With a seemingly endless number of places to see and things to do, Starfield felt overwhelming at first. An unusually slow start when compared to BGS prior works and hours of tutorials compounded these feelings, and had me worried that I might not be in it for the long run. I’m so happy to say that despite a slow opening and hours of tutorials, Starfield is truly something to behold.
Storylines and quests are what drive this game, as opposed to the exploration which games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 masterfully use to keep players engaged. That being said, Bethesda has never made a storyline as good as the main quest in this game. Ever. I also don’t think I’ve ever experienced a better New Game + system from any game before Starfield.. To avoid spoilers, I’ll leave it at that, but it truly is a compelling story with themes much deeper than past Bethesda quests, and high stakes. Almost all of the faction quests are of a similar high quality as well. That being said, a lot of the other side quests can get repetitive quick, and most can easily be diluted to “just fetch quests” aside from a few standouts.
Circling back to exploration now, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of players will be disappointed in how Starfield handles arguably one of the biggest aspects of BGS games. Hand-crafted spaces are much fewer and farther between compared to their past titles, and Starfield is only made worse because of it. I think the procedurally-generated planet experiment was cool in theory, but in practice it’s boring. Of course, finding a randomly generated outpost or research tower is fun the first few times, but gets stale quick. Similarly, space exploration is non-existent. You can’t fly from planet to planet like in No Man’s Sky, and there really isn’t much to see except for the occasional encounters with other space-faring people. I really didn’t find this to be too much of a hindrance, though, as to me, being in space was just a transitory period until I got to my next quest marker.
Two things I really loved that I didn’t think I would care for at all was ship building and ship combat. I often found myself completely lost to time while I was tweaking my ships or even building completely new designs. The dogfights in space really are awesome. If you play on Hard or Very Hard, even two enemies can be a challenge, which was very refreshing as enemies on the ground are fairly simple to deal with.
I experienced a fair share of stuttering, screen-freezing, long loading screens, glitches, and straight-up crashes to the dashboard during my time playing, which really did suck. Bethesda is infamous for things like this, which is inexcusable imo. Needless to say, the fact that I had to deal with these issues quite a lot during my 135 hours with the game and STILL think it deserves a 9/10 is a testament to how special this game is to me. I’ve reached NG+10 and have done every Faction quest and main quest at least twice and I don’t see myself putting this game down for a long time.
Storylines and quests are what drive this game, as opposed to the exploration which games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 masterfully use to keep players engaged. That being said, Bethesda has never made a storyline as good as the main quest in this game. Ever. I also don’t think I’ve ever experienced a better New Game + system from any game before Starfield.. To avoid spoilers, I’ll leave it at that, but it truly is a compelling story with themes much deeper than past Bethesda quests, and high stakes. Almost all of the faction quests are of a similar high quality as well. That being said, a lot of the other side quests can get repetitive quick, and most can easily be diluted to “just fetch quests” aside from a few standouts.
Circling back to exploration now, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of players will be disappointed in how Starfield handles arguably one of the biggest aspects of BGS games. Hand-crafted spaces are much fewer and farther between compared to their past titles, and Starfield is only made worse because of it. I think the procedurally-generated planet experiment was cool in theory, but in practice it’s boring. Of course, finding a randomly generated outpost or research tower is fun the first few times, but gets stale quick. Similarly, space exploration is non-existent. You can’t fly from planet to planet like in No Man’s Sky, and there really isn’t much to see except for the occasional encounters with other space-faring people. I really didn’t find this to be too much of a hindrance, though, as to me, being in space was just a transitory period until I got to my next quest marker.
Two things I really loved that I didn’t think I would care for at all was ship building and ship combat. I often found myself completely lost to time while I was tweaking my ships or even building completely new designs. The dogfights in space really are awesome. If you play on Hard or Very Hard, even two enemies can be a challenge, which was very refreshing as enemies on the ground are fairly simple to deal with.
I experienced a fair share of stuttering, screen-freezing, long loading screens, glitches, and straight-up crashes to the dashboard during my time playing, which really did suck. Bethesda is infamous for things like this, which is inexcusable imo. Needless to say, the fact that I had to deal with these issues quite a lot during my 135 hours with the game and STILL think it deserves a 9/10 is a testament to how special this game is to me. I’ve reached NG+10 and have done every Faction quest and main quest at least twice and I don’t see myself putting this game down for a long time.