Starfield

Game is what ive been waiting for, The amount of detail in areas is amazing, planets do have life and npc's walking around, lots of reviewers are going to barren plants just to complain, don't listen to them if like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 or 4 and have any fascination about space give it a try, just remember its not a space sim and it never claim to be - it has its small bugs here and there but that a Bethesda game at heart and there mostly with npcs -- 10/10

-No DLSS/Ray Tracing
-Graphics look worse than Fall out 4
-Low framerate despite aforementioned mediocre graphics even with a powerful GPU
-Planets look repetitive and unattractive
-No smooth transitions between space and planetary flight like in No Man's Sky
-Cities are often very simplistic and ugly
-Basebuilding is uninteresting and brings nothing new to the table
-Exploration is not at all incentivized with travel mostly consisting of fast travelling between the surface of planets

+Shipbuilding system is interesting and allows for a lot of freedom
+Combat and space combat feels OK
+Interior of spaceships is nicely crafted

Overall this looks like a Skyrim/Fallout 4 mod which feels like an uninspiring mix of No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk. Painfully mediocre for what it was advertised to be, I don't recommend buying it for more than 20-30 eur during sales.

They really did not playtest the post mainquest stuff, it's repeating the same quest over and over again with 0 variation and waiting on one NPC to finish an animation of getting a book out before you can talk to him.

There's also a system similar to the dragon shouts that they dont give you proper descriptions for.

Wait for some QOL mods before buying.

GOTY for me. It has a nice warm seat next to Skyrim in my heart.

I get why people are mad, but they're missing the point. Bethesda games have always been terrible technically, but what they give in literally every other regard is why they're so good.
Rating Skyrim on its tech means it scores a low 2/10 - rating it on it's freedom, exploration, worlds, details, etc is what made it the Goliath it is today. Starfield is the next iteration of that.

IMO, I like the lack of space travel for a reason I never considered. It shows just how unnecessary it is.
Travelling between planets sounds fun but space is empty nothingness. Like in No Man's Sky. Get quest, taking off, flying for 5 minutes, landing, walking, taking off, flying for 5 minutes, landing, handing quest in; repeat - every single time for every single segment of every single quest. It's monumentally boring.
Starfield has the perfect balance, I never felt like I was being pulled from the moment. I can see why some may think it's a glorified "fast travel sim", but I'd take that over mindless "press X to wait sim".

It has quirks and I wish Bethesda got rid of the Netimmerse engine, but that pales and drops to a singularity in the face of everything else; the stories, worlds, immersion, exploration, details, style, freedom, everything.

CBD score 8/10

I have to say, I have been fully addicted to this for the 5 day early play.
It's been a fully enjoyable journey & I know there is more to see.

Cons:
*While the 1st person view is smooth the 3rd feels like it was built afterwards leading to that typical 3rd person feel when built onto a 1st person game.
*It has a lot of systems that haven't changed from skyrim (more of a haha than a con but you'll see them)
*Space flight isn't as free as you would of hoped. Whilst the dog-fighting works well you have 2x speeds in space. Standard thruster speed for fighting & grav drive jump, there is no high speed engine to fly around the solar system or even off/on planets. The game as a whole though flows well once you get used to it.
*To be fair I found the character creator a downgrade from recent games like Neoh 2, Wo-long & Wild Hearts where I could easily get the face right. I found getting my character look to be quite hard & still couldn't get there with lot's of sliders & dials that do not allot of much but maybe it's just something that will need experience to get the fine tuning right.

Pro/Con?:
*Those who don't like navigating a world without a map or mini map you will have neither here, you will get lost & have to find your way. Saying this though you can always pull out your scanner & it will give you some ground directional arrows to get you in the right direction. (Wasn't sure pro or con as I can see it being hated by some & loved by others so this it the Marmite/Bovril of the game.

Pros:
*Huge & beautiful. The mixture of pure handcrafted content & procedural is something to behold & a new thing I think more game dev's will end up following.
*The shooting & looting, thieving/pick-pocketing is the very same feel from Skyrim but now the enemy have guns & grenades.
*The characters, story, communications & animations have all led to a great experience, not found any floating eyes or anything yet but it doesn't mean there not out there, it's a big adventure area.
*The available galaxy & planets is beautiful to get fully lost in. Yes there is lot's of nothing but there are way more things to do than story.
*The ship & outpost builders are well done if they do take a little bit to get used to.
*The procedural quest's from the boards fill out very well making sure there's always some random no story quests available for farming your skill's & mat's.

Overview:
This game universe is built so well & I'm looking forward to immersing myself into it.
I would fully recommend this game even at full price, but of course if you get a deal then your the lucky one.

I don't understand why Bethesda release a game that requires a nasa super computer to play but with graphics from the early 2010's. The performance and optimisation is awful, already spent 2 hours trying to make it so the game can keep 60fps on a 2080ti.

Amazing game that is filled to the brim with content and exploration that keeps growing as you play with the chance of infinite game play thanks to how the new game+ system works (Don't look up how new game+ works, it's a story spoiler). Probably the most polished and refined bethesda game to date and with my playthrough i experience 1 visual bug and 1 crash (happened when i tabbed out so half my fault). full 30~40 hour main quest with 4 side faction quest and tons of planets mass to be explored. The planet exploration is semi-fluff and can fell drab to the procedural generated nature of planet poi and random encounters.

I pre-ordered Starfield in early July
From first to third September I watched streams and decided to make refund
Fourth September I downloaded pirate game, and played it myself
Fifth September I pre-ordered Starfield again (::clownsmile)
And I don't regret about it
The game is worthy, interesting, truly huge
There are certain disadvantages, such as lack of full-fledged Space, as in Elite Dangerous, or locations made from modules, and therefore a lot of loading screens, and a little bit Bethesda's like enviroment. For that I give the game 7/10. But why players had high expectations when it was announced for several more years that would have the old skyrim's engine at game - I do not know
But other than that, it's an Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout level game, each of which is good in its own way. Looks good and Starfield

Amazing fun.

They also worked on QoL a lot and took lessons from other games so you can easily skip boring repetetive actions and stay focused on funny stuff.

Also, no showstopper bugs are present.

Absolutely a long term commitment game, in a solid good way. Having a blast. I've had a single quest bug so far, nothing else. I'll be playing this one for years, and with future mods sure to come, many more years.

43 Hours in and I do not see myself slowing down anytime soon. Beware the Shipbuilding mechanics, first time I went in to "just make a minor adjustment to cargo space" I finally got out of that system 2 hours later and my ship was now double in size. Ugh. There is tons of quests aside from the main story quest, I have been working with the Crimson Fleet for a while as well as slowing pushing the main quest line along. Thinking of doing the Freestar Rangers quest line (free ship!!). You will also get quests just by overhearing snippets of conversation as you are running around. I have been loving this game from the first moments of stepping into this world.

It's a very enjoyable game. Contrary to expectations, it did not turn out to be very buggy. Fights are a bit lacking. The RPG side is top notch. Everyone can play in their own style, there are lots of things to do. A game that can be played for hundreds of hours.

It is everything I was hoping for and more.

With Bethesda's support for following up with enjoyable DLC's for their games, I'm looking forward to seeing how the universe will be expanded upon.

I'm also looking forward to their modding support, and the cool content that the community makes to even further augment the experience.

I am enjoing it quite a bit. Big BGS fan so I went it knowing what to expect exactly (fallout in space) and that what I got. The beginning is very slow as I feel the game doesnt come into its own until you are 10-12 hrs in. Ive taken a break from the main quest now that Ive leveled and have a good ship. Side quests are fun and varied. You can get them just walking around cities. Im pretty happy so far.

Since its a bgs game I cant wait to see the mods in 4-6 months and what they will do.

Basically if you loved Skyrim and FO4 you will Love the game. If you expect No mans sky you will be dissapointed.

One of Bethesda's best ever, potentially one of the best RPGs ever, depending on how the next few hundred hours go. No bugs to speak of other than the usual massive open world game jank, but suprisingly very infrequent and never even bothersome, more funny stuff happening that anything else. I was worried about procedural generation and space combat at first, but there is so much handcrafted content packed onto the generated tiles that you would swear it was hand made. As a bonus to this already incredible experience, I cannot wait to see what people do with mods, being able to create entire planets/solar systems. Do not miss this one.

9-9.5/10

Pros
+ Bethesda's signature handcrafted environments/dungeons
+ Graphics are much better than I expected
+ ID software's contributions to the gunplay are obvious, leagues ahead of fallout, but still not 10/10 amazing
+ Physics seem much better
+ Endless amount of content to get through, most of which has been very interesting so far
+ Ship combat/customisation after being tedious for the first few hours have become amazing
+ Space exploration is actually super fun, many very cool unique dungeons/encounters there, do not skip it
like I was at first
+ Cities and even the game universe seem alive and actually connected, thing happen and go on without
you, little interactions will come back up 10+ hours later when you least expect it

Cons
- The odd bug/graphical glitch/Bethesda patented weird AI interactions in cities
- Enemy AI is lacking at times
- The map system is just okay, nowhere near as bad as reviews have stated but still not great
- No fast travel when encumbered means dropping/passing on loot that I would like to keep sometimes

I absolutely LOVE this game! The longer you play the better it gets so be patient.

The start of the game can be a little jarring. You're thrust into this story and you don't really get your hand held too much at all, you have to figure a lot of things out for yourself. For some, this may be a turn off, but for me I love it. It let me take in the sights more than running to the next blue quest objective.

At first I was not such a fan of space because it felt like a cheap knock-off, but the longer you play the more you'll realize why they did it the way they did. You will be traveling A LOT! To have constantly navigate, fly, land etc you'd never have time for anything else. The game is HUGE!

Performance will vary according to your rig. My gpu is grossly outdated but it still runs the game fine with some tweaks. Even with lower graphic settings the game still looks great. A far cry from the way games 15 years looked. I've only experienced one crash, I tend to hang zoning into Mars from my ship or the city (it clears on its own, just slow), and a few oddly placed crates floating in the air or humans spinning off into space off in the distance...definitely not a bug ridden mess like most Bethesda games are at release, so bravo guys!

I completely no life'd the game during early release and clocked in 73.8 hours (so gross) and I enjoyed literally every moment of it! I only made it to level 20 in all that time. Exploration, reading lore, talking to NPCs etc took up a lot of my time. I've only been doing the main story for the last day or so.

The first thing I'll criticize is the art. The characters are the ugliest Bethesda has managed yet and that's coming from their last game in an apocalyptic wasteland where bathing is optional. I don't know how but the ugly Bethesda faces mixed with the mismatching hair and ridiculously bulky future clothes have made the characters so awkward looking that any settlement is impossible to take seriously. There's no real strong tone or theme to any of the visuals in this game and it feels like a dozen different things shoved into the game that all just fight each other. Bethesda seriously needs to clean house in their art department. The animations also seem unchanged from Fallout 4.

The gameplay is just dull. The open world is incredibly disconnected because of the loading screens and space, leaving the game feeling less suited for exploration than past Bethesda games despite the universe being larger. The combat is just Fallout 4 but because there's more downtime in between areas the game just gets boring. Going to a planet and just scanning things for no real reason, 10 XP out of 1500, and then shooting a rock with a laser is not good gameplay.

The guns all feel fairly similar to what you expect from Fallout 4, there's a mod that makes the weapon automatic, mods to add a new sight, barrel mods, etc. Nothing really new from what I've seen so far. The armour stuff is a downgrade from Fallout 4 because there's even fewer pieces than either and they're frankly just bulky and ugly spacesuits. That's the nature of being in space but there's been little variety so far. The NPC's in this game also behave far simpler than past Bethesda games, they seem to lack schedules and just wander around doing canned animations instead of having homes and tasks with time cycles. This helps the game feel even more dead as the towns are just empty husks with stores.

The ship construction might be neat but everything involving the ship is just bad. The ship combat is terrible, flying around in space feels incredibly simply and the ship combat is extremely repetitive, 3 ships jump in and shoot at you as you pick them off. The first ship you damage boosts away and you shoot the other 2 and kill them and then switch back to the first ship as it returns. This exact scenario has happened at least a dozen times so far for me.

Overall, this game is just boring. The downtime that might be filled with exploration, walking into a random cave, or just looking at things in past games like Skyrim is replaced by looking at a menu before you load into a planet. There's no way to fill the downtime with any sort of role playing, like camping in Skyrim, because of the nature of Starfield being driven from loading through menus. You will spend your game looking at poorly conceived menus that require clicking and holding on things or unnecessary scrolling so that they can have the same UI on a TV that's 15 feet away so it requires huge text or a monitor a foot from your face.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☑ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

Despite having a decent pc the game simply doesn't run. Constant crashes, freezing, audio cutouts, the starting mission not working on the 7th retry. The ship not loading in, the ship loading in then not being accessible. Im willing to accept the comical bethesda character bugs but the game being unplayable is giving some serious 76 flashbacks.

Starfield is a Bethesda RPG through and through. I've been around since Elder Scrolls I: Arena. I've played them all. I've loved them all. Starfield is more polished at launch than any other they've ever released, but if you're expecting Elite Dangerous or even No Man's Sky, then you may be disappointed. But if you expect a Bethesda style RPG, there is SO MUCH good here.

The main story is solid, but not earth shattering...but again, this is a Bethesda RPG. The star of the show is always the side quests, the random encounters, losing an hour (or three) decorating your house/ship/outpost, and collecting random things (not me collecting dozens of plush dolls and piling them in the corner of my spaceship).

It's a little inaccurate to say that Bethesda creates games. They create worlds where we can escape our daily grind. We can do what we want. We can play how we want. Soon, we'll be able to mod in what we want. And we can just step into that world and just be.

Most of the negatives I've seen are people who are playing a game that they didn't expect. But if you just play the game that is front of you, it's a very, very good game. But if you step into the world in front of you instead of just trying to play it, I think you'll find something incredibly special.

So, here we are. The first new Bethesda title in ages. Is there anything groundbreaking or mindblowing after 10 hours of game time? Not really. The game works like any other Bethesda title with action and shooting generally in mind, namely Fallout 3 and onwards, but with some QOL improvments here and there.

But since it follows the similar formula as the other Bethesda titles, Is it a bad game, though? No, it is actually fairly enjoyable. Basically, its Fallout but in space. And you have a cool space ship, which so far (at least for me) has been the most enjoyable part of the game, and it also seems you can actually explore all the planets in the game, but it would be cool to fly more in space. Flying in space only seems to include space combat and docking to some stations and thats about it. Was hoping to actually fly on the planets and land on them and such but, oh well, im sure some modder will do that soon.

Some pros from first 30h:
Followers can actually jump(Imagine that). They can also join a conversation with another NPC or react to them so now they are not just an empty shells walking with you.
Dialogue UI is improved, however it would be nice to choose the options with numbers or numpad.
I have not yet encountered the same voice actor twice (besides basic enemies and their screams), which is a rare occurence in Bethesda titles.
Story has been interesting but nothing mind blowing, we'll see where it goes.
Gunplay is solid and fun.
As always; The exploration is wast and there is so much things to find and do, which is one of the key components of Bethesda RPG's.
Space has a lot of cool stuff, can't wait to search for more.
Flying the ship is fun. You can do more with it than just shoot and move around. Theres shield management, Engine speed, gunfire powers etc. Plus you can customize the ship as well.

Cons:
Menus can be a bit tricky since you have dozens of them, but I got used to them after a few hours.
Side missions been classic no-brainer stuff so far, hope they get better later on.
Melee combat is sticky for now. Sometimes the first attack doesn't do an animation (still hits though), or sometimes it just does execute the command when you take out your melee weapon.
Sometimes when you try to shoot an enemy when they are behind cover and you think you can shoot them since you can see their head or back or whatever, it just hits the corner or misses.
Lightning is a bit of bit off sometimes, things/people look overexposed.
More flying with the ship in space would be cool, now its like I said; Ship combat and docking to space ports.

Its nice to have a new Scifi RPG, since the last one I really liked was the Mass Effect Trilogy.
Overall fun experience so far. If you like Fallout or Elder Scrolls titles, you'll probably like this one too.

Bethesda pulled it off when Microsoft really needed it. The game has been nothing but fantastic for me so far and I love being able to explore new plants/systems. I flew to a small star system and got a random distress call from one of the plants. This lead to over an hour side quest with wasn’t just some fetch quest but a variety of different aspects all in this mission from clearing out a base to surviving waves of enemies!

Very disappointed. Skyrim in space but not fun. You spend hours walking extremely slowly over endless boring landscapes. If you run, you quickly run out of oxygen. The gunplay is terrible and the AI opponents are stupid. Endless boring dialog and boring missions like: got to this planet and talk to this guy. Not go somewhere else and talk to that guy. 90% of space flight is going from the close orbit of one planet to the other. The woke garbage is also unwelcome. The interface is terrible and I have spent hours trying to upgrade my ship unsuccessfully. Don't believe they hype. This game blows.

I know, I know. I've got less than five hours of game time logged.

However, the more I play, the less I notice things that I would consider "little". I'm pretty loyal to Bethesda so this review will probably be riddled with biases, but honestly, things like slow performance and no gamma slider don't really bother me, because the game literally came online less than 24 hours ago at the time I'm writing this. I expect this game will be a lot like Kerbal Space Program 2 in that there are a lot of bugs and performance issues, but they'll be worked out over time with patches and updates. So with the larger picture in mind, I'm willing to play the crap out of this game.

As I said, I haven't played much at all, but I'm willing to wait to see what vast improvements the devs will release over time. So far, the graphics are pretty great and the performance, though laggy at points and with a slightly irritating degree of frequency, isn't awful. I imagine I'll update my review as time passes.

Wow what a game, the best RPG I have played yet! Depth, character development, exploration, crafting is amazing. So many quests, so many options outside of the main quest-line it is truly incredible. Some things could be tweaked to improve like the ability to open a door when the scanner is out, but overall that doesn't detract from the supreme play-ability of this game. The skills tree makes meaningful changes to the game, they aren't just there as a filler and some of them are very worthwhile, in particular persuasion! also Lockpicking which can really help with routing and looting. Some have complained about the fast travel options but honestly you need it otherwise you would spend way too much time travelling and the game already uses an incredible number of hours. Be careful with your choices, some have real meaningful ways of changing the game significantly, no spoilers, but choose who you defend when the lodge is invaded carefully, it will have an impact on your romance options in future!

I wholeheartedly recommend you buy this game if you love RPG's especially Fallout as this is similar but a whole lot better. Well done Bethesda!

First and foremost - Starfield is not a space exploration simulator (eg No Man's Sky, Elite, Star Citizen) and if you are searching for this experience in Starfield you will not find it. This is not how it was advertised but it seems a lot of people got it into their head that it was.

Starfield is a great Bethesda RPG. The main story is fantastic, the factions are fun and interesting, the world is full of stuff to do, the music is stunning, and the combat is immensely improved over past titles.

The gunplay feels a lot closer to Destiny gunplay (large praise) than it does to Fallout combat (which I have historically despised). There is no VATS or similar - its not needed as the game feels like an actual shooter. There is some awkward hit detection bugs sometimes, its not super often but it is worth mentioning. Hopefully some of the hit detection improves via patches and future updates.

Base building/outposts are back and better than ever. You can make decent money if you properly utilize your outposts and the trade routes between them. This is one of the few areas I haven't delved too deeply into yet, as I've been engaged with the factions and main quests mostly but I am looking forward to spending more time with this.

Space travel is mostly fast travel. There is space combat but you're not going to fly manually from one system to the next. This ties into the expectations about Starfield being a space sim game. It's not.

In conclusion, if you enjoy Bethesda RPGs (Elder Scrolls, Fallout, etc) you will likely enjoy Starfield. The game follows a very similar format to many of their successful RPGs of the past. The only valid complaint about this format that I can see is the abundance of loading screens, but this is unlikely to change while Bethesda uses the Creation Engine. It's a trade off, and one that Bethesda fans are probably fine with. I know that I am. The loading screens are short, even if they're often. If you hate Bethesda games, you probably won't like Starfield. If you haven't played Bethesda RPGs before, you should enjoy Starfield as long as you like story based, western RPGs.

I personally give Starfield a 9/10, and this doesn't even include the massive potential that the game has via the modding community. I highly recommend giving this game a try.

I will start by saying that I am not a space/sci-fi game person and I am most certainly not an FPS kind of person. I bought this game because it was made by the company that made the Elder Scrolls games, which are some of my favorite games ever, and it was marketed as an RPG in space.

While it does have a few "Bethesda Bugs", it is still one of the best games ever made. There are some complaints about how "slow" the game is, but that is a reflection of size, not poor design. At the time I started writing this (I couldn’t post until after official launch) I was 11 hours in, still on Kreet, and not a single bit bored. I am currently now 62 hours into the game and I can honestly say that I can see myself playing this for many years to come. There is soooo much to do in this game...I hope the coders received good bonuses.

As far as graphics go, they are phenomenal. I have zero issues running it on Ultra with a 3080 in a Ryzen 9 7900X. I am currently running it on High just to save some wear and tear on my GPU (way too expensive to replace nowadays). Even at "just" the High setting, the graphics are sill amazing. Granted, I haven’t made it to Neon yet, so maybe I will see some issues there. I guess I will find out soon enough.

Currently, I only really have three "complaints". The first revolves around the inventory system. I would be nice to have a better sort (i.e. you cannot sort Aid items by how much they heal, or addition attributes that they may have) and a filter system would be nice. The second is in regards to the character creation system. The Refinement options could use some better tool-tips. Also, the hair choices are kind of lacking...was long hair banned in the future? Finally, the ship-building section of the game needs to have way more informative tool-tips and a way to sort/filter.

Those are minor issues when looking at the game as a whole though. Personally, I think a lot of the negative reviews are from streamers that are used to just jumping into a game and burning through it as quick as possible to get to the next new release.

It starts out kind of slow, but that is actually a good thing. There are a whole lot of of mechanics involved in this game. While getting to know them can be frustrating, chances are you will lean to like them once you get the hang of them. My advice is to take the game slow and enjoy all the work the dev team put into creating this game...the level of detail is insane.

Oh, and when you are exploring abandoned buildings don’t forget to look up; there are tiny little nooks containing loot that you can only get to by jet pack. Check to see if you can open vents as well. This game rewards curiosity.

I'll go ahead and get this comment out of the way:

What this game is: Skyrim, fallout 4, outer worlds, no man's sky, and star citizen all got together and had an orgy.

This game is the result.

Performance: this requires a high end PC. I have a decent rig (3080, i9 12900k, 32 gigs DDR5, NVME gen 4 SSD) and I play at 1440p staying at 60 FPS unless I'm in an area with dense foliage or particle lighting, but it doesn't dip below 45 FPS

Gameplay: it's what you'd expect, but pleasantly smooth. Acrobatics are not janky like previous fallout/elder scrolls titles.

Graphics: it's just beautiful 99% of the time. Eye candy everywhere, but there are some areas that seem to not have much depth, but it does not detract from gameplay

Flying: this by far is my biggest gripe, but I may just be anti change. I prefer to have my yaw be a/d, with my roll and pitch bound to x/y mouse axis. I can not for the life of me figure out how to set this, if it's even possible at all. The lack of centering on the ships pitch/yaw axis doesn't self align, so flight is very non-intuitive for me. Like I said, I've gotten used to it, but I feel there should be an option to bind. Perhaps I'm missing it though.

Overall, a great experience. Story is good, plenty of customization, the areas seem alive. It's pretty much the game I've always wanted.

9.5/10

The game is vast, lots to do, with various mechanics. Combat feels great and the story is decent, especially some of the side missions are definitely worthwhile to play. Although the ship builder and customization is great, I would have liked for the game to push me to use the ships more instead of giving me the option to fast travel everywhere. Overall a great Bethesda game, I think the best one since Skyrim.

Starfield is a fun game and it's easy to lose track of time while immersing yourself in the world. The optimization on Nvidia 30xx cards is atrocious and you will see stutters, artifacts, and frame drops - hopefully they give it another optimization pass and patch in DLSS support.

Pros:
The quests, the ship building, and exploring each location you land at are all immersive and well thought out.
The battle mechanics are stock-standard for FPS, decently fun in 3rd person, but very good for a BGS game.

Cons:
No planetary surface vehicle makes for some long walks.
Not being able to actually fly manually to and from planets means a lot of loading screens.

Starfield is the next evolution of the Bethesda RPG formula. If Skyrim and Fallout were your cup of tea, then be prepared to lose all of your free time for a while. It has everything you've come to love from a Bethesda game with plenty of new additions.

Recommending with one big caveat: wait until the game is patched or the community patch is released.

Others have already said it but this is Fallout 4 with a nice dash of No Man's Sky. If you're looking for a spaceship game though this isn't really it. The flight and combat is very simplified but it fits well in a game that already has so much else to do. If you're a fan of FO4, Skyrim, and other Bethesda games, you'll almost certainly love playing this one. It scratches all the itches plus there is a fresh new game universe to discover. (I will say that the aesthetic isn't as cohesive as other Bethesda games but I still enjoy it.)

All that said, I'm encountering plenty of issues. Crashes, infinite loading screens, weird physics jankiness, and bugged side quests. Hence the caveat at the start of this. I'm currently using a handful of mods to improve some of these issues but I recommend waiting a bit if you're on the fence.

This is my favorite Sci Fi RPG since Mass Effect 1 and I'm absolutely in love with it. 30 hours in and I feel I've barely scratched the surface.

However, it's important to illustrate what this game ISN'T. It's not No Man's Skyrim. It's not Fallout in Space. It's not a spaceflight simulator. And I'm not sure I'd even call it a true open-world game.

None of those are criticisms, but the comparisons to past Bethesda titles is inevitable. Starfield is out to do its own thing with a new take on the classic Bethesda formula. I think it does these extremely well, but those expecting more of the same old goodness are going to be disappointed by misaligned expectations.

The game of course borrows heavily from other BGS titles. The weapon and armor upgrade system is lifted directly from Fallout 4, for example. And the classic dungeon dives are here and better than ever. You still walk around and pick up a thousand quests, some hand-written and others using the radiant system. You still have a "get better by using" skill system that's different enough from past titles but still functionally the same. And, most importantly, you still have sandbox, open-ended exploration of planetary surfaces (and space orbits). But that's one of the main areas where Starfield diverges from its cultural ancestors.

The core gameplay loop has you visiting a chunk of a planet's surface at a time, which is bounded as a big square tile. This is then populated by procedural generated content - dungeons or neat features or resource lodes or the like - anchored by a few hand-placed unique POIs if you went to one of the pre-existing landing points on the surface. You can instead land anywhere you please, in which case it's all procedural. Regardless, you land, scan POIs that pop in every kilometer of wandering, while looting inorganic and organic (if a life seeded planet) resources as you go. It works well, but there's no getting around the planets feeling shallow and, well, procedurally generated. This game does not have the whimsical wandering around a giant open world like Tamriel or the post-post-apocalyptic United States. Instead the galaxy is the "map" divided out into discrete chunks you must fast travel between. You land, check out a few things, take off, and go get surprised by the next location. Repeat literally thousands of times. I cannot emphasize enough that this isn't a case of Starfield trying to be a simulated open world game and failing. It knows what it is and leans into it and sticks the landing hard.

It's also worth singling out space stuff. It's more of a mini game than a fully fleshed out system. There's not a lot to find in space other than random events and fights themselves are fairly bare-bones. Your ship serves more as a mobile base for planetary (or dockable space area) exploration, which crafting stations, tons of extra storage, and all of your companions always right there with you, than a foundation for a whole other spaceflight simulator game. The ship builder is a lot of fun and you will get attached to your custom designs, however.

All in all, I enthusiastically recommend this game to BGS veterans and newcomers alike. But for the former, you really need to sweep away any expectations that this is going to be like earlier titles.

I had high hopes for Starfield, but I can't confidently call it a good game.

The Major Issues:

- You do not feel like a proper pilot of a space ship. Starfield's space travel is reduced to bland loading screens and cutscenes, a stark contrast to games like 'No Man's Sky' and 'Elite Dangerous' that handled it brilliantly.
- Missing "Soul". The game lacks a certain intangible quality, making it feel lifeless despite its technical depth. After the main story, there's little motivation to keep playing- very unusual for Bethesda's greater titles.

Other Notable Flaws:

- Skill-Locked Features: Basic gameplay features are frustratingly locked behind skill progressions, hindering the overall experience.
- The Pleasure City 'Neon' in the settled systems fails to deliver the expected vibrancy and vulgarity. Not a single stripper. Should have looked at Cyberpunk for this one.
- The main story has potential and was overall an interesting mystery, but suffers from repetetive missions and repetitive space travel sequences, which consist mostly of loading screens and cutscenes, a baffling design choice honestly.

Starfield falls short of expectations, raising concerns about Bethesda's direction in game development. Let's hope it doesn't foreshadow what awaits in the next Elder Scrolls installment...

With 28 hours played so far, the result is very positive. It is a difficult game to assess with few hours because it has so much content, mechanics that without having finished it it is difficult to give a hasty opinion.

pros:
* RPG
* Range combat
* Ship combat and manager
* Outpost manager
* Game history for now
* for me only 1 bug that I have been able to notice.

50%/50%
Exploration:
For some people, exploration may seem boring or not very complex. Scan the planet with the ship and on foot the POI, flora fauna and resources. Perhaps more complexity to this process would be nice. Perhaps the problem of not having a vehicle on the planets or more objects that make exploration more interesting. I hope they add more content for exploration and that it is more required to get crafting materials. Currently it is easier to buy the materials or loot them that you will get by exploration. With the outposts you can get materials but it's just another mid-end game mechanic and I don't know how balanced it is.

const:
* Although it is not bad in performance it can improve but for a game that has just come out it is very good. This clearly depends on the PC of each one.
* AI can improve a lot.
* Meele combat

Opinion on some criticisms that are common:

*The loading screen simulator:
Yes, when you enter a ship there is a loading screen. When you enter some buildings. Navigate between planets/systems. Partly there are technical limitations here and partly it's due to gameplay. If it would be super interesting to take off and land on planets, to be able to go through the system that we are with the ship relatively quickly. But as a former Elite Dangerous player. Those mechanics are fun the first few times. And if we had to mobilize like this, the criticism would be that we are space truckers. Many loading screens shorten the immersion a bit but it will take 10 minutes to go from one planet to another as well.

If I have to give you an initial score it is 9 or 9.5 /10

Just incredible. Have loved all 75 hours so far and it feels like I have barely scratched the surface. Almost no bugs, extremely polished game, which is an incredible statement to the industry in 2023 that it is entirely possible to release a finished game--I hope the industry takes note. Bethesda and Todd Howard just know how to make a freaking good video game.

With over 28 hours in the game I feel confident in my review. This is a Bethesda game without all the game breaking bugs. I have had ONE audio bug but other than that its been great. The story is great, the free range with exploration, the fact you can almost do anything you want. Give this game a try if you love Bethesda games and you will enjoy this.

67 hours in feel like I've barely scratched the surface..here's my recap, worth buying? Yes, easily 1000 hour game, tons of replay ability; even more so with mods! It's Fallout in Space. It's exactly what you'd expect a Bethesda game to be. It's not No Man's Sky or Elite. It's a Bethesda RPG in a space setting.
Just coming from Baldur's Gate 3 though, BG3 edges out Starfield for GotY. They just aren't quite on the same level imho, Starfield is an easy, 8.5/10 enjoyable game but the writing, voice acting, and story are all just slightly less great coming from BG3 which I think gave us all that bit 'extra' if that makes any sense. I think had BG3 not come out first many would have said GOTY but Larion deserves it more. This coming from a long time Bethesda fan and first time Larion/Baldur's player.
IMHO what makes BG3 vastly superior are the companion stories, AI, and acting, this is where Starfield really falls flat by comparison and where the jenk of creation engine shows it's age....like when my companion talks to me with her neck turned 240 degrees, or her eyes stuck shut, or when walking thru Akila I fall through the environment or randomly just crash to desktop. The companion dialogues feel so forced on me and contrived at times....Sam, Your DAUGHTER!...that they get annoying rather than enhancing of my experience. There's memes about Bethesda bugs and by Bethesda standards this has had fewer bugs but they are still present and accounted for throughout. It's other things too like how bad the AI still is and combat is pretty mid generally. Space combat even more so. it's not a bad experience but it's also absolutely not why I'm playing the game.

But, having said all of that, I'm enjoying the hell out of it....and looking forward to seeing what mods can do with this fantastic foundation. As someone who still plays both Skyrim and the Fallout series with some regularity it will be nice to add another title to the rotation.

As a hardcore gamer, I don't advise my fellows to buy this game if you plan on playing vanilla. If you are ok with mods, the game will be fantastic I am sure given time.

If you are a casual gamer, this game will give you plenty to do in whatever span of time you have available in your busy life.

If you are a young gamer then this is going to be an amazing title for you.

I grew up on Morrowind. That is really all I can say. I expected more and prefer dense hand crafted content. I will enjoy playing the game as a pallet cleanser, but there are so many mechanics in this game that felt less than fully fleshed out.

Equipment modification.

Base Building.

I loved the ship design. It reminded me of Kingdom Hearts gummi ships...Which were a simple joy back in the day. Lackluster now, but I was young. I imagine DLCS and the like will add more to this and that is pretty cool. Still a limited number of assets to alter the look of your ship, but in time I know that will change.

Planet generation and exploration.

Still though, it is going to be a good game. It is a good game. I just expect alot.

To give context, in Morrowind you could create crazy enchantments that made Skyrim's system look laughably weak. You could make your own spells. The amount of equipment was nuts. You could fly. You could make a ring that let you fly permanently.

Again, high standards on my part and alot of experience with a multitude of game systems/mechanics and there implementation.

All that being said I hope you enjoy your adventure and feel that my review is totally false. That and make sure to level your Boost Pack skill all the way. Couldn't imagine playing the game without it. XD Made me feel like a Mandalorian.

Only seen 2 bugs neither very exciting like Skyrims giant space program but thats okay. I'm just having fun exploring the planets and watching the life on the ones that have them. My goal is to make my home town on the destroyed Earth which will take some time and thank Todd they changed the build mode so much easier with skyview. No idea what the story is since I keep getting distracted doing the side quests and exploring. Only issues I have are the space travel could be better, yes NMS does do it better but I would say they are thousands of year in the future compared to 200 years from now so our tech is still evolving. Can't wait to see the Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, and Mass Effect mods. New engine works pretty good and my parents are alive. 8/10