or money. If you get on gamepass, I would say try it and see if this is your cup of tea. But as it stands, it has a lot of issues, horrible bugs/glitches, bad performance, boring, time consuming, unfun gameplay, fetch quests that don’t make any sense, except to waste your time.
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  9. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    "I, like many gamers, thought of a game where we could look up at the sky and fly into space where you could view the galaxy with complete freedom. In this space RPG, you can create any character and explore the universe the way you want."
    - Todd Howard
    7 years of development. Budget 220 million dollars. 500 developers. Huge support from Microsoft. We got it... The worst Bethesda Game
    "I, like many gamers, thought of a game where we could look up at the sky and fly into space where you could view the galaxy with complete freedom. In this space RPG, you can create any character and explore the universe the way you want."
    - Todd Howard

    7 years of development. Budget 220 million dollars. 500 developers. Huge support from Microsoft. We got it... The worst Bethesda Game Studios game.
    There is no spirit of exploration and adventure because there is no open space, and the same research points are very similar on planets. In Elden Ring, like Zelda, has a spirit of adventure and exploration. Those games don't have "thousands" of lines of dialogue, "thousands" of planets. You are always wondering "what is there?". And starfield can't offer you that. CTRL+C location that you have already cleared. All of the Bethesda games, this game has the most boring main story and sometimes illogical. It's 2023 and the studio still hasn't gotten rid of loading screens in 7 years of development. Almost every action is a loading screen. Maybe in the future the game will become more interesting with a survival mode and mods. Now, this is a boring grind on empty planets.

    Only for good shooting, excellent interior design and equipment I put 5/10
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  10. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    I'm a lover of RPGs, and Fallout... but I have to admit that this game is unplayable, The loading screens are just stupidly annoying... I couldn't continue playing after 1hr... is just impossible for me.

    the only good thing is that I can go back to No Man´s Sky, and enjoy a real space game, without the **** LOADING SCREENS.
  11. Sep 7, 2023
    6
    The more I played the worse it got. I initially gave it an 8 out of 10, now I am down to 6 out of 10. It is just...empty. I think if they added more (intelligent) alien races to discover, vehicles like hover craft or dune buggies to explore planet surfaces, and flying in the atmosphere - the exploration part would have been much better. Also, why can't I swim under water? It is soThe more I played the worse it got. I initially gave it an 8 out of 10, now I am down to 6 out of 10. It is just...empty. I think if they added more (intelligent) alien races to discover, vehicles like hover craft or dune buggies to explore planet surfaces, and flying in the atmosphere - the exploration part would have been much better. Also, why can't I swim under water? It is so immersion breaking. Expand
  12. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    Instead of innovating the Bethesda formula, they stick to what they know and don’t add any new ideas. Almost all features are things that have been seen in Fallout and Skyrim. Main story is boring, where missions are repeating the same action over and over. Special powers you get are rehashed shouts from Skyrim. Combat is slightly improved with gun handling but also lacking features thatInstead of innovating the Bethesda formula, they stick to what they know and don’t add any new ideas. Almost all features are things that have been seen in Fallout and Skyrim. Main story is boring, where missions are repeating the same action over and over. Special powers you get are rehashed shouts from Skyrim. Combat is slightly improved with gun handling but also lacking features that other Bethesda games have had in the past (sneak takedowns, executions, and guards being alerted to gunfire/attacks). The gameplay is pretty much Fallout 4 without VATS.
    The exploration in this game in my opinions fails in comparison to their other games. In Skyrim or fallout you can see something in the distance and walk there. In starfield, every planet might have 3 or more locations that are worth going to but to get there you need to fast travel between those locations and fast travel between planets. Everything feels segmented to where it shouldn’t even be called an open world.
    Facial animations are dated and companions are lifeless and seem to have no personality.
    The Choices you make seem to have little impact to the world around you. Everything just seems boring and bland.
    The side quests are hit and miss with some having genuinely interesting stories and lore. For a Bethesda game it is passable as a good rpg where you can sink a lot of time into. But they seem stuck in the past. Since Fallout 4, we have had other game studios make more interesting games where the rpg genre boundaries are pushed (Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3, and even Cyberpunk). I loved Skyrim and Fallout 4, but in 2023, Bethesda doesn’t seem like the industry pushing company that they used to be.
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  13. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    I'm not a fan-boy. I play on all platforms. This game is just not enjoyable. Hopefully, modders can salvage it in a year or 2.
  14. Sep 7, 2023
    4
    Not sure how Bethesda managed to make discovering the universe so lifeless and monotonous, but most of the exploring plays out like this:

    enter your ship - > loading screen -> sit at console and "take off" -> loading screen -> choose new planet -> loading screen -> select landing site on planet -> loading screen -> exit ship -> loading screen -> "explore" procedurally generated planet
    Not sure how Bethesda managed to make discovering the universe so lifeless and monotonous, but most of the exploring plays out like this:

    enter your ship - > loading screen -> sit at console and "take off" -> loading screen -> choose new planet -> loading screen -> select landing site on planet -> loading screen -> exit ship -> loading screen -> "explore" procedurally generated planet (kill a few bugs and scan some plants/rocks) -> fast travel back to ship -> loading screen -> go back to step one

    . . . sure, you can skip a few of these steps by traveling directly to another planet thousands of light-years away without even entering your ship - but at that point, why do the planets and galaxy systems even exist if they are simply options in a menu?

    I've played over 300 hours of Fallout 76 because I love the Fallout universe so much, but Starfield just feels so sterile and devoid of the same heart and character that is so present in their other universes. I can even usually ignore the Bethesda "jank" that often accompanies the launch of their games - but something about Starfield's core mechanics seem inherently flawed as well, and I'm not sure I could even explain why. Whether it was the underdeveloped enemy A.I., the poorly designed base building (a giant material storage container can only hold 150 lbs of items, while the safebox in my bedroom can hold infinite), the emotionless (and ugly) character models, the lackluster main story quests, or just the general lack of adventure - Starfield ultimately proves to be an underwhelming RPG that fails to deliver on most of the promises Todd Howard and the marketing team pushed.

    That is not to say that there's nothing good here, the weapon design and shooting mechanics are a vast improvement over their past games, the ship-building is very intuitive, and the scenic landscapes of distant planets and galaxies can be absolutely gorgeous! I just wish I had more of a reason to explore them . . .
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  15. Sep 12, 2023
    7
    Starfield has some great moments BUT... has some major and glaring issues that often spoil the game.. First off...How is this supposed to be a space based adventure with your own spaceship, when you cant even fly the spaceships properly? We are unable to fly on and off, or even over the surface of the planets? Hell even the far lower budget indie developers 'No mans Sky' at least lets youStarfield has some great moments BUT... has some major and glaring issues that often spoil the game.. First off...How is this supposed to be a space based adventure with your own spaceship, when you cant even fly the spaceships properly? We are unable to fly on and off, or even over the surface of the planets? Hell even the far lower budget indie developers 'No mans Sky' at least lets you land and take off from planets and fly around them! But Starfield's space exploration is a bit of a scam, a gimmick, a fake, a charade, a thin veneer, its pure snake oil sold to us by Todd Howard the snake oil salesman.
    Starfield has no real space exploration at all, just one base/mine/space station per planet, with fast travel cutscenes and loading scenes masquerading as space travel, the whole space exploration element is all a giant let-down!. instead we get the same irritating repetitive over and over cutscenes of the landings and take-offs..and that's it! Awful!
    Why even bother with the planets anyway if that's the best they could do with all the money they had and giant dev team? Its a joke, an insult to our intelligence and betrayal of what Todd Howard promised! They should of just kept it all on one planet, with different biomes and simply called it Planetfield! Whilst i enjoyed some of the planets in starfield, most are barren and continued nothing much to the game.

    And why so many Cutscenes? they are everywhere, Take off your ship = animated cutscene,...land your ship = animated cutscene, Fly to the nearest planet = animated cutscene, get out of your space ship chair = animated cutscene, get out of your spaceship = black screen cutscene, get back in your ship = black screen cutscene, get back into your chair = animated cutscene cutscene, Walk through a door black screen cutscene, Everything is cutscenes! I half expected a nice trip on the monorail/metro, looking out of the windows as I travelled between districts, but no...all i got was..you guessed it another fast travel black screen Cutscene! Compare that to the awesome real monorail in Star citizen!
    As for the planets, they may as well be non existent like ive said.., often just empty barren and nothing to do, with simplistic graphics, its a pointless waste of time even wanting to explore them!..there is nothing to explore! They are ultimately as fake as the games title. Fast travel to a planet you are presented with a few options, land on the designated area with the base, city, mine etc, or land on the planet somewhere miles away and be presented with zero options other than to mine pointless materials. So in effect each planet is just a staging post/backdrop for the missions. No exploration at all.
    Procedurally generated worlds can be boring and repetitive, even when done well. They need Procedurally generated bases, cities, missions etc. Now that would of been cool.
    No HDR options or even basic gamma or brightness options, so for me at least many of the interiors ended up looking very bright, foggy and often felt like I was in a smoke filled night club in most of the interior spaces! But thankfully the modding community was soon able to offer fixes for this on day one of official release! BUT Why should it be left up to the modders to sort these blaring issues out on day one of release?
    I've also added a custom ini to increase the field of view to 90, instead of the restrictive default of 70. As for the cities in the game, they are cartoon looking, low textured, like New Atlantis, which is a very basic, cartoon looking, small city with a scattering of useless NPC's walking or sitting around, and whats with the odd looking fake trees, and rubbish pools of fake looking water with cartoon water lily's in? As for all the cafe's, and shops, they are just empty facades with no real life in them.
    Missions are often ridiculous and boring.
    ive given it a 7..due to the effort put into some of the bases and ideas. It could of been a 10 if they kept to their promises. Its a real shame because you can see a lot of effort HAS gone into certain parts of the game.
    If Todd Howard was a used car salesman, he would walk you around an amazing Ferrari at his car showroom, waffle off all the great specs to get your interest level up, then quickly get you to sign the paper work for the expensive purchase, then when you are walked to the handover room, you would be given an old clapped out pickup truck with a Ferrari badge 'sticky taped' to the bonnet!
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  16. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    5/10
    In resume: This game is souless.
    How can a game that has been in development for more than ten years (they market more, don't they?) be a science fiction space adventure and the first thing we notice is that they don't include "space travel" or "space exploration"? Are you kidding me? You can't take off or land on a planet. Loading Screens everywhere. Even the advertasing
    5/10
    In resume: This game is souless.

    How can a game that has been in development for more than ten years (they market more, don't they?) be a science fiction space adventure and the first thing we notice is that they don't include "space travel" or "space exploration"? Are you kidding me? You can't take off or land on a planet. Loading Screens everywhere.
    Even the advertasing exploration is not true, you can't explore fully a planet, an invisible wall and a message appears after you walk some Km.
    The planets being proceedal generated is acceptable (at some point) but the copy and past of outposts and caves and bs on a planet is abismal. And I'm not talking about 5 occasions, is dozens apon dozens... Don't forget there are thousand of planets...

    It's awful how little immersion there is. developed for more than ten years, but where? What did you do with the money and time?
    Why is this game so empty? We know that most of space is empty, therefore I won't discuss about the planets, which are assumed to be empty. The cities, though? The cities are deserted, dead, and devoid of life. No one is concerned if you shoot. Police won't intervene. This is advertising has a RPG. An RPG should, at the very least, have strong exploration, be immersive and soulful.
    There are nothing in this game that will pull you to this world. The first missions I did after I was "released" in space were the most ridiculous missions, you know that ones that are there to fill the game with bs? Yeah... My thought was "this is going to be the entire of the game will it not?". Ridiculous.
    I will not talk about bugs of course...

    Man, this is bad. This people need to stop with this bs, for real.

    (The 5 out of 10 is because the game is a good shooter, the graphics are ok, city design and "zones" are good and ship costumization is good).
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  17. Sep 7, 2023
    3
    Starfield 44h+ in -> VERY HARD (SPOILER FREE)

    The game has a nice start but gets really slow. Due to the extreme nonsensical bullet sponge nature of the game, you are heavily relying on your "LUCK" with drops when killing enemies to get a dope weapon early ortherwise you're in for a tedious time not dealing a lot of damage. I've had an encounter that was part of the main quest where
    Starfield 44h+ in -> VERY HARD (SPOILER FREE)

    The game has a nice start but gets really slow. Due to the extreme nonsensical bullet sponge nature of the game, you are heavily relying on your "LUCK" with drops when killing enemies to get a dope weapon early ortherwise you're in for a tedious time not dealing a lot of damage.

    I've had an encounter that was part of the main quest where I've had dropped a Legendary weapon that was incredibly good, however since I didn't save.. during that same encounter I had died. When the game reloaded the last save, I obviously went to the exact same enemy BUT was rewarded with a blue weapon of a different type instead. Obviously that is fine, however my point is, that it is very RNG heavy to get a good playthrough.

    I've not felt underleveled, in fact I was undergeared. I ended up taking a different route in the game, exploring a ton of Level 1 or 5 plantets in hope of getting decent gear and/or "infinite" AMMO to combat those bullet sponges. Imagine, a Humanoid taking 100+ bullets to actually DIE?? Then getting an upgrade that uses 20-30 bullets instead? Wild. I know, it's a bethesda game but I hoped they would have improved in this department.

    While the search and exploration was tedious... the game made up for it with it's nice worlds and content to explore, I decided to take up on a few side missions which were deep. Some are cool, some have a broken or stupid or braindead plot to them. Over all, I avoided the main story because it was rather mid/boring after retrieving the 2nd or 3rd artifact (I don't remember lol). I had also encountered a ton of bugs in every single quest, also main quest which forced me to reload my previous saves.

    Another huge chunk of my hours into the game was the leveling of perks. These were super weird too. If you look for pirates that are easier to kill with your starter ship, it might be hard as you'd not know where to find them. You need to destroy ships in order to get your piloting skill up. After many hours, I figured out that there is a simulator, that in fact COUNTS your kills toward to the perk system. So you can just level up your perks with no risk in mind. I ended up spamming that for many hours to be ble to buy myself a better ship.

    Let me tell you, the majority of my hours were me trying to find a way to play this game in an enjoyable way, I did enjoy quite a few things, but those things can't outshine the issues the game has. The bugs, the balancing of difficulties, the way drops work towards to your progression, getting enough credits, having to do the crimson fleet quests to get contraband to not be detected on scans and and and. The game can be GOOD but there are flaws in the way.

    Now imagine the vast amount of issues other players and/or creators are talking about. Such as the amount of menu management in the game or always being encumbered, immersion breaking mechanics and and and. The game is totally unfinished and not ready for launch but it was released anyway. It's like we're all BETA testing the game.

    So yes, I will keep playing the game because I spent 100 EUR on it. I want to believe my money wasn't wasted and the further I get into the game I still do not enjoy it. I might at this moment be overleveled, however, with all those bugs and "broken" mechanics, I doubt I'll have much fun. The game can challenge me to change my opinion, until then my verdict is very clear:

    Starfield = messy with lots of bugs ruining a game that could have had potential, maybe one day it deserves a 7+ rating from me.

    I am still playing the game to beat it, if something changes I will edit my review.

    Thanks for reading.
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  18. Sep 7, 2023
    1
    Outdated game, outdated engine, outdated dev team, outdated CEO.

    Let me start: I am owner of premium edition so I have been familiar with this production for a few days. First at all I will honestly state that I feel cheated out of $100. And just to be clear, I based my decision to buy not on hype or rumors, but on carefully following official information from the developer, publisher,
    Outdated game, outdated engine, outdated dev team, outdated CEO.

    Let me start: I am owner of premium edition so I have been familiar with this production for a few days. First at all I will honestly state that I feel cheated out of $100. And just to be clear, I based my decision to buy not on hype or rumors, but on carefully following official information from the developer, publisher, including their CEOs. So I don't feel like a dumb sucker, but like a person who was deliberately lied to. I want nothing to do with future products with the Microsoft and Bethesda logos. But about that in the summary at the end.

    I begin with technical aspects, because it is easer. In a nutshell: primitive port from consoles. Therefore, VRAM does not exceed 6 GB, and RAM oscillates around 6-8 GB (although on PC 24-32 GB today is not surprising). Hence the constant loading screens, even though the whole thing should sit in memory even though everything works in small instances. And I'm not even mentioning such technical nightmares as the lack of support for proper anti-aliasing in 2023, no DLSS, no Intel ARC GPU support or problems with textures not fully loading, exactly the same as in Forspoken. And that embarrassing performance even on extremely strong configurations with graphics dating back 7 years! How about AI of NPCs and enemies? What AI? What faces animations? What is it? A joke? The whole thing done as off-putting as possible. 3D engine is terrible, I mean terrible outdated and you feel it literally everywhere. Fatal engine, fatal port. And yet, these are only core technical issues, on top of that there is the content, and this content is as if from 2010-2013. It is unacceptable. This way of giving gameplay even comes from the 90's and has nothing to do with current standards. And this applies to the content as well as the form of its delivery, i.e. UI/UX. And it's hard to believe that this is a product released in the year 2023, there are such is the coarseness of everything, feel so cheap, so... lame. Use of Creation Engine while owning the rights to use the id Tech engine. This is lunacy!

    Now we move deeper, and you know what? No alien races, whole Galaxy is open, but there are NOT any other vivid civilizations. The narrative in this game is reminiscent of the work of a 15-year-old for a contest entitled "The story of the world. How I imagine life in 100 years". But, on the other hand, the entire Galaxy we've come to know is purely American: from the architecture, to the disgusting mass culture, to the customs. Where are the cultural differences between the different worlds? Hey, you creators of this carcass without imagination, do you really think that in the future everyone will live in the same cesspool as you today? This is not the 1980s! What is it I ask? WHAT IS IT?! It insults intelligence. Where is the plot? Where do choices matter? It is unbelievable how infantile everything is conveyed and would require an looong and deeep elaboration, but I just don't want to rummage through this rubbish, simply: this is total mess.

    This should be groundbreaking Crysis for the year 2023, not a horribly optimized, archaic product in form and content. This game is in much worse state them Cyberpunk on release because Cyberpunk at least had a good, modern 3D engine and a contemporary gameplay concept.

    This game should never have been released in this state - this is not an indie developer, but the largest software publisher in the world. You can see right through, Microsoft and Bethesda have real problem with internal management, because it is not first blunder this year. Maybe next year something will come of it, if MS does not abandon the project and rebuild this game from the ground up - and I write this completely seriously. For now it is unplayable. This product is a complete mess at this point, it's a beta version, and situations like this gives Microsoft a terrible reputation - again. Something really bad is going on there. Their recent actions resemble management at a market stall, not a multinational corporation. If Microsoft wants to stay in this market as a major player, needs to change something, because the Activision-Blizzard purchase won't help anything if you don't release good products. Of course, in the short term you can count on profits from an uninformed or undemanding customer, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. I am sure, that Starfield discredit will only confirms this.

    And looking at the above I would give a summary rating of 4/10, but in this case I in good conscience give 1/10. Why? Because, let me repeat myself, for months the developer and publisher in their official information simply gave outright lied about whether this product will be. So as owner of premium edition of this game let me summarize: I feel SCAMmed in very bad way which I write utterly honest. Almost everything from the official announcements and official statements turned out to be a lie. Enough is enough.
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  19. Sep 9, 2023
    0
    I could not finish this game. Already uninstalled. The AI is really bad. The facial animations for NPCs pull you right out of the immersion. I spent most my time in loading screens and doing the same repetitive actions over and over. Fetch quests in the main story. The side quests were even worse.

    Combat was spongy and unimpactful. The perk system was a huge disappointment. A lot of
    I could not finish this game. Already uninstalled. The AI is really bad. The facial animations for NPCs pull you right out of the immersion. I spent most my time in loading screens and doing the same repetitive actions over and over. Fetch quests in the main story. The side quests were even worse.

    Combat was spongy and unimpactful. The perk system was a huge disappointment. A lot of them are minimal. But some of them are necessary for quality of life within the game. I don't want to grind for perk points just so I can sprint or carry enough weight.

    The voice acting was great. As well as the music. Both 10/10. But the writing is poor. Good actors with bad writing doesn't really help much.

    Supposedly, the story gets much better later in the game. Slow burn. I just can't get engaged enough to make it there. I've already given up.

    I did improve some things using console commands. The mods are interesting. With patches and mods this game will improve. I see a glimmer of hope in there. But I'm rating this based on my current experience. It gets a 0/10 because I uninstalled after just 12 hours.
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  20. Sep 7, 2023
    5
    I can't be your Constellation member...

    Starfield system requirements are exaggerated even for today AAA games, despite the game outdated engine. Starfield is also a great example of how AAA game developers today dont value optimization. While developing this game, they didnt think about anyone with average and above average systems. Until Starfield, I had never seen a game that
    I can't be your Constellation member...

    Starfield system requirements are exaggerated even for today AAA games, despite the game outdated engine. Starfield is also a great example of how AAA game developers today dont value optimization. While developing this game, they didnt think about anyone with average and above average systems. Until Starfield, I had never seen a game that aggressively imposed such high system requirements.

    You cannot make a successful game by ignoring a player base that makes up a large part of the world. You cant assume that every PC gamer has, or has to have, a RTX 4090/7900 XTX and a system of its caliber. It is unrealistic for game developers to expect every PC gamer to have a high-end system. Because even the graphics your game offers dont match your requirements. There are dozens of games released 10 years ago that look much better than Starfield. Great graphics alone do not make a game good. Graphics are not a priority for every gamer.

    Even if Starfield is the best looking game in the world, it cant be a good game with this optimization and content. I dont want to see games with high graphics on the outside but empty inside. You can impress gamers who dont understand games with just graphics, but games are more than that and real gamers know that. But no game released without optimization in this way has ever been successful.

    Even though there are so many examples and Bethesda had similar problems in their previous games, they never learned a lesson. Not to mention the bugs and glitches, it was already expected to be released this way. Classic Bethesda always makes technically broken games. Bethesda didnt try to make a good and memorable game.

    Their only concern was to make a game that didnt live up to expectations with astronomical requirements in order to make more money for their sponsors, the computer parts manufacturers. They want todays PC gamers to have higher systems so that more next gen games with terrible optimizations can be developed. Otherwise they cant reduce the cost and time of development or sell new graphics cards and CPUs. I dont respect or support these goals of companies.

    There is a lot to criticize about the content of the game, but for me the gameplay is more important and since the game is currently unplayable due to optimization, there is no need to talk about other aspects.
    Bethesda needs to stop using the Creation Engine as soon as possible. We have seen another game that turned into a disaster because of this engine. Bethesda just dont want to see it.

    Starfield will probably be playable after a few years of updates, DLCs and expanded mod support, until then, goodbye...
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  21. Sep 8, 2023
    0
    Worst Bethesda game I’ve ever plated. Extremely disappointing. No soul. It’s basically fallout 4 with no open world.
  22. Sep 8, 2023
    5
    I cannot recommend this game right now, don’t waste your money on it @ full price.

    It baffles me how Bethesda can screw up this much, this could have been a GOTY. --> The bad Let’s start with the obvious: the game is full of bugs, not “Skyrim launch” level of bugs but a lot of bugs nevertheless. A game of this magnitude is expected to have them, but please don’t go on the media
    I cannot recommend this game right now, don’t waste your money on it @ full price.

    It baffles me how Bethesda can screw up this much, this could have been a GOTY.

    --> The bad

    Let’s start with the obvious: the game is full of bugs, not “Skyrim launch” level of bugs but a lot of bugs nevertheless. A game of this magnitude is expected to have them, but please don’t go on the media bragging about having “so few bugs”. They are common, they are everywhere, from visual bugs to quest bugs, even whole ship fleets missing that prevent you to move on with your quest (fixed after game restart).

    Second, the game has KOTOR (2003) space travel mechanics. With so many examples on the market (Elite Dangerous, NMS, etc.) it’s amazing how they couldn’t implement an in/out atmosphere landing. It’s just cut scenes all over the place: for landing, for docking, even riding the freaking metro. You cannot fly on the planet surface, you cannot fly into the planet, all you can do is a cut-scene here, a cut-scene there. Want to move around and explore the planet? Get ready to run marathons. No ground vehicles, no flying, just running - you’ll obviously end up just fast traveling everywhere. And the loadings… They are fast on NVME’s, but almost every door, everything you do is a freaking loading screen that cuts the immersion.

    Third, they screwed up big on the map, inventory & management. Moving items from your character to the companion requires about 5/6 actions, one of them being to open a dialogue with them. They did it right on Fallout and Skyrim, no excuses here. The map is a huge mess, I’m 30+ hours in and still doesn’t feel right, it’s not intuitive, it’s confusing, lacks consistency and the game has no minimap.

    Moving on, space combat is “ok”, a hugely simplified version of Elite Dangerous combat/ship maneuverability, still, more satisfying than the shooting mechanics on ground. Speaking of it, the weapons feel & effects are hugely unsatisfying. Nothing wrong with the weapons stats, types, etc., there is a lot of gun variety, they simply couldn’t do what (for example) Battlebit did, a game made by half-a-dozen friends where the weapons just feel amazing. NPC AI is a joke, the game feels way too easy on normal and the NPC intelligence doesn’t scale with it. Be ready to deal with bugged enemies aiming at the ground, hiding in plain sight or aliens running indefinitely into walls.

    The RPG side of it is Fallout 4 level of fail, you don’t have freedom to do anything out of the rulebook. Try to shoot shop people? Immortal. Try to shoot anything that’s not a pure enemy or random generated outpost, bullets don’t affect them. Dialogue options? Vague and weak. Persuasion mechanics are a mess, all feels superficial like a big roller-coaster ride.

    Last but not least, the performance. I can’t complain here because thankfully I have a really good setup, but folks that aren’t this fortunately will have a shock with the game lack of optimization. And it’s not like you’ll find the best graphics ever, not even close. The textures are outdated, the face animations too, the game doesn’t even stretch its legs to scale with GPU/CPU power. I’m running everything on ultra @ 1440p and the game only uses 5GB of VRAM, so much untapped power. Graphics aren’t that important, but it’s the cherry on the top of everything I just stated.

    --> The good

    The soundtrack is amazing, Interstellar meets 2001 Space Odyssey, a pleasure to listen to it on max volume.
    Awesome quest variety and factions.
    Game is stable, never had a single crash.
    The crafting / ship customization is awesome.
    The feel of the game overall is “ok”, I’m getting immersed in the story, but I just get kicked out of it every 5 minutes because of the things stated above.

    --> Conclusion

    Bethesda left the hard work to the modders. A 200+ million project, hundreds of people working on it, a veteran studio with all the funding they could have asked for, it’s like they f***ed up on purpose and I’m mad about it because Bethesda did a lot of my favorite games, ever, and I used to LOVE this company. So – many – rookie – mistakes.

    Personally, I think they were graphically held-back by the Xbox Series S, since it is a Xbox/PC exclusive they had to make it work on that damn calculator (and we can see the results). Also, the game is 100% a console port, there are no native PC mechanics, which aren’t that difficult to implement on a single-player game…

    The game is “ok” but could have been a masterpiece and it makes me mad because of the lost opportunity. Perhaps one day it will, when everything is just properly refined. Just wait for the price to drop, wait for the patches to fix everything, wait for the godsend modders to do their magic.

    Get a grip, Todd
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  23. Sep 7, 2023
    4
    This is the wild disappointment of 2023. Graphics and animations of the 2010 level (if not worse)
    Music from Oblivion, and inventory from Skyrim. Maybe it's just another mod for Skyrim?
    The worlds are empty, it's boring to travel through them. Against the background of starfield, mass effect andromeda and no man's sky look like AAA projects, while starfield looks like a pathetic DIY
    This is the wild disappointment of 2023. Graphics and animations of the 2010 level (if not worse)
    Music from Oblivion, and inventory from Skyrim. Maybe it's just another mod for Skyrim?
    The worlds are empty, it's boring to travel through them. Against the background of starfield, mass effect andromeda and no man's sky look like AAA projects, while starfield looks like a pathetic DIY indie studio.

    there is nothing to say about the disgusting optimization at all.

    And the enthusiastic reviews of critics only confirm that there is nothing to listen to them, because they sold their reviews)
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  24. Sep 7, 2023
    1
    Starfield, a game that fell short of the promises made like many before it. Bethesda shows us again that marketing means more than development. Sweat off the hype surrounding space exploration, take a giant leap back, and observe what has really been provided to us here. Starfield is about exploring space, or at least that was what it was supposed to be about. You will often find yourselfStarfield, a game that fell short of the promises made like many before it. Bethesda shows us again that marketing means more than development. Sweat off the hype surrounding space exploration, take a giant leap back, and observe what has really been provided to us here. Starfield is about exploring space, or at least that was what it was supposed to be about. You will often find yourself repeating the same fetch quests over and over once you complete the mind numbing overly long tutorial. Once you get in to the groove though, you quickly find out that the game contains much repetition broken up by the same loading screens, and that you are not as free as you thought you would be. Quests will be to teleport (quick travel) to a location that resembles the same as before it, walk a short distance, shoot the bodies in front of you, loot and return. You are unable to freely fly your ship anywhere you want, nor can you land anywhere on a planet that you want. In fact, if you land the same place twice, the planet will look different. The game procedurally generates a "random" tile to which you can walk, just don't walk to far because there are invisible walls. You can not even see the towns in the background. Gunplay is nice and tight, however quickly becomes underwhelming when you realize most weapons feel the same, but some with a zoom option. The enemies will not run for cover or show any signs of intelligence as you blast their faces off. Jumping and moving super slow .. because you know, gravity? .. This only adds to the frustratingly boring slow paced gameplay and story. Designing your own base or ship you would think would be fun, but it is not. The clunky system and process is tedious and is not rewarding. The level-up / reward / skill system seems interesting, but plagued by bugs and glitches as is the entire game quickly becomes the same... more annoying than rewarding. Overall, this half baked experience seems like it was pulled out of the oven way too soon. Gamers alike want to love it, as it is a popular release and set in space, what is there not to love? Unfortunately, this game falls flat on its face and feels more like multiple mini games stuck together with extremely long loading screens. Each as equally bad as the other. Don't even get me started on the graphics or inventory system, yikes! Expand
  25. Sep 7, 2023
    4
    Starfield is a step back from every previous bethesada title (except Fallout 76)

    NPC dont feel alive anymore. They dont have a schedule anymore. The shopkeeper is behind his desk 24/7. You wont ever see a NPC travelling to another planet or having a drink at the bar, unless its part of a quest. They dont really have a personality, unless they are part of a quest that require them to
    Starfield is a step back from every previous bethesada title (except Fallout 76)

    NPC dont feel alive anymore. They dont have a schedule anymore. The shopkeeper is behind his desk 24/7. You wont ever see a NPC travelling to another planet or having a drink at the bar, unless its part of a quest. They dont really have a personality, unless they are part of a quest that require them to have one.

    Exploration is useless. Main hub are fine. New Atlantis and Neon are fun to explore, but the thousands of planet advertised are empty. The point of interest on them are bland and re-used. Every "abandonned mine" is the exact same, down to loot container and enemy placement. Not just that look similar, they are exactly the same. I encountered multiple of them, on the same planet. just to fly to another planet and encounter another one.

    Planet survey are boring and repetitive. They dont grant you anything meaningful. You never encounter any quest while going them, Your just running around for 45 minutes searching for the last animal you need to complete it so you can get paid.

    Skill are as bland as they come. No more do you have to use a skill to make it better. You get one skill point every level, put it in whatever you want.

    Random event are repetitive. Every now and then you get hailed by a ship, but they are only a few scenario that can unfold. Before long, you dont even answer because you dont care anymore.

    Gearing is boring. You get 10 type of weapon, most of which is in the balistic category. So just regular gun. There a few laser weapon and explosive, but nothing interesting like mini nuke

    Enemy are repetitive. There are 4 type: Spacer, Pirate, Ecliptic and Robot. The first 3 are the exact same. The alien barely ever play a role. Even the big bad terrormorph are complete pushovers.

    Space is merely a front and serve no real purpose gameplay wise. Dogfight are boring and repetitive, the sense of scale dont exist.

    Starfield feel like an empty box. What you imagine it to be is a lot more fun than what it actually is. It is bland, uninspired, generic and repetitive. I do not recommend to anyone. Specially not to people that played better Bethesda title in the past. Modders might make it a worthwhile investment in a few years because everything need to be improved in this game.

    I gave Fallout 4 6/10 and Fallout 76 2/10 so i decided to give this one 4/10.
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  26. Sep 9, 2023
    0
    This game is a loading-menu-simulator. Very, very boring. You don't feel inside a universe, you feel that you are inside a menu, inside a block world. Really.. this game is trash.. this game made me install star citizen again so i can actually have a ship that worth something. Because in starfield there is no motive to have a ship, the only reason ships is in this game is for you to fastThis game is a loading-menu-simulator. Very, very boring. You don't feel inside a universe, you feel that you are inside a menu, inside a block world. Really.. this game is trash.. this game made me install star citizen again so i can actually have a ship that worth something. Because in starfield there is no motive to have a ship, the only reason ships is in this game is for you to fast travel the first time you go to a place, then you do it from a menu. Bad design, very bad. They could have done 10 planets by hand, only one system but well done, then they could launch expansions systems. Expand
  27. Sep 7, 2023
    4
    In Skyrim and Fallout you had dramatic introductions ... emerging from that cave after escaping a dragon, emerging from the sewers after the assassination of the Emperor, emerging from vault 101 after the escape of your father. Not so in Starfield, there is no emergence or anything with soul, there is no "Oh, wow" moment and that shallowness continues throughout the entire game ... ofIn Skyrim and Fallout you had dramatic introductions ... emerging from that cave after escaping a dragon, emerging from the sewers after the assassination of the Emperor, emerging from vault 101 after the escape of your father. Not so in Starfield, there is no emergence or anything with soul, there is no "Oh, wow" moment and that shallowness continues throughout the entire game ... of which I have 70 hours played.

    The quests are bland, the dialogue is just horrible. The music is average at best. There's a certain lack of "deus" in the machine. It doesn't grab you, it isn't warm, it's distant and remote. Plodding and boring. Key elements such as settlement building have no real purpose and are obtuse and difficult.

    Gameplay is an endless series of loading screens. You may experience regular CTD and other issues unless you lock your FPS to 60.

    On top of this the game has been styled from the bottom up to be a showcase of modern social justice pieties. From the composition of the populations to the fact that 85% or more of dialogue is going to be with women. Sometimes it's like the game has been set at a baby shower that never ends. Already the champions of that movement are declaring the success of the game as a success for their movement, disproving the claims of their opponents that you lose money if you adopt their creed.

    So you have a game that might have been a 7 on its own merits dragged further down by the obnoxious adoption of a faddish political movement, which constitutes a non-stop distraction and irritation.

    This game is at best a 4, and I'd recommend you don't waste your time or your money on it.
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  28. Sep 7, 2023
    1
    RPG without exploration. A story without a plot. Space without flying in space. Planets without flora and fauna. Cities without traffic. Shooting without gun play. Characters without character. Graphics without graphic elements and shadows. This game has absolutely nothing
  29. Sep 8, 2023
    0
    Games in 2023 from "AAA" studios come out for $100 and are in alpha state. This is disrespectful to the player base.
  30. Sep 8, 2023
    0
    Boring, bland, soulless and devoid of any fun. Truly a game to not waste ones money on. I reached breaking point after 5 hours and uninstalled. What a joke, all these years and you get a fake space backdrop exploration aka loading screen fast travel nonsense.
Metascore
85

Generally favorable reviews - based on 75 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 75
  2. Negative: 0 out of 75
  1. 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.
  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. 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.