Starfield is the first RPG game I've played to completion in years, so the fact that it engaged me that much says something for it. This review is detailed, so thank you to any who actually take the time to read it all. To fully explain my rating this review contains some spoilers.
The Good:
-Although not easy to get used to from other space flight simulators, once I got the hang of space flight and combat it was very fun. I wish way more of the game took place in space (see below).
-Ground combat is also fun. There are a lot of weapons, weapon modding is cool, and the guns do what you expect them too. I enjoy combat in this game much more than all previous Bethesda games, easily the biggest win over Skyrim and others (although I miss the unique joy of VATS from Fallout 3).
-An impressive amount of voice dialogue and the acting is great.
-The Skill system is a carryover from previous Bethesda games although it's larger. More specialization available but kind of grindy.
-Once you get the hang of it ship customization is fun and being able to walk around and explore your own ships is just a great thing to do in this game.
-Parts of this game look amazing. Almost photorealistic. The best looking Bethesda game from a purely realism standpoint.
-New Game + (NG+) is handled by the main quest in an original way, and makes narrative sense in the storyline. The first Bethesda game to have a legitimated "explanation" for NG+.
-The music is great. Not varied, but it's pretty great in certain parts of the story. You'll feel like a bada** when you level up.
The not-so-great
-Ship building is fun but the game in vanilla form imposes lots of restrictions on what you can do early on. You won't make that ship you love until you are well into the game. There are also learn pains in building. Expect to spend a lot of time here, not all of it fun.
-Character facial animations are uncanny valley. Just not right.
-They got rid of gore. Boo! When you finish a hideout infiltration it feels like you just left a big slumber party because everyone is so sleepy. D'aww. This game didn't need to go to Fallout or Oblivion extremes but it's so so tame for a "Mature" rated game. It's "barely" MA. Space drugs are why it's MA. Lame.
The Bad
-The worst thing about Starfield by a country mile are the repeating points of interest. There are over 1000 planets you can lend on, but there are only 4-6 major city locations spread over all the systems, some minor city-ish locations, and then there's a set of 30-50 handcrafted points of interest used for enemy hideouts. That."30-50" figure is me being optimistic by the way.
Any time you land on one of those 1000 planets, you'll have the option on most to walk 300-1000 M (meters?) to one of those 30-50 locations . Where you'll encounter a repeating set of enemies, loot, and location lore.
"Wait...aren't planets big? If they are going for realism, wouldn't only having 30-50 points of interest (poi) for each entire planet mean that there's the potential for a lot of repetition?"
Yes.
About 1/3 of your way into the main story your game will really open up and allow you to explore. When this happens you can go on a lot of bounty hunter style quests, and that's where you'll begin to realize the repetitive nature of those places.
I can't oversell how repetitive it gets. You find the same enemies and lore bits in every single hideout of the same layout. Luckily there are other things to do besides loot hunting, but the game needs to fundamentally change how it handles hideouts.
-The story is very uneven at times. There are bits of incredibly engaging story, and a lot of meh or so-so. Too few dialogue options, and the final outcome to each quest only has limited variety, and only in 2 of the faction quest lines. True choice is somewhat an illusion in this game.
-The main quest involves "Multiverse" stuff and that's so Marvel 2019, I'm sort of over that sci-fi troupe. Here we are again. The storytelling feels lazy compared to Skyrim or Fallout, especially the main quest line.
-Way too many faction quests involve "take item or note to another person". There is nothing that happens along the way. You just go there. And since you can fast travel basically everywhere you can usually, after a load screen, just immediately arrive at your destination/delivery location, giving you the impression no time passed at all and you completed the quest in seconds,
-Some quests, too many, can be completed literally in seconds, especially once you know where you are going.
-No city maps. It's almost like Bethesda knew the story was too short so they introduced. / excluded game mechanics just to make the game take longer to complete. For example, getting lost is very possible, especially early on going. Cities are not easy to navigate, dungeons and mines far worse. I hated how a Series X gen game could launch so unfinished to not include an overhead map option or true world map, the ground world map is laughably bad. You use it for fast travel icons only, nothing else.
-Speaking of fast travel, it's way too much of what you do in this game, Almost no travel is seamless. Typical travel in this game, this is 100% real: In New Atlantis, a city walking around, I decide to "travel" to an outpost on the other side of the galaxy. Load game menu, star map, fast travel to my ship, load menu, star map, fast travel to the outpost, load menu, I'm there. There "was" travel to my ship, travel into orbit, warping to other system, system travel to planet orbit, land at outpost, get out of ship, but all of that just became 2 menu loads and 2 loading screens.
-Complete lack of ship travel planet to planet.
-Many other systems that feel very incomplete. Unique ship habitats that have no purpose. Ability to assign companions to outposts who do absolutely nothing. Many instances of fast travel, but you fast travel to just outside the location you wanted to go to, rather than just in it, forcing you to endure yet another load screen. For example, traveling to your main outpost early in the game is 2 load screens for absolutely no reason.
-Load screens! The game loads very fast on Xbox X and about the same on a good PC but there are so many load screens between areas and common places you travel to. But which location has a load screen and which does not is weirdly arbitrary. It really feels like a game engine on its last legs. The worst was a big space battle that included 4 load screens in the middle of it,
Is this game worth buying? Sure. But it feels like 60% of a game.
The Good:
-Although not easy to get used to from other space flight simulators, once I got the hang of space flight and combat it was very fun. I wish way more of the game took place in space (see below).
-Ground combat is also fun. There are a lot of weapons, weapon modding is cool, and the guns do what you expect them too. I enjoy combat in this game much more than all previous Bethesda games, easily the biggest win over Skyrim and others (although I miss the unique joy of VATS from Fallout 3).
-An impressive amount of voice dialogue and the acting is great.
-The Skill system is a carryover from previous Bethesda games although it's larger. More specialization available but kind of grindy.
-Once you get the hang of it ship customization is fun and being able to walk around and explore your own ships is just a great thing to do in this game.
-Parts of this game look amazing. Almost photorealistic. The best looking Bethesda game from a purely realism standpoint.
-New Game + (NG+) is handled by the main quest in an original way, and makes narrative sense in the storyline. The first Bethesda game to have a legitimated "explanation" for NG+.
-The music is great. Not varied, but it's pretty great in certain parts of the story. You'll feel like a bada** when you level up.
The not-so-great
-Ship building is fun but the game in vanilla form imposes lots of restrictions on what you can do early on. You won't make that ship you love until you are well into the game. There are also learn pains in building. Expect to spend a lot of time here, not all of it fun.
-Character facial animations are uncanny valley. Just not right.
-They got rid of gore. Boo! When you finish a hideout infiltration it feels like you just left a big slumber party because everyone is so sleepy. D'aww. This game didn't need to go to Fallout or Oblivion extremes but it's so so tame for a "Mature" rated game. It's "barely" MA. Space drugs are why it's MA. Lame.
The Bad
-The worst thing about Starfield by a country mile are the repeating points of interest. There are over 1000 planets you can lend on, but there are only 4-6 major city locations spread over all the systems, some minor city-ish locations, and then there's a set of 30-50 handcrafted points of interest used for enemy hideouts. That."30-50" figure is me being optimistic by the way.
Any time you land on one of those 1000 planets, you'll have the option on most to walk 300-1000 M (meters?) to one of those 30-50 locations . Where you'll encounter a repeating set of enemies, loot, and location lore.
"Wait...aren't planets big? If they are going for realism, wouldn't only having 30-50 points of interest (poi) for each entire planet mean that there's the potential for a lot of repetition?"
Yes.
About 1/3 of your way into the main story your game will really open up and allow you to explore. When this happens you can go on a lot of bounty hunter style quests, and that's where you'll begin to realize the repetitive nature of those places.
I can't oversell how repetitive it gets. You find the same enemies and lore bits in every single hideout of the same layout. Luckily there are other things to do besides loot hunting, but the game needs to fundamentally change how it handles hideouts.
-The story is very uneven at times. There are bits of incredibly engaging story, and a lot of meh or so-so. Too few dialogue options, and the final outcome to each quest only has limited variety, and only in 2 of the faction quest lines. True choice is somewhat an illusion in this game.
-The main quest involves "Multiverse" stuff and that's so Marvel 2019, I'm sort of over that sci-fi troupe. Here we are again. The storytelling feels lazy compared to Skyrim or Fallout, especially the main quest line.
-Way too many faction quests involve "take item or note to another person". There is nothing that happens along the way. You just go there. And since you can fast travel basically everywhere you can usually, after a load screen, just immediately arrive at your destination/delivery location, giving you the impression no time passed at all and you completed the quest in seconds,
-Some quests, too many, can be completed literally in seconds, especially once you know where you are going.
-No city maps. It's almost like Bethesda knew the story was too short so they introduced. / excluded game mechanics just to make the game take longer to complete. For example, getting lost is very possible, especially early on going. Cities are not easy to navigate, dungeons and mines far worse. I hated how a Series X gen game could launch so unfinished to not include an overhead map option or true world map, the ground world map is laughably bad. You use it for fast travel icons only, nothing else.
-Speaking of fast travel, it's way too much of what you do in this game, Almost no travel is seamless. Typical travel in this game, this is 100% real: In New Atlantis, a city walking around, I decide to "travel" to an outpost on the other side of the galaxy. Load game menu, star map, fast travel to my ship, load menu, star map, fast travel to the outpost, load menu, I'm there. There "was" travel to my ship, travel into orbit, warping to other system, system travel to planet orbit, land at outpost, get out of ship, but all of that just became 2 menu loads and 2 loading screens.
-Complete lack of ship travel planet to planet.
-Many other systems that feel very incomplete. Unique ship habitats that have no purpose. Ability to assign companions to outposts who do absolutely nothing. Many instances of fast travel, but you fast travel to just outside the location you wanted to go to, rather than just in it, forcing you to endure yet another load screen. For example, traveling to your main outpost early in the game is 2 load screens for absolutely no reason.
-Load screens! The game loads very fast on Xbox X and about the same on a good PC but there are so many load screens between areas and common places you travel to. But which location has a load screen and which does not is weirdly arbitrary. It really feels like a game engine on its last legs. The worst was a big space battle that included 4 load screens in the middle of it,
Is this game worth buying? Sure. But it feels like 60% of a game.