STARFIELD

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

It was exactly what I was expecting from a Bethesda game.

Could Starfield have been better? Absolutely. Did they cut corners? Yes.
But is it truly awful? In my opinion, no.

I think one of the main issues is that people want Starfield to have the tech from games such as Star Citizen and No Mans Sky. The former has been in development for 10 years with no release in sight and the latter was truly awful at launch in which they successfully turned it around, which took 5+ years.

I still enjoyed what I played. Both through Game Pass and on Steam. I think this game does have legs still and hopefully with more additive updates it will continue to grow.

The main issue I have with the game is the spaceflight travel. I am not asking for seamless transitions but immersive transitions. The black loading screen between jumps is jarring. Change it to white and the immersion increases greatly. An animated loading screen even more so. Just this extra work would greatly benefit the game's immersion. Having used the creation kit I can understand how the world spaces are put together, but the limited square maps on planets are immersion breaking. I think a reload of the cell would be preferable to a 'turn around message'.

Just an Idea...The game supports screenshots as loading screens, could a screenshot of the player screen (at the map boundary) be injected into the load screen while the new cell is loading. Probably.

I have also learnt the Modding tools which is a Positive for me personally. I have found great enjoyment creating some new places to explore, a new quest line and I hope to release my mod soon. However the quality control on the Creations Store is abysmal. The pricing needs to be reviewed and Bethesda's own content should be held to the highest critique for their pricing.

Thanks for reading.

So I finished the game at launch with like 50-60 hours in it. It was enjoyable but I don't think it really grabbed me at the time. Maybe I was suckered into the negative press around it. I'm not sure. I did buy the premium edition which came with the DLC though, so I was always going to pick it back up.

Over the last few months, I had a few flirtations with Fallout New Vegas, a bit of Fallout 4 and more recently Fallout London. The whole time, I was like: "Damn, I kinda miss the polish of Starfield". Which is crazy for someone to say about a Bethesda game honestly.

I started reading The Expanse books recently, and I was really feeling a Space game with good shooting, so I loaded up Starfield, chucked some cool mods on and I have nearly finished my first NG+ before the DLC drops.

Since this second playthrough, I have really felt enraptured. I felt like the first time I played through New Vegas or Skyrim. The first playthrough, I kinda rushed through, ignoring some dialogue etc but this time I am exploring and doing my best to eek out all of the secrets. Because there is a lot of really cool shit in this game.

Firstly, It is stunning. The vistas you see, the great expanse of space and stars, the moons and planets you explore. All gorgeous. The story is good, the factions are interesting and the game actually only really starts in NG+ if you ask me. That's when it really opens up (for reasons, I will not spoil). I also love the science of it, the technology, the weaponry, the ships. All super cool and honestly all 12 year old Sci-Fi nerd me would ever want in a game.

The musical score is fantastic. Many times I was reminded of exploring Skyrim as a teenager. The soft ambient music playing in the background as I explore a new planet, gives the same vibes I got from exploring a crypt of Draugr. The voice acting is all pretty good. The alien designs are varied and unique. Some, like the Terrormorphs are downright frightening, some are more cute.

Let's not forget the QoL and bug fixes that have been put into the game in the year since it's launch. Whilst I still get the odd crash and bug. It is so much better than my first play through. Also the addition of the Rev-8 vehicle is very welcome, as crossing planets on foot/boostpack was quite tedious.

Honestly, I think the game is overhated. The problem goes across gaming as a whole right now. Everyone has super high expectations that every game has to be the most perfect game that takes all the best bits of every game, We were always going to get Elder Scrolls/Fallout in space. There was always going to be a loading screen when you enter somewhere because it is the same formula, as the others. Whether other games do differently or not. There is always going to be some bugs, it's a Bethesda game. We weren't this critical when Skyrim came out. And that was one of the buggiest games ever at launch (especially on the PS3).

People want New Vegas Story, with COD shooting, no "woke" agendas and NMS ship piloting. People want a mythical chimera of a game made of the best parts of every game ever made,.It's not going to happen. I think once I adjusted my expectation and learned to enjoy the game for what it was. I was honestly floored by it

It got such a bad rap at launch but I think it is because of where we are in the games industry. If this came out in 2011, I am so confident it would go down as one of the greatest games of all time. Just like Skyrim before it.

I implore you to play this game if you haven't already. Remove your expectations. Ignore what has been said online. Just dive in and enjoy it. If you have played a bit at launch and went off it. Give it another go. I genuinely think this game will surprise you.