In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.


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Most hyped and most let down I've been for a Bethesda title since Skyrim.

Starfield is an incredibly unfortunate game on multiple fronts. It's not a title that can be labeled as "lazy" or "unpassionate" as love and effort oozes from almost every corner of the game from it's shipbuilder to the hundreds of planets you can explore. However, it's also clear that the scope of this game was never going to work with a Bethesda-esque RPG in mind. As a result, the game is incredibly unfocused and the quality of quests vary wildly from moment to moment. A truly special moment will come along every ten hours or so, but you'll end up filling the time between with meaningless and boring adventures that won't stick around in your mind for long.

Finished this game almost purely out of spite and still was somehow disappointed.

This review contains spoilers

What an absolute blast to play! I absolutely enjoyed the main storyline and had so much fun playing the Crimson Fleet faction quest line! The only gripes I have are with the ending/NG+. I highly recommend any RPG fan should play it and I can't wait to see what the mods are like! Hopefully they expand more quest lines.

I wish NG+ had more differences in the multiverse aspect. It didn't change as much as I wanted and I wanted crazier things to happen, like a version of me being the leader of the Crimson Fleet. I felt the ending of the Crimson Fleet should of had more to destroy more of the UC but I had fun for what it was. Also didn't feel like my actions had as many consequences as they should of - like when I got arrested by the Vigilance for killing people, I wiped out the lieutenant and the crew. How did they seem unaffected in Legacy's End seems really confusing.

Objectively speaking this game is fine for what it is but the more I think about it and really absorb it I feel so soured on it, thank christ I didn't pay $70 bucks for this shit because it is not even CLOSE to being worth that much.

When I first beat Starfield's main quest, I thought "that was kinda fun", but the more I really thought about it this might just be my least favorite BGS game. It makes some good steps from Fo4, by all means, but it does too few good steps and just more steps backwards, on top of having a setting that is BORING. The XP system is a grindy slog that makes zero sense whatsoever. Why do I only get 50 xp from a MASTER LOCKPICK? Oh yeah, because this game has NG+ and wants you to replay it 7 times just to get to master level. The perk system is genuinely awful. At first it doesn't seem that bad until you realize just how many basic ass abilities are not only locked behind spending a point in it (you cannot pickpocket or craft low level items by default, you NEED to put points in and grind), but also grinding it to level up. It's busywork on top of even more busywork. Give me the basics to work off, and just let me put more points in it if I wanna do better stuff with it. Fo4 had this right. Here I gotta do these stupid objectives if you wanna level up a certain perk which takes FOREVER.

In general this game loves to waste your time. The ship builder seems cool at first but you eventually realize how limited you are because if you try to have a cool design, you're either gonna cause some error depending on your placement or your shit is gonna be too heavy according to the game (not helping the game BARELY explains the rules of the builder and how it works). Most of the time you're honestly just better off buying or using a pre-made ship because trying to upgrade a better one just becomes a headache. On top of that, fast travelling from system to system is a joke. You can't just do it by default over any distance. If you need to fast travel over a long distance, you need to have a better grav drive on your ship, or else you can only travel so far to one point before having to open up the menu to fast travel AGAIN to where you need to go. WHY DO I NEED TWO LOADING SCREENS IF MY SHIP ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH. STOP WASTING MY TIME. And again, even if you have the money to get a good grav drive, you may as well get fucked, becuase just equipping that in turn of your last one is more then likely gonna fuck up the weight and lock you out. And if you're a stubborn shit like me and just try to use it reguardless, having a heavy ship (but not too heavy that the game forbids me to use it), it makes space combat nearly unbeatable at certain points. Especially later on where enemies have faster, tougher ships with more damaging weapons, you will not stand a chance since your ship goes as slow as shit in normal space and likely will die in two hits if you didn't upgrade anything else. Yes that is my fault but Christ why give me this huge complicated ship builder, encouraging me to be creative when you're gonna force all these rules on me for the sake of balance?? And again, all for the sake of having ONE EXTRA LOADING SCREEN???

The story is just boring. I usually try to look for nuggets of potential even with dry delivery/writing but there's barely anything here. It's the very basics of a modern mid-tier sci-fi adventure you'd see dumped on netflix and see get talked about for a week before everyone moves on. Nothing about this setting clicks with me. Even Elder Scrolls, a series I have always had almost no real connection to, is more interesting then this because it feels more creative. The companions are all feel like carboard personalities that didn't get the development they wanted. The only one I liked was the cowboy dude and even then his companion-specific quest (yknow, usually the thing that gives the characters that development) doesn't do anything for me. I legit don't even remember what happened during it. The only section I found interesting settingwise was exploring old NASA, finding out the story behind the discovery of the grav drives but even then that's only near the very end of the game, so who cares by that point.

The map design feels so bloated too. If this game ditched all the procedurally generated planets and just opted for like 2 or 3 planets with super large maps and tons of things to do it would've been a lot better. And you're gonna want to explore all those planets too because those have the resources you want to craft better stuff. The stuff you already have to grind xp and put a perk point into and do the challenge. It's all a viscous cycle of boredom and wasting time. I don't care if it's "realistic", there's nothing fun to do on these planets. No interesting monsters to fight, no cool caves to explore with anything useful, at the most you'll get these blatantly copy-pasted quests of "Hey we lost our scientist friend can you go find him?" from nameless NPCs that again, only exist to give you SOMETHING to do. You could ignore these and miss NOTHING.

This whole game just feels bloated for the sake of it, with too many cooks in the kitchen for the sake of pleasing investors (for context, only 100 people made skyrim and fallout 4, compared to here with the 400+ people at BGS, PLUS other studios like Arkane for support). It really makes me wonder if BGS is really listening to player feedback. Was the player voice removed because of the blowback they got from fo4? Or because it would've been too much work for all the content they wanted to make? Actually, no, I know that is the case, because they've said before it WAS gonna have a voiced protag again, before not wanting to put in all the effort and instead just recasting the VOs as companions.

This shit is just a slog. I'll replay games like Fo4 because even despite the messy story it feels concise and fun to play, with a focus on stuff. Even fo3 is more fun then this. It's just boring. I really don't have faith in TES6 or FO5 if it's just gonna be like this game (not helping fo5 is probably gonna come out in like 2030 when im dead).