- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
- Release Date: Sep 6, 2023
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 5
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Oct 10, 2023Starfield is an epic work of science fiction wonder and is a true Bethesda RPG at its heart. The world is expansive, and the main story and all the side-quests are brilliantly crafted. The game looks amazing, has an incredible score, and will genuinely wow you with the galaxy's vastness you can explore. If you’ve ever looked to the stars and wondered ‘what if’… this is a game you must play. It isn’t just for Bethesda fans.
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Sep 19, 2023If you have the time to spare, Starfield is a worthy investment into another gaming universe that delivers a truly immersive experience.
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Aug 31, 2023Bethesda has not only crafted a new compelling and wondrous universe to explore where you can play in any way you desire, they’ve created one of the most important games of this generation and prove once again they’re the best at what they do.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is, in a nutshell, everything it needed to be and much more than we could have hoped for.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield delivers on everything it promised and then some. It's the ultimate sci-fi game, giving players an incomprehensibly massive world to explore and letting them play however they want. Starfield has what it takes to be another Skyrim-level game that's played religiously for the next decade. It's utterly engrossing, an absolute must-play, and the best Xbox console exclusive in years.
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Aug 31, 2023When it comes to central storylines, this is easily the best Bethesda quest yet.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is without a doubt a monumental release - and not just because it's Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years. Every now and then, a new game comes along that changes our perception of what the industry is capable of. Starfield is that game. This is beyond what we’ve come to know an open-world to be. Bethesda has created a universe that, despite its vast scale, maintains interest and an impressive attention to detail throughout. The journey you embark on will dazzle you, and I have no doubt that players will be gripped for months, perhaps even years to come. Here is a playground where you can be whoever you want to be. I simply cannot stop thinking about Starfield and the wondrous secrets it still holds. Bethesda, I have one word: bravo.
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Aug 31, 2023As unfathomably vast and boundless as the subject matter it covers, Starfield raises the bar for its genre and for the medium as a whole in countless ways.
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Aug 31, 2023The space epic, in which you could imagine yourself in Star Wars, Firefly or Dune, is one of the most hyped games of the year but it also lives up to the sky-high expectations. The scale, the freedom and the possibilities in the game are almost unprecedented. It's hard enough to excel at any of these components, let alone do it all well and combine it into one rock-solid game, the best Xbox game in years.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield isn’t a perfect game. No game is. That said, for a game to have this much ambition and actually pull off almost everything it set out to accomplish is a remarkable achievement. I haven’t even talked about some of the game’s most interesting elements, such as how it approaches New Game+, which I can’t wait for more players to see. Starfield is a triumph that I’m confident players will be exploring for years to come, not only because it will remain incredibly compelling but because it will take that long to see anywhere near everything it has to offer.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is the most potent value proposition for Game Pass, being the killer app for the subscription service. It is also the best, most ambitious game in the Xbox Game Studios library to date. It would not be a stretch to say this could be one of the most ambitious games ever made, and that it followed through with many of those goals with relatively low compromise.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is one of those games that define an era. A fun, huge game and one of the best Space Operas of all time. Bethesda and Xbox have built one of the best games of the generation.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is one of the best games of the year (which is no small feat in this fantastic 2023) and one of the best games in Xbox history. Bethesda has created an era-defining game that will set an example for other studios to follow as they embark on their own journey into space.
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Sep 18, 2023Starfield for me is very easily the game of the year, it would take something phenomenal to knock it off the top. Is it perfect? Not by any means, there are bugs and exploits to see but you have to go out of your way to do so, albeit to the detriment of your own experience. I think calling it Fallout in Space with Mass Effect tones and elements of No Man’s Sky is a cheap description. I think this is the massive space adventure we have needed and I am addicted to it and with so much content I feel very spoilt. It is so much fun and an RPG lovers fantasy to explore and I cannot recommend it enough.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield can be summed up in one word: immense. Immense for the quantity and quality of stories it delivers, immense for the number of different activities it makes possible, immense like the galaxy it allows us to explore. Bethesda's new RPG will make you live a great sci-fi adventure, exploring hundreds of planets, admiring beautiful sceneries, and granting you many emotions, all at your own pace and making you live the adventure the way you want. If you are fascinated by space exploration and love narrative-focused experiences, this is an absolute must-have.
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Sep 17, 2023Simply put, Starfield is Bethesda’s greatest-ever RPG. The living, breathing universe they have created is one of the most impressive in the gaming space and the sound effects and musical score push the immersion to near perfection. If only I didn’t have to speak to the back of NPCs head.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a great game from Bethesda, it displays a lot of attention to detail in both its main and secondary missions. And not to mention the open world sections with an entire galaxy to see, offering hours and hours of content to completionist players.
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Aug 31, 2023Despite its occasional bug, unexplained mechanic, or small gripe, Starfield is one of the premiere titles in Xbox's library and adds to Bethesda's storied history.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is an RPG that brings the best out of previous Bethesda games with the best sci-fi narrative about space ever created. With elements inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar, a game about space has never been this grand and with such satisfying exploration until now. The team led by Todd Howard can be proud of the fantastic work they've put out.
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Aug 31, 2023The best Bethesda Game Studios has conceived a huge, colossal and exciting game, where each adventure can be different. It's not perfect, but it's certainly one of the games of the year.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is, overall, a very good RPG from a studio known for making very good RPGs. Not the most surprising news I’m sure, but it’s nice to see that they’re able to break away from the Elder Scrolls and Fallout settings successfully, and I do feel like their take on space exploration is a breath of fresh air for this type of RPG experience. It’s a huge game overall, so if you’re the person that believes time played = value, you’ll be pretty happy with this one for sure, but at the same time if you’re worried about overall quality, I think you’ll still enjoy your time with Starfield. I look forward to playing a lot more of it over the next couple of months, attempting to see everything the game has to offer. So in short, check it out, it’s pretty darn good.
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Oct 16, 2023It is true that you'll find a good number of barren wastelands with little to do other than extracting some resources and take off to more interesting places, but again it really depends on how you want to play. There's so much to do, so many systems and abilities to explore, missions to complete, spaceships to loot, and species to catalogue, that I honestly don't think there's anybody who thinks that exploring every square meter of this universe is the better way to enjoy Starfield.
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Oct 2, 2023You have so much choice in what you do and how you do it that you might not be bothered by having overflowing pockets or being unable to find a store. Heck, bring a knife to a gunfight if you want. You do you. Me, I'll be exploring the stars, with a gun in my hand, a song in my heart, and a grin on my face.
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Sep 12, 2023Ultimately, Starfield is one of the best space-based RPGs ever made, one where hours fly by in minutes, and one where the only hard limit is your imagination.
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Sep 11, 2023Even though the first quarter of the main story is boring, loading screens pop-up every time you blink and some gameplay mechanisms are lacking, Starfield is still one of the best RPGs we’ve seen in years and definitely one of the best when it comes to science fiction. Does it live up to the massive hype behind it? Probably not. Will we be playing and talking about it for years to come? Definitely yes.
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Sep 8, 2023Starfield is filled with possibilities for who you can become and what you can do, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in gaming.
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Sep 7, 2023Starfield is Bethesda's best RPG to date, an enormous space odyssey that serves up some incredibly evocative and engaging exploration, satisfying combat, and a narrative that had us hooked right to the end. Yes there are issues here with the usual jank, and some very messy and fiddly menus and interactions, but all of these problems feel minor when compared to everything this game gets right. In a year that's been packed full of absolutely essential games, Starfield manages to sit right up top with some of the best of them. After all the hype and bluster, this is just a very, very good RPG and a game we'll be playing and replaying for a long time to come.
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Sep 6, 2023Achievement-wise, this game is clearly going to take some time, and that can only be a good thing considering that Starfield seems to have delivered what it promised: an almost endless adventure we’ll still be discovering new details about years down the line.
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Sep 1, 2023The reason Starfield comes to shine so spectacularly is because everything you do has a purpose that will influence a story. You want to know how it will end, so you want to explore what happens with its conclusions. Yes, there is still much more to do after the end, making the adventure go further.
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Sep 1, 2023Starfield is not a perfect game, and I can see some players becoming frustrated with some of its bigger imperfections. It’s a game that offers a massive world that’s not always particularly full, which could turn off some players. However, past its initial rocky start, Starfield feels special and interesting and deserves to be tried at least. More than anything else, I’m curious to see where the Bethesda audience takes Starfield. Each game from the company has its own dedicated community and I want to see what Starfield’s community will look like in a few months’ or years’ time.
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Aug 31, 2023'Skyrim in space' falls short on Starfield, but at the same time it is the perfect description of this total package. Starfield is so big, diverse and detailed that it's hard not to lose yourself in this world. Not everything is perfect, but the negatives are completely outweighed by the positives. In short, a typical Bethesda game. But then in space.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield both hits and misses the mark. Starfield has both improvements and steps backward from the previous games, and whether you consider it to be better or worse than Fallout is dependent on what you prized from those games. If you're looking for more Fallout 4 with bigger and more detailed environments and quests, then Starfield is pretty much everything you could hope for and more. If you're looking for No Man's Skyrim, however, it's disappointing. Almost everything on the ground feels good, while the space travel and exploration feels lackluster. If you're looking for a Bethesda-style, open-world RPG, Starfield scratches that itch, and Bethesda fans will lose countless hours in scouring every nook and cranny.
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Aug 31, 2023Figuratively and literally, Starfield is the next evolution for a Bethesda game; taking that framework and that sandbox before applying it 1000 times over. There are memorable characters, quests and locations, but these help you tell your own journey too as you forge your own path and create your own plots within this unfathomably large sandbox.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is Bethesda firing on all cylinders.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a great adventure game! Generous, full of possibilities, it opens the door to a wonderful galactic journey. We obviously regret the few bugs that we generally always find in Bethesda games and a gunfight part that lacks punch, but the experience is so crazy that we ignore it. With its rich world, a gripping and well-written story, charismatic characters, and really well-crafted side quests, Starfield is absolutely generous. A real sense of travel in the stars.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a triumph for Bethesda, but even more so for every human who ever dreamt of a destiny born in the stars.
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Aug 31, 2023There are simply few games that offer this huge quantity of content, but also back it up with quality. Timeless classics like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 feel downright limited by comparison, yet share that wonderful sense of adventure waiting around every corner. Trust me when I say you don't want to miss this.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield may not reinvent the wheel when it comes to Bethesda’s formula for role-playing games, but it cleverly combines the best elements of past games in a very appealing sci-fi setting. The highlights are no doubt the many well-written and well-designed quests that you’ll encounter throughout your journey through the settled systems. No matter what appeals to you as a player, be it nail-biting gunfights, the quiet construction of your own base or the thrills of laser-dodging dye dogfighting, Starfield has hours upon hours of content for you to lose yourself in.
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Aug 31, 2023Bethesda Game Studios has reached new heights in Starfield. A thrilling narrative, loaded with an entire universe to explore and backed by sublimely polished systems, has ushered in the ultimate Bethesda experience. It’s truly hard to summarize just what makes Starfield special, and that’s because so much of it is. You’ll be glued to your screen for hours, going where no explorer has gone before.
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Aug 31, 2023If what you’re hoping for is The Elder Scrolls or Fallout in space, then Starfield is that. Not only does it have countless stories begging to be sought out against a vast and beckoning star chart, it’s also the most polished Bethesda Game Studios title we’ve ever had.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is an instant classic and a triumphant homecoming to blockbuster gaming for Bethesda Game Studios.
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Aug 31, 2023In a lot of ways, Starfield is the game that I always wanted Mass Effect to be. It truly captures the awe-inspiring scope of space exploration while being packed with a galaxy full of unique characters and stories for players to uncover.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield may not shake Bethesda’s legendary formula as much as some players wanted, but it defies all but the most unreasonable expectations. Newcomers will easily lose themselves in the universe, and fans of the studio won’t be disappointed. Starfield easily joins Fallout 4 and Skyrim as a titan of a game that will continue to enthrall players long after its release.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield has been an absolute mission of a game to review. I shouldn't need to emphasize just how big this game is. It's a Bethesda game, and it spans a large quadrant of our very own Milky Way galaxy, with hundreds of star systems and around a thousand planets of potential gameplay experiences. Starfield pushes Creation Engine to its absolute limits, and for sure, the cracks of age are starting to show. While aspects of Starfield could've used more iteration from a design standpoint, it's ultimately one of Bethesda's most cinematic and impressive titles to date. With incredible writing, slow-burn stories that snowball into some of Bethesda's most immense moments, and tight RPG FPS combat that thrills in ship-to-ship battles, boots-on-the-ground firefights, and zero-g death ballets — Starfield is a landmark experience, with a bright future ahead of it.
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Sep 11, 2023Starfield is the perfect example of a video game that is equal parts brilliant, and equal parts flawed. Its open-world is nothing short of staggering, while its animations and dialogue are something best left in the past. Regardless of that, though, Starfield is truly an iconic experience, and will go down as an all-time great - of that I have no doubt.
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Sep 1, 2023All I want in a galaxy exploration adventure is for it to convince the lower levels of my brain that I’m an honest-to-goodness spaceman, the star of an epic and action-packed space saga. Starfield delivers on this, and then some.
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Aug 31, 2023Titanic, massive… adjectives fail to describe the immensity of Starfield. Shining like a sun, Bethesda's software is indeed the Skyrim in space that SF enthusiasts hope for. Admittedly, by not revolutionizing any mechanics specific to the genre, the software can be seen as a small nebulous step for the C-RPG. But it's a giant leap for great video game adventures, even if some features lack depth. Gigantic, captivating in its missions, full of things to do and discover, Starfield is an undeniable success. With its original New Game +, it will enchant you for countless hours.
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Aug 31, 2023It took me a long time to fall in love with Starfield, and even after I did, certain aspects didn’t work for me. But the things I didn’t enjoy are vastly outweighed by my enthusiasm for this new, original science fiction universe, the breadth of its adventures, and the appeal of its many interwoven stories. Go in with the expectation that it will take some time to find your footing in such a vast gameplay space, and there’s a universe well worth discovering here.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a colossal adventure that projects the experience gained by Bethesda into space, dragging all the great strengths, but also the weaknesses, of the historic creative philosophy into sci-fi boundaries. It's not an experience that allows you to navigate in real time towards infinity, built onto the sense of discovery, but a vast RPG sewn directly on the ancient formula of The Elder Scrolls, capable of delivering hundreds of hours of entertainment to anyone who's willing to accept its rules and limits. The great improvements that have touched the narrative and the technical component, together with the extraordinary amount of activities, are in fact mitigated by a disorganized exploration, by the proverbial static nature of the world and by some residues of the old Creation Engine.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield isn't about conquering the galaxy, it's about the joy of discovering it for yourself. A lackluster main story doesn't obscure just how much its stars really shine.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a magical, if a little clumsy, first journey to the stars for Bethesda, the RPG maker reminding us of the power of player freedom, engaging writing, and just a little jank.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is certainly not a new milestone like Skyrim or Fallout 3, but it will keep fans of Bethesda RPGs happy for dozens of hours.
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Oct 15, 2023While it has weak spots and doesn’t push many boundaries, Starfield is still an excellent RPG experience. Bethesda has once again mastered the things it built its reputation on – world building, quest design, and deep customization. However, it’s found new things to excel at too, with exciting combat and a novel implementation of New Game Plus.
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Oct 5, 2023In Starfield, this blend and culmination of ideas sometimes pays off in wonderful ways — but sometimes it falls short, because pushing too far in one direction would mean committing to an idea. Consequences.
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Sep 18, 2023Starfield lives up to the hype and more, bringing a fully realised universe to our TV screens with a captivating, intriguing story and worlds that are begging to be explored. Damn near every Bethesda trope you can imagine is present and correct here though, and it’s up to you if you can power through them to find the greatness within or if they’re just a bit too irritating to genuinely fall in love with the game completely. We’re in the latter, but boy is there plenty to enjoy here regardless.
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Sep 15, 2023A simply huge game, Starfield is wonderful at times but also confoundingly awkward and janky. Its storylines are brilliant, and its characters memorable, but there are gameplay frustrations that linger.If you want a massive set of worlds to explore and sink into, though, it's still a cracking choice.
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Sep 13, 2023Starfield isn't everything the developer promised, but it's a very good RPG, worthy of a Game of the Year nomination. Bethesda's new space RPG tells an absolutely intriguing story, treating each main mission like an unmissable episode in a memorable series. Although the game has a few bugs and glitches, the experience isn't traumatizing. It's not Skyrim in space, nor a galactic Fallout, but a new name that assumes its authenticity and dispenses with comparisons. Starfield isn't technically perfect, but it fits in perfectly with the best games of 2023.
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Sep 6, 2023Starfield is a very ambitious game, and while it brings much of what veterans of past Bethesda games love to the table, it under delivers on the promises of captivating space exploration. It could also use a bit more polish, especially when it comes to some notable quality of life omissions and visual hiccups. Despite these shortcomings, Starfield affords you the freedom to play how you want and provides worthwhile storylines that are rich and complex, regardless of which paths you go down. Sometimes it truly is all about the journey.
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Sep 6, 2023Starfield, as with Bethesda’s previous work, requires its player to submit to the spell that is being cast. The rewards for those who can overlook the often awkward delivery of dialogue, bodies that glitch through scenery, the confusion of menus and the flimsy feel of combat are considerable. Because that feeling of electric possibility – when the horn section swells as you touch down on a new planet, stride into the nearest settlement, then pick up whatever threads of story interest you – never wanes.
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Aug 31, 2023As a fan of science fiction, space, spaceships and so on, so far I'm very happy with the final result of Starfield, although there are points that could even be considered disappointments. However, the game really exploits Bethesda's mastery of creating all these different systems and it's clear to see the dedication and care that has gone into creating a new franchise for the company after so many The Elder Scrolls and Fallouts.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a technically solid systems-heavy role-playing game that works well with a surprising degree of polish compared to previous Bethesda RPGs. Despite this, Starfield has no sense of character and the story lacks impact.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is all about the stories it tells, and it tells them well. The central narrative and the characters inhabiting it are some of the best that Bethesda has ever produced, but they’re unfortunately let down by the banality that so often surrounds them. I came into Starfield wanting to explore the stars, and I got a brilliant sci-fi story instead. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield has one of the best new game pluses I've ever tried and the ambition of every edge of the title is continually felt as we play. I was living this experience for over fifty hours, but I could have played five hundred and I would still have so many things to enjoy. There will be a lot of debate about a lot of things about Starfield, but, without a doubt, it is a step forward in the innovation of how new technologies can give us an experience in videogames and it is a work that convincingly goes for much more, something that is increasingly valuable in this field.
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Aug 31, 2023It's the static and mechanical elements of Starfield that shine the brightest – the art, the environments, the combat systems. They make up the strong foundations of a playset with a very intriguing scenario. But you need to mentally meet Starfield partway to complete its vision of a vast, living universe. You need to stretch out the expanse and envision the journey. You need to look past the menus and form the fantasy. You need to help breathe life into its paper dolls. You need to add your own dash of wonder, and imagine your own unknowns. Truly, Starfield is a role-playing game, through and through.
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Aug 31, 2023Bethesda’s latest is bursting with “just one last thing” attention-grabbers that will keep you up well past your bedtime, night after night. Its imperfections are vexing, but its allure is undeniable.
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Aug 31, 2023For the sheer size of it, the beauty of the hundreds of different landscapes you can explore and the always engaging missions, Starfield is a massive technical achievement.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is an excellent RPG in the same mould as Skyrim and Fallout, but with a sci-fi spin. It features a deep skill tree and rewarding side quests to eat up your free time, as well as fantastic gunplay. But it hasn’t quite reached the high expectations for space exploration, with technical limitations and countless bland planets making the journey into the stars a rather mundane one.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a great game, but it is not the second coming of Bethesda. This is exactly what I thought it was going to be and if you love their games, you will love Starfield. There is so much to see and do. So many great characters, excellent writing, and plenty of side quests and choices to make. I hate the cliché “if you’re a fan of the genre” but if a game ever matched that quote, it is this one. This is a Bethesda space opera and one of their best games to date.
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Sep 12, 2023A fun space-faring RPG held back by a few glaring decisions, Starfield is a good launching point for a game that’ll become something great in the future.
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Nov 1, 2023It's a big game, but starts way too slowly, and may never get interesting.
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Sep 4, 2023It’s never a great sign when someone recommends a game on the grounds that it gets good after more than a dozen hours, but that’s very much the kind of game Starfield is, and I do recommend it.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield has its moments, for sure. Its satisfying gunplay makes combat exciting, especially when it's integrated into setpieces within its better, more captivating questlines. And although limited in its conception of space exploration, there's a novelty in poking around the galaxy to see star systems up close and personal, and occasionally finding side content worth chasing. However, it struggles to deliver a cohesive and memorable RPG experience amid the seemingly boundless sea of stars. For all its reverence for scientific philosophy, its stories and characters paint a rather tame and sterile vision for what our spacefaring future could look like. When you strip Starfield down to its essentials, it relies on a tried-and-true, but well-tread formula while missing some of the depth of the games that came before it. Starfield is a game more concerned with quantity than quality, and leaves the experience at the surface level.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield isn’t the generation-defining video game that overeager fans might be expecting; it’s a fairly typical, though impressively constructed Bethesda RPG where depth and stability often come at the expense of scope. The surprisingly limited base adventure isn’t so much the draw here, though. The enormous intergalactic playground feels custom-made for modders who want to explore the infinite possibilities of space just as much as Constellation and Bethesda itself.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a massive space-based RPG with a galaxy of content to explore, but it has a surprising lack of ambition.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a pretty good time. It’s basically Fallout 4 in space with some sci-fi and some procedural generation.
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Oct 9, 2023Some would say that the modding scene will solve the game's most glaring problems, and that may be true. But it's still worth noting how many problems there are, and how lots of them managed to escape Bethesda's attention. We'll hope that game will have extensive content support in the future, as was promised by the dev team.
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Edge MagazineOct 5, 2023In spite of these shortcomings, Starfield exerts a curious gravitational pull: there is a pleasant mindlessness to it that means it can easily become a black hole for your free time. But if it's not a BAD game, it's an achingly unambitious one, failing in what should be one of the foundational aspects of any space exploration game (see Post Script). True, we've come a long way in six decades. But zoom in on the recent history of games - and that of its maker - and you're forced to concede that we've not covered much distance after all. For Bethesda, this isn't so much a giant leap as barely a small step. [Issue#390, p.112]
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Sep 14, 2023Starfield pairs near-impossible breadth with a classic Bethesda aptitude for systemic physics, magnetic sidequests, and weird vignettes. But in sacrificing direct exploration for the sake of sheer scale, there's nothing to bind it together.
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Sep 12, 2023A disappointingly low-tech space exploration game that relies too much on the legacy of Skyrim and Fallout and lacks the innovation and imagination to do its concept justice.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is far from meeting the expectations it has generated over the years.
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Sep 8, 2023If you’re the kind of person who thinks videogames peaked with Fallout 3's launch version and they’ve required neither evolution nor improvement since, this game is absolutely for you. If you believe Bethesda doesn’t need to exhibit growth as an artistic outlet and hasn’t had to change a thing about the way it’s made games since 2008, I can safely say you’ll adore Starfield because it’s all that a Bethesda game has always been... and literally nothing more...Starfield is a shallow ocean, hiding its lack of creative ambition behind the physical size of a universe that’s minuscule where it counts...In short, it's everything a fan of these games could love.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Aug 31, 2023People who loved the last Fallout games will love Starfield for sure. This is a great RPG open world game with plenty of things to do and it’s also really good in everything Bethesda usually does right, even if it's disappointing on the things that they tried to innovate like planet exploration and starship handling and combat. [Recommended]
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Aug 31, 2023Bethesda took its formula for RPGs, perfected over the years with the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, and deployed it on a scale grander than I have ever seen. I spent 36 hours playing Starfield on an Xbox Series X and completed more than 100 missions, side activities and other jobs. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of the game...It's one of the best games Bethesda has ever developed and easily one of the best games of the year.
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Sep 28, 2023In Starfield, many might see a time-tested, signature charm. Others might see a time-worn, laborious monotony. These are fair perspectives. A game this large is hard to distill into one set of strengths or one set of weaknesses. As in other Bethesda games before it, you’ll likely have to make your own fun here, but in giving us not just a swath of post-apocalyptic terrain or a fantasy realm but an entire galaxy to explore this time, Starfield makes all the flaws and shortcomings of its patchwork world all the more glaring.
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Aug 31, 2023With Starfield, Bethesda has put all of its efforts into exploring the dark, vast corners of outer space. In the process, it has drained a lot of the humanity I was hoping to find in its wake. In trying to do everything, Starfield obfuscates its most compelling mysteries.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield aims to be Bethesda Game Studios' magnum opus: it's compelling, entertaining and familiar: it feels like spending time with a longtime friend. This also means that it is inherently old in its structure and in how its universe reacts to the player. It's a shame that it comes with some unforgivable sins, like how dull the planet explorations is, but you will spend tons of hours in the game nonetheless. [Review in Progress]
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Aug 31, 2023Skyrim was basically a once-in-a-lifetime video game—a zeitgeist-capturing single-player RPG that eventually made its way to multiple game systems across multiple generations. It seems unfair to the breadth of this video game to determine (even after more than two dozen hours of play) if Starfield will live up to that. But it’s impossible to deny that there’s something special here. Maybe something that speaks to humanity’s fascination with space travel? Or maybe not. Starfield may or may not be the most important video game ever made, but it is Skyrim in space, and that’s awesome. [30+ hour impressions]
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Aug 31, 2023Put this all together, and you have a game that doesn’t fundamentally change the formula that Bethesda has built its reputation on. Starfield is another huge experience with an almost overwhelming amount of things to do and see, coupled with some great character development, role-playing features, and so-so action. But it also smooths over many of the rough edges that have defined past releases from the studio while introducing a new theme and narrative that match the grand ambitions that Bethesda has always strived for. War never changes — but it’s a lot more thrilling in space.
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Sep 6, 2023Skyrim and Fallout 4 had a space baby and named it Starfield. As with every child, there’s the hope that it will better its parents as it grows into adulthood, and from the time spent with Starfield, I’d say it’s right up there with Bethesda’s best. I’ve certainly enjoyed what I’ve seen so far and the new setting, but there’s just no getting away from the fact that it has its mother’s eyes and its dad’s nose. [Review in Progress]
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Aug 31, 2023Let us cut to the chase: we were over the moon with Starfield. The number of available quests is remarkable, but the writing’s quality is what truly amazed us. Bethesda has delivered a masterful experience here by intelligently guiding us through the multiple narratives as we discover and explore the universe they have created for us. Even after +100 hours, one can still find a way to keep busy whilst feeling the same exhilarating sensations of the adventure’s kickstart. The expected journey is there, and the space adventure is almost limitless. Unfortunately, exploring on our own is not as exciting as we had hoped. In our opinion, the promises of freedom are only half-fulfilled: yes, one can travel and roam the galaxy, and yes, some rich adventures can be experienced, but space and planetary exploration are barely on a par with games like No Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous. It all depends on what you are expecting for that point, which is definitely there, but sadly lacks depth and possibilities. Starfield encompasses and combines all the studio’s know-how on a highly ambitious game that delivers a stellar experience, but one that needs to be accepted for what it is.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3,626 out of 6232
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Mixed: 488 out of 6232
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Negative: 2,118 out of 6232
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Sep 7, 2023
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Sep 7, 2023
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Sep 7, 2023