STARFIELD

You can see my play time so obviously I enjoy the game. I tried it on Game Pass, liked it and bought it. I'm not writing this review to try and convince people who don't like it that they are wrong, i'm just going to say why I enjoy it. It's a review pretty much aimed at people looking for so actual information beyond the flood of 5 word Thumbs Down reviews driven by a really bizarre level of hatred towards what in the end is just a game, flooding the site. I've have friends who really enjoy the game and others who didn't and moved on to other things.

For me this is an RPG set the future. It's not a spaceflight sim but has spaceflight and combat elements supported by a cracking ship design system, it's not a space shooter but has a competently done combat system supported by a wide weapon choice and customisation system. And it has all thr rpg elements i look for - i find the character and skill progression system engaging and meaningful in shaping the possible styles of role-play.

It's just a world where i can immerse myself and play a character. It's a world where I meet interesting people - some I love and some I don't. And it's a game with many engaging story lines from the main quest line through to faction and personal stories.

It's a world where I can build outposts, build and fill a home and a world where i can just hang out. It's a world where you take it slow, actually read the dialogue and immerse yourself in the setting. If your game mode is to just end-run the story then there are undoubtedly better games for you.

There are better spaceflight sims, there are better looter shooters, there are better shooters, and there are better story driven games. In fact you can take any game system and mechanic of Starfield and find a game that does that system better. But Starfield takes a whole bunch of games systems, probably implementing them in a 6,7 or 8 out of 10 way but brings it all together in an 8.5/10 package for me.

does it have load screens? Yes of course it does because you can't make a non-instanced galaxy where every succulent plant and sandwich is tracked. Does it have procedurally generated planets? Again - of course it does. Imagine how long it would take to hand-craft a whole planet let alone a galaxy! Could it do with more handcrafted Points Of Interest? Yes it could but the many cities and settlements it has are well-done and being expanded upon.

And it has great mod support allowing me to customise the game further to my tastes via Nexus or The Creation Club, where there are numerous great and free mods.

All in all if you're looking for a good space rpg you should ignore the frankly crazy levels of vitriol directed at this game and try it out for yourself.

ADDENDUM - regarding the Shattered Space dlc. I'm only a few hours in but enjoying it a lot. Again - ignore the guys who say they finished it in two hours. It's an rpg not a race! There's plenty to explore and do other than make a mad dash to the finish line to 'prove' a point. I spent a couple of hours just exploring the opening location.

I like this game but come into it for the sandbox, not the RPG. Starfield is more sanitized than Disney Star Wars, and absolutely nothing interesting goes on in any of the faction questlines. However, the tinkering of ships, making outposts, doing bounties and making your own fun still makes the game worth playing if you look at it with that approach. This is all my opinion of course, take it as you will.

I completed the main Starfield game and the Shattered Space expansion. I played around 240 hours and reached level 82. I would give the game a 3/5 rating. The game was mostly glitch-free. The graphics and audio were fine. The characterization was okay. The scripted main missions were adequate and somewhat interesting. The scripted side missions that I played were, overall, okay. I left a lot of side missions uncompleted.

The problem for me was the procedural generation scenarios on planets. The developers scripted a few dozen scenarios and when you land on the planet, the system would place some of those scenarios on the planet to find. After doing the same scenarios 10-15 times, it became very stale and it killed my desire to explore planets. When I say the "same" scenarios, I mean EXACTLY the same including where all objects and hostiles were placed. So, after a few times, you knew exactly where the next hostile would be. So, it would just be going through the motions.

Although I built a few outposts, I never really found motivation to do so. I collected a lot of credits to spend so I never felt the need to sell resources. The star ship building was difficult and I abandoned that. The ships I obtained by theft or purchase were adequate for completing my missions.

Overall, I mildly enjoyed the game. I believe it was worth the 240+ hours I played. Toward the end, I did feel some desire to play something else. I didn't have high expectations, so I wasn't that disappointed.

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 enjoyable enough. It definitely did not live up to the hype, but still brought me hours of entertainment at the end of the day.
I would rate the game a solid 6/10.

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.

Not a GOTY calibre game by any means, but I felt that it took more than its fair share of criticism and suffered from being closer to average than people expected. This is a competent and enjoyable sci fi RPG, with similar but more advanced gameplay to the first Mass Effect due to generally improved video game mechanics since its own release (unsurprisingly SF's story is nowhere near as good though), where the space flight is a backdrop rather the main mechanic; the focus is very much on the exploring and gunplay, the latter of which is very good I must admit. There is a lot of weight behind each gun and they all handle and feel differently. I'd actually place this as one of the most satisfying set of shooting mechanics I've enjoyed in quite a few years - blasting around with a jet pack firing off a wide variety of weapons does feel very Mandalorian-esque in a positive way, and was the sort of gameplay I was hoping for from the long-cancelled Star Wars 1313. There is a reasonably deep crafting system that will be familiar to veterans of TES and Fallout, but the focus is more on attachments rather than creating weapons from scratch. Resources can be looted, bought, or mined from outposts that you can establish to mine and harvest elements similar to No Man's Sky.

Exploration is enjoyable but over time falls flat due to the lack of the procedural nature of bases, which have only a handful of layouts per base style e.g. military, mining. I found most of the procedural planetary landscape forming is very impressive, rivalling Elite Dangerous and bettering No Man's Sky in this regard (I have not played NMS since the planetary updates though), and even now I still enjoy exploring planets.

Space flight is a fairly shallow mechanic that is not too dissimilar to No Man's Sky, if a touch more deep, but don't expect anything like Elite. I would actually say that SF is the inverse of Elite - where Elite is a set-your-own adventure space sim with a side of ground combat, this is an RPG with a focus on gunplay where space flight is on the side. However I did find the ship building mechanics to be incredibly enjoyable if quite clunky. I found it very rewarding to fight, board and ultimately take over my first C-class ship, A being smallest and C being the current largest, and then upgrade it with new parts (from weapons and shields, to hubs for myself and companions) as my character levelled up and more parts became available at vendors. Being able to gradually turn this ship from a fairly slow but heavy hitting ship into something resembling an advanced corvette or frigate with more crew and a mobile base of operations was incredibly fulfilling. Disabling a ship's engines and then boarding in an often zero-g environment still makes me grin like an idiot, especially when I use a high recoil weapon and which blasts me backwards. I really hope they lean into and expand this mechanic further in future patches or expansions, because I feel it sets the game apart.

I'll mostly skip over the story but it's reasonably standard Bethesda fare, with mostly bland companions; I found most of my enjoyment came from the emergent gameplay and personal stories that come with it, much like Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout. We still get the creepy Bethesda faces in conversations, but Creation Engine 2 is a significant step up from 1 in presentation and graphics across the board.

There have been a number of quality of life patches since I last played at release, chiefly the introduction of a planetary vehicle making exploration much more streamlined in a positive way, and the bizarrely missing-at-release local map making some of the labyrinthian outposts and towns easier to navigate. I would also heavily recommend playing with the legendary crafting mod from either Nexus or (free) on creation club - nothing is more frustrating than looting a weapon or space suit with amazing perks but on a low level item, so being able to recycle them onto something more level appropriate is a huge quality of life improvement.

Overall this is a solid if slightly underwhelming title. I wish the space flight was closer to that of Elite's, but I suspect that this is a limitation of the Creation Engine which has always excelled more around emergent gameplay which I have personally found as satisfying here as I have done since Morrowind. I was particularly surprised by how satisfying and robust the shooting mechanics were, given that Fallout is hit and miss in this regard. I think it is worth picking up on sale if you fancy a space-based, sci-fi sandbox RPG that leans into emergent mechanics.