STARFIELD

Space is the backdrop, not the playground
With a title like that, you're probably expecting me to say Starfield was disappointing. This could not be further from my true feelings about the game.
To put it bluntly, Starfield's space travel is inferior to No Man's Sky or Elite:Dangerous. If you are looking for a game where you can live in your ship and chill with your crew as you drift towards your next destination, Starfield will not fulfill your dreams. Space is simply used as the backdrop for something much bigger than Bethesda has ever done before. That's not to say space travel isn't important. It is very important! But most of the time, space is used as a means of getting from one planet to another via fast travel/warping.
Space is just a loading screen... or is it?
You might ask "Does anything happen in space, since it's just a loading screen?" The answer is actually yes! Very often! During warps, the game will run a check of your route to see if you would run into any random events. If so, you will be sent out of the loading screen and back into space. You can interact with the random event, or simply begin fast travel again. In my opinion, this simply cuts out all the slow moments of space travel and highlights the fun parts. Although, there is a catch. To trigger the route check, you will have to already be in space. Make sure to take off in your ship whenever you want to fast travel. In the case you forget to do so, random events can still happen but only at the destination of your warp.
The vastness of space and the insane number and variety of planets are the main attraction of Starfield. If you are familiar with Bethesda games, walking and talking is a large majority of your time. This is no different in Starfield, as you explore hundreds of unique locations (not even counting thousands of procedurally generated), and meet all kinds of friendly, not-so-friendly, lunatic, suspicious, and funny characters along your journeys.
RPG is back, but different
Starfield is a game that arguably outshines previous Bethesda titles. The scale is larger, with no sacrifices to the mechanics they've had in the past. In Fallout 4, Bethesda simplified decision-making and the RPG elements in favor of improving the gunplay which leaves the game feeling more like an adventure-shooter than an RPG. Even Skyrim could be argued, with the removal of leveling stats, reduced how much you could create your perfect character to roleplay as. In Starfield, stats/attributes do not come back. But in its place is an interesting return to the RPG roots.
While you don't have stats or attributes in Starfield (such as Strength, Intelligence, Luck, etc), it presents a different way to represent and express the kind of person you want to play as. Your background, chosen traits, leveled skills, and factions you've joined properly and consistently take control of almost every situation the game puts you in.
Skills are another new alternative to stats. New dialogue options will be available based on what skills you choose to level. Sometimes you need to let someone know you're sneakier than other people, or that you have experience in cyber security. People can even recognize if you're a well-trained pilot or gunman.
Who you are matters
In the beginning, I thought this was a mere farce- an illusion. Perhaps they simply placed many opportunities early on, to show off roleplaying elements, to trick me. There's no way I would be able to use my background as a Space Scoundrel or my allegiance with the Crimson Fleet for more than just a couple dialogue options, right?
After completing three major questlines, dozens of side quests, and the main story quest, I've invested more 50 hours into Starfield over four days- an average of 12.5 hours every day. With confidence, I can report that the choices I made at character selection as well as the choices I've made during the game: who I allied with during a side quest, the factions I've decided to pledge allegiance to, the people I've killed or the people I didn't kill. All of these things felt like they mattered in countless dialogue choices. I was never worried that the character I built did not matter- the opportunities jumped at me constantly. Many times I even had to choose between the different things that defined my character in the same interaction.
One moment that really impressed me was that factions are actually consistent in Starfield. In previous Bethesda games, joining a hostile faction did not always guarantee your safety against its members. Some used excuses such as "We may be the same faction, but all of us follow different rules." It was a sad attempt at passing their programming (or lack thereof) for normally hostile NPCs recognizing the player as an ally. In Starfield, this is not the case.
Minor spoilers in this paragraph. On my first playthrough, I joined the Crimson Fleet, the most notorious pirate crew among the stars. In an early mission during the main story, I had to rescue a friend from the Crimson Fleet. I entered their lair where they were holding the hostage, ready to enter a shoot-out. To my extreme but pleasant surprise, none of the pirates shot at me. I could walk up and even begin conversations with some of them. They recognized me as one of their own, and did not blink an eye at either me or my companion. I was able to reach the bottom of the lair without any conflict, and the game even properly acknowledged it. Minor spoilers end here.
The rest of the game? Gunplay, crafting, and more
I started with the space exploration and RPG elements because I believe they are the most controversial and sought-after pieces of information. The rest of the game, though? Almost entirely improved over Fallout 4. The gunplay is chef's kiss (for a Bethesda game). Piloting a ship is reminiscent of No Man's Sky. Ship-building is extensive, but quite easy to start playing around with. The crafting is still simple and satisfying. Much of crafting is still locked behind skills, just like Fallout 4, but Starfield did not feel as difficult to reach as FO4 did. The handcrafted maps are arguably their most detailed and beautiful designs yet.
The balance has been very adequate for me personally. I could feel my character getting stronger, more skilled, but also enemies always provided a decent challenge. Nothing was too easy or too difficult- I never had to change difficulty from Normal mode. I've heard complaints that later on, enemies get very bullet-spongey, but I simply have never had that issue and I mainly used handguns. While there is an enormous variety of skills to pick from, leveling is fast enough where I never felt like I needed to save my skill points (as some skills have requisites to level). If I didn't meet the requirements yet, I simply leveled a different skill and waited for next level to try and improve the other skill.
It's not perfect
It does miss some things their previous games did as well. But it's a Bethesda game through and through. Beautiful environments, fantastic immersion and storytelling. Fulfilling the fantasy of living in another universe, especially in space. Starfield has become a game I'd love to play again and again. Bethesda has restored my trust in them, even after the launch state of FO76 and the reduction of RPG elements in FO4. I look forward to future updates, the DLC, and TES 6. I hope you can play Starfield, come to your own conclusions, and hopefully enjoy the same things I was able to as well.

77hrs in: "finished" starfield.
Now, it has a NG+ mode which is intriguing, so I'm actually still playing it ... but the story actively encourages you to finish it multiple times .. and restart over and over and over, which is ... curious. So I'm onboard.
I'm still on the fence about the title as a whole.
Enjoying it? Yes, very much.
But it's hard to compare to previous titles (such as Fallout4) because I ended up playing those in a heavily modded state, which skews my memory of the raw, unmodded game.
Starfield is currently raw and unmodded. It is an RPG. It's a story. It's not about exploration, space flight, or space trucking. It's an adventure. It has a story and you are a participant.
The Bethesda feel is here in spades, and that includes a clunky interface with awful/useless filters and options (gadamn Bethesda, will you grow up and modernize this already? jesus)
There are some bugs. Even after a year of testing, I have encountered a couple of showstoppers. There are some annoying quirks I am surprised did not get addressed in the 1 year of polish they went through.
I think Bethesda has also backed themselves into a corner with their Creation Engine 2. It's essentially the same architecture as CE #1, with all the same limitations. The concept of 'cells' for building transitions, or area transitions is ... old. So to completely rebuild their engine, but to do so in a way that has a old, outdated architecture was a weird decision that I think will box them in for the decade to come. All of their future games may be "better", but they will all "feel old".
Move into a building? loading screen.
move out? loading screen.
board ship? loading screen.
Take off form the planet? loading screen.
Fly to another system? loading screen.
Fly to another planet? loading screen
Land? loading screen.
Enter the mining facility? loading screen.
Room inside the facility? loading screen.
It ends up feeling very much like a series of interconnected 'cells' where you get to do things before you transition to the next cell.
And in a world where games have demonstrated the ability to transition more smoothly - even invisibly - I question why Bethesda has hung their hat on such an archaic way of doing things.
It makes their largest game yet feel "small".
Blasting across the universe across multiple planetary systems is ... a loading screen. And I'm not talking about the ability to fast travel and skip everything, but simply going from A->B is ... a loading screen. Every time.
There is no planetary exploration and anyone who says otherwise is misguided. Planets are procedurally generated. You land in a cell. That cell has boundaries. That cell will be populated with a very limited set of re-used POIs (One day I got the same POI 3 times).
The novelty of the first exploration morphs into routine as you realize that basically you have landed in a medium sized procedurally generated terrain cell with half a dozen random things throw in it for you to walk to and explore. It feels like a sandbox a dev might make up as a proof of concept.
Want to move a little further 'east' to explore more? take off (loading) click a new area, land (loading) and you get a new cell with a sprinkle of POIs in it. Enjoy.
And far, far, far too much of the 'quest structure' are fetch quests, and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me on that. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too many fetch-style quests. Heck, the main effing story is a fetch quest. Exploring a planet is a fetch quest, where you don't know where anything is and you might spend 2 hrs trying to figure out where that last "1 fauna of 9" is located ... while effing walking everywhere. Te - di - ous.
I have always felt that Bethesda creates great experiences, and even better foundations for modders to go nuts with, and it's the modded experience that really makes it for me.
Here Starfield absolutely and firmly falls into that camp. It is a great foundation for what is to come.
Don't get me wrong, I have been enjoying the experience and I will continue to do so, but I am looking forward to mods buffing out the Bethesda quirks and menu annoyances, and hopefully some reason to build an outpost (because right now there isn't one).
Currently ... I think I will give this a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. Tops.

Starfield has a slow start but when you get into it, its as fun as any other Bethesda RPG. I'm about 40 hours in as I write this and i had 0 crashes and minimum of bugs. Those bugs were mostly funny than annoying, and none of them were game breaking. Loading screens were a bit of a let down but I got used to them too. The thing I have to say is most annoying to me is the surface map.. I get that, you can't have detailed map on every planet, but at least the major Cities could have it. Most of the time I roam around the City for a long time before I find what I look for. I hope City maps get added, if not by Bethesda then by some modders. Overall, great game that will definetly get better in the future, with help of Community or Bethesda itself.

If your video card is struggling with this game I found a video on the tube of you "Starfield on RTX 2060 6GB!" that gave my own GTX1080 an 8-10fps increase on the default high preset (in New Atlantis) while improving the look:
Setting shadow quality to low, reflections and volumetric lighting to mid, and turning down motion blur let me turn everything else up to ultra or high, and most importantly dial up the resolution scaling from the blurry default 62% to a much crisper 80% (62% was too low res to see high quality shadows anyway). Clearer and higher fps.
Actual review:
Starfield is a scifi melting pot combining aspects of NMS, cyberpunk games, mass effect, skyrim and space westerns, while being none of those and staying very much as Bethesda as it gets, complete with companions, scattered books, nifty architecture and beautiful vistas that somehow occasionally look slightly last gen while requiring next gen hardware ;)
  
In my 30 hours so far aside from space mining, outpost and ship building which I've hardly looked at yet, I've explored plenty of spaceship and space station interiors (you can board ships during space combat and fight the crew to take over the ship). I've gone on corporate espionage quests with moral hijinks. I spent an evening traveling between outposts on one planet, with mountainous grasslands rising above forested valleys containing giant egg shaped trees and massive insect species fighting each other, and still found surprises here and there. The cities are divided into wealthy, working class and poor areas with their own lore and character backstories and I've only begun to dig into them. It feels like I've just scratched the surface--there is a lot more to see and do. Also to hear: the music is good, sort of like the more ambient tracks in Skyrim.
Now that I'm farther in and have sorted out the settings, I'm not really having optimization problems so much. As I've gotten further into it and pulled into the lengthy side quests I can say that this is easily becoming one of my favorite outings from Bethesda

Just started replaying it, after waiting a while to get some more QoL features into the game compared to its release state. It's in a lot of better state, it's to the point where i can recommend it.
IMO Only one mod that's basically mandatory now - StarUI (Good Sort / Filtering of the inventory... that can get quite darn large)
For a bethesda softworks title its unusually stable, over 150+ hrs and zero crashes

Starfield is recommended but with caveats. The main story is based on the concept of nihilism. If you 'live your best life' hurting other and reaping rewards, another universe balances that out with good. If you choose sacrifice, then another universe does the best life options. It all balances out. In this, the game is empty and void of anything meaningful, as nihilism is the concept that it doesn't really matter anyways.
The worst part of the game is the main story and main companions. They are a team of narcissists that operate based on feelings in the guise of science and exploration. Companions go from being aggressively attempting to romance your character to aggressively judging your character based on your actions and their feelings. This contradicts the main story, but the companions constantly contradict themselves with their dislike and like patterns and their own behavior.
The game play is relatively trouble free, but overall the mechanics and game play is simplistic. The combat is fun. The space craft is also enjoyable but buggy and relatively limited. The outposts are very buggy and inconsistent, requiring workarounds often. Owning a home in the game is possible, and I have many homes in my first play through. Homes are worthless, however, and are more of a trophy than anything meaningful or useful. Decorations through the build menu are the only ones that last, but items put in decorations and decorating outside of the build options is hit or miss if they go missing or fall through the game world or on the floor.
The best part of the game comes in side quests and ship combat. I especially liked the Crimson Fleet/SysDef quest, the only real epic space battle in the game. Nothing even came close. There are a couple of other decent quest chains, but equally several that are abysmal. In all, it is hit or miss, but with something for everyone. There is even a lawyer/court drama that the character can play out, if you like that kind of thing.
The dialogue is often suggesting of modern day politics, but that is unavoidable in today's environment. It is easily ignored or skipped if the dialogue is too annoying. There are some very preachy quests, however, that will appeal to some and be revolting to others. There is a significant representation to 'diversity' of sexual behavior. This seems to have been a priority to the developers.
In short, the game will truly hold its value with mods and possibly DLC. In itself, I almost refunded the game initially, but am glad that I did not. There is a good framework, though tedious through the old school design of loading and outdated menu designs. There is also a massive lack of features that were in prior Bethesda games, which will probably be modded and/or brought in via DLC. Time will tell. I recommend the game, but do not expect a work of art. This is a framework of something that can be much better and I expect will be.

First off, I don't plan to buy any Creation content. This isn't anything against the people who work hard on mods and content as they do amazing work. I just don't see the need to do it. I also do not agree with how Tracker's Alliance Patch and Creation Content we handled. I feel they should of just had them all as a DLC option and packaged together into one item for the DLC. I do appreciate them adding stuff in as free patches, but DLC would have been better for that particular line item.

So, for me personally, and this is not something everyone will feel, but I have been having a blast with basic Vanilla Starfield. No, I am not some Bethesda fanboy who gets hyped up by everything they do. Yes, I do enjoy playing their games, but its because the style of gameplay that they lean to that works for me, and it doesn't bother me much. I enjoy 1st person RPGs and shooters, I like looting almost everything that I think will get me more in-game currency so I can buy better weapons and armor if they are available. I like customizing my home/ship. I like exploring and seeing what I can find and what I can see happen.

Alright, on the stuff I am always seeing people complaining about. The Temple Puzzles, the repetition of places in the maps, or the "lack of content", first off, there is a lot of content, and yes, a lot of it repeats. To me though its not all too different from shooting a gun in a game or punching things depending on your playstyle, you will constantly do those. I am not bothered so much by these except for the repetition of the same layouts out and inside of points of interest. And here is why.

The Temples are only confusing at first when you don't know how they work, but once you know what is going on they are extremely easy. You see spinning glowing star points about the size of your character, you float and boostpack into them. Sometimes they vanish because of timing out but then you just look around and find/go through the next one that pops up.

The repetitive locations isn't too much of an issue for me when it comes to bases and their layouts. The main gripe I have is with the enemy location placements inside them and how you see the same exact old corpse bodies and text based documents placed around.

Now one thing that isn't mentioned much by people which I do feel was a missed opportunity was being able to either Craft your own weapons, or upgrade the base ranking of your weapons or armor. They don't rank up with you. An example of what I would like is to be able to go to a workbench and make your weapon ranking go from Advanced up to Superior. What made me initially think about these, was finding a legendary weapon with some abilities I liked, but they had really low damage and did not feel worth holding onto because they were ranked lower than my non-modded advanced ranked gun.

For me, these are all the bigger issues that I had with the game. Yes there was some other stuff but for me these were the top ones. And even with all of these, I really am enjoying and liking the game a lot. If my time played of 755 hours hasn't tipped you off by this point. I started playing the game about a week after launch and have been putting in time for the game on and off every week when I feel I can without distrupting life much. The randomly generated maps every time you land in a new location do add a lot of variance to the game and the fact that every planet and moon has this is also a boon. If I can I will be adding more to my review when I can, If I can't. I hope that you will at least give the game a try, either on gamepass or buy it if you want to give it that chance, or watch a playthrough or something to save the money first in order to determine your own opinion about the game.