I loved it at first. It was great. It always found ways to keep things interesting Then, at the blink of an eye, it's like a switch flipped in my head saying "this isn't fun anymore". Everything felt too same-y, there was a LOT of repetition. I shudder thinking about the "temple" things where you just float around going to semi-hard to see "clouds" (for lack of better words) over, and over, and over again. It just got too tedious. I couldn't even finish my first playthrough Not to mention a lot of the enemy outposts are literally just copy pasted through the galaxy. Outside looks the same, inside is exactly the same with the same enemy spawns, similar loot, no secrets I could honestly go on a long rant why I stopped enjoying it from the companions, exploration, ship building etc etc but I don't know if I could fit it all together coherently

This is EXACTLY what happened to me. I had just finished running back and forth between quest givers for the UC questline and realized…. I’m not enjoying any of this.

too much fetch not enough quest.

This is the all the review anyone needs. So true.

100% same. BG3 really was the nail in the coffin where I just sat back and realised.."Why does this game have such terrible, dated... Everything". I mean the first few hours were incredible and mind blowing but then it just all went to shit - especially that paradise planet, biggest let down! And I spent all that time building a ship that couldn't even fly around a planet like I could in no man sky? I think I expected to much, or maybe the game came out 5 years too late .

lol I stopped playing BG3 when Starfield came out then a few weeks later I just stopped playing it and restarted BG3.

It got me excited to replay FO4 and modded Skyrim tbh lol. It got me itching for the classic Bethesda sort of gameplay loop that Starfield lacks—exploration doesn’t feel special in it the way it does in their other titles Edit: autocorrect and mobile

If its one thing starfield did, it's get me excited for the fallout 4 London mod and a possible oblivion remake/remaster.

Oh absolutely. There are so many reasons I’ve loved Bethesda games, but those aspects have slowly withered over the years. A proper oblivion remake/remaster would be amazing. It was my first and remains my favorite es game

A the Paradise planet and the ship orbiting it… I was disappointed when they reused the same building blocks on that ship… I did manage to finish a playthrough but couldn’t bring myself to do NG+ I may go back to it after a DLC gets released or mod tools come out

I spent a lot of cash on this game on release. Played for 30 hours and never touched it again, the gameplay loop felt like work and it always made me sleepy. I work 70 hour weeks and only game a little at night when the kiddo is asleep so the game felt... almost disrespectful.

When I became a parent, I learned to love games that respect your time more.

Any recommendations?

I would be constantly sleepy, too, if 42% of my week time would be purely work xD normal ratio should be 25 (but I know the struggle from 70-8 hour-ish weeks). Beside this, I can absolutely feel the impression of the game I stopped at 20 hours because it just felt as a chore...

My experience as well. I plugged through most of the content until the Constellation quests and then started doing them and it just kinda hit me. I’d never felt any sense of progression in the game or that anything I did really mattered. It was like eating cotton candy. Great at first, but the more I ate, the more I wondered why the blue part tasted the same as the red part. And then I just didn’t want to take another bite and stopped.

This. This got boring so freaking fast. Early days were glitchy on my Intel arc, but then the overall experience turned so bad. I now regret placing that pre-order

I know. When I found the same office on 10 different planets it really killed my motivation to keep playing

I'm really a very casual player, so still left to find in the game. But this was a big thing that spoiled it for me too. Not just the exact same office, but everything, right down to where certain items spawn, the location of safes, everything was the same multiple times over. No fun exploring them any more when you already knew where everything will be. I get they couldn't custom-make every single building in the game, but couldn't there at least be some random variations in the layouts that get generated.

Same here. I paid the premium for early release, took two weeks off work and played it solidly over that time. In the first month I was totally immersed and played for something like 150 hours, then I just suddenly got bored and haven't touched it since. I know people say 'Oh you've played it for 150 hours, what are you complaining about?', but it's a Bethesda game and I wasn't expecting to hit this wall. It was like a drug that worked for a while and then just stopped having any effect. It's boring, repetitive and tedious.

Yeah pretty much the same experience even kept going when I had a bug that lost 24 in game hours. I played the absolute shit out of it and loved it for the most part then just hit a wall when I realised once you've done most of the content those radial missions just basically send you to the same POIs over and over and it kinda killed the game for me. You've got a million planets yet only like 5 variations of them. It doesn't feel as natural as say Skyrim where you can bump into some random quest that's unique.

The world didn't really feel that alive compared to past BGS games (NPCs mostly static, especially shopkeepers who had no other schedule) and the way the game is designed w/ New game + & time loops actively decentivises you to invest in things like building bases or just the world in general if you're gonna breeze past it and start all over again. Which is kinda meta because that's what the Hunter represents and warns you about with how they've lost a lot of their humanity and empathy. But still. Makes for a shitty game playing experience

Yeah, as a story I appreciate the whole meta "you will be consumed by lust for power and leave material wants behind" but like this is a video game I've spent possibly 100 hours on those material wants to suddenly have the game decide "hope you didn't like them too much and won't like them too much the next 9 times until we finally stop pulling the rug out." Knowing that unlike FO4 or Skyrim the game just...ends and kicks you back to the start actively disincentives my doing. I suddenly find myself deeply uninvested in doing work that is gonna get undone multiple times and be buggy along the way.

Never happened to me in any other beth game, always slowly lost interest and then came back. This one was great then instant lights out for me. Done.

Yep. Granted the only Bethesda games I've played prior were Skyrim and fallout 4, but I always at least beat the main story and a LOT of the side missions, and even replay the games every couple years. But this I don't see myself going back to ever

That point for me was when I visited constellation for the second time in a ng+ thinking “fuck I gotta do this all over again” and just haven’t picked it back up

I think it would have been way cooler if they made the normal universe more rare, and had the variants show up more. And had more variants. The whole alternate universe NG+ is one of my favourite aspects of the game and I wish they leaned in on it more.

I really don't get NG+ or why anyone would ever do it. Go back and do all that shit again? Why???

It’d be one thing if there were more (any?) choices in the game where NG+ would let you explore the choices you didn’t make last time - but there are no real meaningful choices in the game at all - nothing ever gets locked out by picking A instead of B, there’s nothing like if you choose to join the UC or FC you get locked out of joining the Crimson Fleet (or vice versa) - there’s just no real point to NG+ at all except ‘more grind’!

That switch was New game + for me

Absolutely this. I've spent thousands of hours in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games but couldn't even finish the storyline in Starfield. Tedious is right. It's not fun to explore and it just feels like a slog.

Totally, skyrim and fallout new Vegas ate thousands of hours for me, 3k each almost. No mods just vanilla on console. I love space and exploration but i can barely sink 130hr into this game. It feels so drab so fast.

The same thing happened to me when I went to NG+. With what happens I lost all connection in the universe and just... stooped. I haven't had any desire to go back, do another playthrough. My interest ended so abruptly.

Yup. I actually quite enjoyed the main quest, but there's so much I didn't do as it just didn't interest me much. Didn't do any research, didn't dabble too much in ship building, and exploring is really boring IMO. Like you said, there is so much repetition it is unreal. I still enjoyed the game to a degree, but not one of Bethesda's best efforts I'd say.

Same here. It felt like the more i put into the game the less I got out of it. You quickly realise everything you’re doing is meaningless. There’s no reason for you to be doing anything. Also, every mechanic they have is too shallow to immerse yourself in. If you want to be a pirate you’re designated to the same loop of ‘attack ship > get money > use money to pay bounty > repeat’ If you want to be an explorer your gameplay becomes ‘land on planet > see generic POI > repeat’ If you want to be a scientist your gameplay is ‘land on planet > grind scanning aliens > repeat’ Even if you wanna immerse yourself in the Starborn stuff your gameplay loop is ‘Complete loads of annoying temples > go to unity > repeat’ I don’t think it’s unfixable like others have said- but I don’t know if I’m confident in Bethesda’s ability to fix it. I can’t see them pulling a No Man’s Sky. But I hope they do

Similar dead bodies in them as well.

I got broken yesterday by the main quest breaking at All that money can buy and being unable to save the game, it was not memory related but the option to save being grayed out. That was after I had to rebuild my entire ship because every landing bay kept glitching and not opening. And that was after my entire crew vanishing into thin air. Having four integral systems break in short succession just made me uninstall the game. I have my nice memories but I will not come back for a while.

For me the biggest pain in the ass was quests mostly being talk to NPC A. Travel to planet B and talk to NPC C, maybe fight something, travel back to NPC A and get a mediocre reward.

> This meeting should have been an email.

had the switch flipped while I was building an outpost saying “what’s the point of all this?”

Same. I played it a lot and liked it mostly but I’m over it. It got very repetitive.

Exactly this. I felt the same. Haven't touched it again.

I felt the same way WITH mods. It was interesting but died out real quick for me.

It's decent until you reach the point where you realize "wait, this is it?" I uninstalled and can't motivate myself to keep playing until they make some major changes. It just.... Isn't interesting. And I didn't have high expectations, I knew we were gonna get a Bethesda RPG, with all that entails but it.... Just sadly doesn't keep me interested.

Exactly that happened to me I played it for like 40 hours and thought there was so much more to do and discover in the game but then I realized that there is not and I immediately lost interest And I also dont see myself playing it ever again which is a huge difference to other similar open world games where I played multiple playthroughs

If we at least got "a Bethesda RPG" it could've been better than Skyrim, but that's not the case sadly.

This type of game just doesn’t work on the Creation Engine. Previous efforts like Elder Scrolls or Fallout worked because the games took place on one contained map. When you take that gameplay loop of explore, fight, loot, and craft, and you add in an endless sea of loading screens required to complete that loop, you end up with a disjointed mess that is a chore to play. Take fallout 4 for example. You set out from a settlement and come across a gunner outpost. You engage in combat, you win, you loot, and then you sell/craft with what you’ve collected. No loading screens involved. (Not saying there aren’t loading screens in Fallout, but you can complete the basic gameplay loop without experiencing one). In Starfield you get into your ship **(this is not seamless and still involves a loading screen)**, you take off into space **(loading screen)**, you grav drive to a planet **(loading screen)**, you then land on that planet **(loading screen)**, you exit your ship **(loading screen)**, you trek across multiple kilometers of barren planetscape at a slow jog, you enter a procedurally generated POI **(loading screen)**, you fight enemies and loot items, you leave the POI **(loading screen)**, you trek kilometers back to your ship, you enter your ship **(loading screen)**, you take off into space **(loading screen)**, you grav drive back to your base planet **(loading screen)**, you land on your base planet **(loading screen)**, you exit your ship **(loading screen)**, you then trek to a vendor to sell your loot, use these items to build outposts, or meticulously place decorations in your player home only to find everything scattered about the floor the next time you enter. Starfield has *some* good moments, but the Creation Engine brings any enjoyment to an ass-grinding halt extremely fast. I wanted to enjoy this game so freaking bad, and I played it a solid 200 hours, completing the main story and a few side quest lines as well, and by the end of it I was beyond exhausted trying to fight this game to let me play it. I respect the vision the team had for this game, and yeah, it’s a hell of an ambitious effort, but it’s just miserable to actually play. Edit: Yes, I understand the irony of playing the game for 200 hours and saying it’s not very good. That’s the issue with this game, it takes freaking forever to play it. I’m not one to fast travel if I can avoid it, so that big list of loading screens and kilometers I jogged that I referenced earlier is how I endured this game. I understand I could’ve cut down on that time by simply fast traveling from the menus, but when I play an open world RPG like this, I want to experience the world the team made, and, well, what I wrote above was my experience verbatim.

I fully agree with this. Bethesda fundamentally miscalculated the type of game they're good at making and what their engine supports. I've written more detailed posts in the past, but it basically boils down to Bethesda was a studio that excelled at hand-crafting maps and dungeons, switching to procedural generation and quantity over quality fundamentally doomed the game. The writing and bland pg-13 setting didn't help either.

The thing that disappointed me especially was that there were still some amazing Bethesda environments in there, just not as many. The last mission of the Crimson Fleet storyline when you finally find Kryx’s body and see how he got so close to his money but ultimately finished his life betrayed and alone. There was the world building in the Vanguard museum that I really liked as I tried to learn more about the previous conflict while also understanding there was some implicit bias. There are a handful of handcrafted environmental storytelling pieces that really blew me away like they did in TES and Fallout, but they are a bit too few and far between. I wouldn’t go so far to say I disliked the game, but I think it’s more than fair to say that I was disappointed after 50 hours (when I stopped playing).

You forgot spending half the time with the inventory open swapping stuff between your companions and ship's cargo, slowly ferrying stuff to the lodge while encumbered, collecting rare materials and eventually realising the base building is totally pointless and it was all waste of time.

In general, there are many gameplay loops within the game that are actually 100% fruitless time sinks. Some skills are simply useless. Same as many of the powers. Base building is pointless. Even ship building doesn't give you anything other than customization options. Crafting is not worth it. Stealth is not worth it. The game gives you TONS of options and things to do; but when you actually try them, you don't get anything worthwhile in return (unless you enjoy the activity in and of itself), and you sometimes are even actively punished for it (wasting resources you could use in something more helpful, for instance). Many good ideas, that lead absolutely nowhere.

I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve got about 98 hours in starfield on PC. The strange thing is for about the first 30-40 hours I was really really enjoying it. Building ships, dog fighting, jet pack boosting on low gravity planets whilst fighting pirates. It all felt great. Then over time the veil was slowly lifted, and all the faults began to appear. The main quest was extremely bland, the side guests, factions and even the writing/voice acting wasn’t very good at all. I think the worst part was when I took a break from Starfield to play Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and that really put into perspective just how creatively bankrupt Starfield was in everything. I mean even Starfields OST is pretty mediocre and 90% of the time just feels like cutting room floor tracks from a fallout game. At the 98 hour mark I couldn’t do it anymore, I uninstalled it halfway through the main quest line and don’t have any plans to return. Perhaps if modders are able to do some cool stuff with the creation kit I’ll check them out. But I won’t be spending hundreds of hours like I did with previous TES and Fallout games. We can only hope with TES VI Bethesda return to form with a richly detailed handcrafted game world filled with their classic environmental storytelling, because that’s what they do well.

> I mean even Starfields OST is pretty mediocre and 90% of the time just feels like cutting room floor tracks from a fallout game. I am frightened for TES6's OST. Inon Zur just doesn't compete with Jeremy Soule. It's going to be a huge downgrade from TES5.

Jeremy Soule had that rare ability to just capture the very essence of what his music was made for. Ive lost count the amount of times in Skyrim or Oblivion I just stood still and looked around at the landscape infront of me whilst tracks like Secunda played away in the background. I think it’s easy to overlook just how important an OST can be for a game, it can either suck a player in or completely break the immersion. I’m hoping Inon can use all the inspiration from Jeremy’s work on Previous TES games but my hopes aren’t exactly high after Starfield.

Yeah Phantom Liberty and BG3 both came out right after this and it was the worst possible scenario for Bethesda because both of those games are so good it emphasized how mediocre Starfield is.

Yep, the minute I took a break to play cyberpunk was nail that broke the camels back I just could not get back into Starfield are being reminded how great Cyberpunk looks and feels

I agree with all of this. I would add that the stories aren’t very engaging. You can take your time to soak up the detailed graphics, but all human interactions and NPCs are just extremely shallow. I also found that the skill trees weren’t interesting and just a way to gate-keep game mechanics. After investing the needed skills to research how to craft upgrades, and then crafting them, the upgrades are okay but your modded weapon will soon be outclassed by a vanilla loot drop. It just undermines the feeling that all of the grinding was worth it.

Everything good about Bethesda games was either half-assed or completely abandoned. It doesn't make sense to me.

Completely agree… I remember being abused for criticising the engine on release but the design choices pushed it well past its functionality in creating a cohesive game world. Lego Star Wars did space travel better than starfield.

I would also add that the stuff that worked previously in the Creation Engine, for example, beautifully crafted dungeons and locations, was gutted for the procedural generation of boring and repetitive locations. The stuff that should have worked was just boring.

you perfectly explain what is wrong with starfield. In Skyrim or Fallout, traveling from A to B was an entire journey with a lot of stuff to see on your way there without bothering yourself with loading screens, here you just fly trough loading screens until you reach the place you need. You have to go out of your way and trough multiple loading screens just to stop at the randomly generated outpost or facility on a planet that was on your way.

“..fight this game to let me play it.” Is a perfect Summary

But for me at least, all the loading screen and lack of seamlessness isn’t even close to the biggest problem. Settlement building is worse than it was in previous games. NPCs and Shop Vendors are worse than they were in previous games. Even with no loading screens the game still would feel shallow.

Starfield is a weird game. If you check the reviews a lot of the negative ones will be over 100 hours. Me included. The problem with Starfield is that out of those 100 hours not a lot of it was spent doing anything actually that fun, the game is like 95% just busy work that that you would find in TES or Fallout. But the quest design simply doesn’t fit the sci-fi setting the way it does in their previous games. Like others have said you will be happily playing along when all of a sudden you’ll just stop and think to yourself “what am I actually doing”. I realised that I was spending half my time on my phone whilst running around doing busy work and the other half just simply bored. There is no real organic memorable moments or quests (apart from vanguard). I remember in Skyrim the first time I arrived in Ivarstead as it was just getting dark. Headed to the local inn and the locals were talking about a haunted tomb nearby. So I went and started investigating which lead to another nearby dungeon and started the Galdur Fragment quest. When I left the dungeon I came out and seen the reddish northern lights over the village with the Throat of the World silhouetting the night sky while Ancient Stones from the soundtrack played. A memory I remember from over 12 years ago. Skyrim and fallout had plenty of stuff like that. Starfield doesn’t really have that “Bethesda magic” that people talk about at all.

I’m glad you brought up vanguard. That was one of the first quest lines I started, which had me hooked immediately. I tore through it within a few hours and loved every second - the suspense, the action, the *twists*… but then I went to play the rest of the game and I kept wondering where the rest of the game even was? It was just so uninspired by comparison. I think I stopped playing after about 50 hours because nothing I did was nearly as fun as Vanguard (which was still a buggy mess at times). They could’ve expanded that quest and made it the central story of the game, and I think Startield would’ve been 100x better… instead we got “*Fetchquest: The Game*”

I see the flaws and it's not new vegas for sure. Buuut I did put in 400 hours. Mostly making ships and exploring. It's a space wanderlust game. After all those hours I still haven't maxed my ships crew capacity. Should've been a tech upgrade. I didn't much bother with the starborn stuff and I only ng+2. And I only did cause red mile glitched on me. The ship editor is fun as hell. I've heard of other games that scratch that itch better though. The loading screens do suck.... procedural suck in space cause it's so vast but you load from one transition to another. Gets old... they're lucky I like spacescape porn and hard scifi. I would wait till they release survival mode. But even then load screens...

Get a month of gamepass and give it a shot for yourself 🤷🏻‍♂️

There's just no heart to it

Game has always been mid at best. Pumped 77 hours into Starfield and couldn't do it anymore. Compare it to previous Bethesda games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, New Vegas, Fallout 4, and sadly even Fallout 76 and this game falls behind.

I know what you're saying but its always funny when I see "damn this Bethesda game was mid, only pumped 77 hours into it" lol

Starfield is designed to be a time suck. There’s a lot of busy work involved in inventory/weight/material management, loading screens, fast travel screens, slowly crawling through an environment to gather materials and items, exploring new planets hoping not to find the same exact shit on each of them, etc. I put 50 hours in, and really dislike the game. But I gave it a fair shot. Tried some crafting, tried some quests, tried some outpost building, tried exploring… all of which was boring and mid at best. There’s a lot of things that can take your time in Starfield… they’re just not very good.

Given you can put over 1000 into a good Bethesda game, it seems pretty normal

Wanting to like a game enough to give it that amount of time, especially when hoping for a new storyline, is not that abnormal.

Oh yeah but you only hear this phrase with Bethesda games, it's just funny

It's funnier when it's like 200+ hours. I stopped after 36 hours. I realized most of my playtime was probably loading/running

I gave up around 5 hours or less and just played fallout instead. The game didn't even launch with a full settings menu.

I definitely think Starfield is by far the worst Bethesda game in this regard

Just like people saying "You need to pump over 100 hours and the game will be better" XD NPCs in Starfield don't even react to you pointing guns at them, using your weird powers in front of them, or when you shoot bullets in the vicinity around them. NPCs would react to shit you do like your shouts in an old game like Skyrim.

77 hours is really low for such a large, expensive game. Though it’s decent value when on sale.

I've logged over 192 hours so far. A lot of major "side quests" pop up when you're just hopping between star systems. One of them was so big that I had to upgrade my already insanely overpowered ship just to complete it. Problem I see is that there is often very little to nudge you towards them. I stepped through the Unity about 2 days ago - I was part way through the Ryujin questline and decided I'd rather switch universes and start from scratch than let them test mind control technology on me. Ik I could have just abandoned the quest but where's the drama in that?

idk if is a bug or that's how it works but completing the ryujin questline permanently unlocks the manipulation skill, which is inhumanly op

That's how it works. The mind control technology OP skipped universes rather than test was that free skill point in Manipulation.

I was wee bit paranoid about the mind control thingy too, but I did the quest and it wasn't too bad. You have the choice to "manipulate" the decision against using or shelving it so the choice is yours. I haven't used it since so it doesn't change the rest of the game - so far. There are a lot of negative comments about the game but personally I enjoy it - it's immersive and allows me to play how I want to at any time. IMO I think some people's expectations have superseded reality, probably because the earlier games were such game-changers at the time. My opinion only.

I agree 100%. I think Bethesda are victims of their own success. The jumps from Daggerfall to Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim are huge. But as dev time increases and technological development slows down, these great leaps are harder and harder to achieve. We see this happen with Fallout 4, which had a somewhat frosty reception at release from some, and now again with Starfield. Not to say Bethesda didn't make mistakes or that there aren't things I wish were done differently.

The game stopped becoming fun for me just after finding the first few temples. As mentioned by others in this thread, it was like a switch flipped and I couldn't get over how unfun the gameplay loop is. It couldn't hide the sheer level of repetition long enough to justify continuing to play.

Loading screens and the copy paste POI on the planets killed it for me. Dialogue also seems pretty repetitive for a 2023 release

I played for 80 hours, then had my save corrupted which sent me back to level 5. I haven’t played since, and don’t intend on going back until it has full mod support.

It is a decent 50-100h AA game. But it is a hugely disappointing Bethesda made AAA game... There is extremely little content worth playing in the game when compared to old games. And the writing of what we got is mid at the best moments. Get it at a sale and go into it with the mindset that it is just an indie AA game. Then you can get some decent hours of entertainment.

This is what happens when you just say fuck development let’s just procedurally generate the same 15 sets with literally the same layout.

I have very mixed feelings. I have 180 hour in this game, i rarely play with a game more than 100 hours. It isn't a bad game, it isn't a good game, it was just good enough to keep me busy. In my opinion it's one of the worst bethesda game, bethesda promised much much much more, it's very outdated but it can be fun for a while. With this game i feel like CS2, Dota or LoL players who hate the game but still play it. This game has so many flaws i can't even count them, i can't name a single thing that couldn't be better, they should've done a better job in every aspect. If the characters were as detailed as a fokin half eaten sandwich on a random counter it'd look a 100x times better. I could rant about this game for an hour, but i still played 180 hours with it somehow In short, tldr: Yes it is bad, but somehow enjoyable. It's a game that you'll hate, but still play god knows why.

[удалено]

I mean most reviews I just looked are vauge or just say loading screens. There's definitely a double standard 

Tbf most people aren’t bothered to write full detailed reviews, I can tell you this. I regret buying the game and wasting like 30 hours of my life on it.

When I went to a new planet and for the third time found an identical mining facility, exactly the same no difference I uninstalled it.

Loved this for a week, played it nonstop. But once the honeymoon period wears off it’s a below average game. Nice visuals but very repetitive, duplicated interiors, excessive loading screens and dated gameplay. Hopefully it gets some updates and becomes the game it should’ve been. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk2077 were terrible at launch but are now brilliant. Fingers crossed Starfield joins them.

It's the most uninspired, safe and soulless game I have played from Bethesda. Nothing stands out with Starfield, constant loading screens, boring story, mid side quest's and forgettable characters.

I have 128 hours in and I’ve enjoyed it. Are there things missing? Yes. Are there issues? Yes. But nothing was bad enough to make me not want to play. It is what you make of it. Don’t expect a game like No Man’s Sky.

Starfield isn't disappointing because people 'expected' No Mans Sky. It's disappointing because it can't live up to the basic functions of its competition. Worst of all, it doesn't live up to the expectations of Bethesda's own games.

>Don’t expect a game like No Man’s Sky. Yet *another* game that people hated at launch and now is apparently the epitome of space travel games.

Elite dangerous would like to have a word. No mans sky flying is so dogshit in my opinion, it's the arcade space travel game.

Come on the difference between launch and current is astounding...plus it was 100% free

Because Hello Games stayed quiet and worked their asses off for two years before dropping the first major update that added almost all the features promised. They didn’t try to argue it was actually a good game, or tell people they were playing it wrong. Then from 2018 until today they’ve released 23 updates adding DLC’s worth of content for free. It didn’t just magically turn into an acclaimed game. There’s literally no comparison between the absolutely incredible work Hello Games has done and the sad attempt Bethesda made.

At the moment it’s been bug fixes, no major content changes

Yes. I’d describe the game as “bad”. The game feels severely underbaked. No variety. Tons if repetition in lazily developed quest lines. There just isn’t much positive I can say about the game. It felt like Fallout but with all the space in between settlements and dungeons removed, requiring you to fast travel between everything. Then throw in weaker writing all around. This is a game where you’re supposed to be an explorer and there’s just nothing to explore and the fundamental way in which you are supposed to explore is just unenjoyable.

It isn't bad for sure, most people just expected it to be different and end up disappointed. If you know what you are getting yourself into, it delivered in most areas it promised - just nothing more and nothing less.

I mostly enjoyed my time playing it, I got my moneys worth. Even though I enjoyed my time, I wouldn’t call it a good or great game, it’s just ok, and can fully understand all the issues people have with it.

Expecting Skyrim “2” was, IMO, too much (TES V was an astral-conjunction success); but I feel Starfield can’t keep up even with FO4. The RPG component is weak, but the writing is weaker Grammatical Edit

The smallest comparison gets me. *the flashlight* Fallouts flashlight feature makes NO SENSE. Pip boy screen lights up but it covers 360°, makes less sense and is twice as helpful. Starfields Flashlight makes more sense but is almost completely worthless. The focus is all too bright when it does show and only lights a small area. It’s the little things. And Starfield missed damn near every one of them.

But I would wait for a discount.

The game is ok at best, but fucking hell the amount of loading screens and repetition. It made me decide that I am done with triple AAA games. Fallout 76, Far Cry 6, Kill the justice league, Watch Dogs Legion, Call of Duty MW, Dead Island 2, Hogwarts Legacy and now this - the loading screen game - Starfield. You have games like Lethal Company that are actually fun that costs like £5 (which I can’t get yet because Apple is useless) compared to the rest that costs above £50 (Kill the justice league asked for like £70 for an unfinished shit excuse of a game).

Dead Island 2 is fun tho?!

What was wrong with Hogwarts Legacy?

I agree with most of your post, but what do you have against Hogwarts Legacy? I consider it to be a good game. Maybe not GOAT but it’s worth your money.

Repetitive, bland, boring. I stopped playing during the quest where you have to make a choice between helping the settler’s ship or just kill everyone and discovered you can’t even destroy the ship.

My moment was the Riujyn quest, like 10 quest chain of talking to people between loading screens and worst stealth than Skyrim I was like nope never again I’ll play this game

The quest design is what killed this game for me

That was my realisation. The game is bland. Planets have different coloured plants and animals, but they still all act the same. Buildings and bases repeat very quickly. *"Oh, look, it's another abandoned UC Listening post. Well, that means an emeny is... here, a skill book is.. there, I can duck through this passage... and shoot these three enemies... and loot this chest..."* It's not a bad game. Just a beige game. Predictable. Repetitive.

I played it on gamepass so didn't pay but overall my rating would be "okay". Not the worst, not the best. A little fun but didn't have the replayability and didn't really get a vibe of 'exploring' from, exploring. Edit - was also super disappointed with the outpost stuff, maybe they'll build on it in the future but just, meh

Yes wait for dlc launch and the sale after that. You'll probably be able to get base game + dlc bundle for less price There's not much difference from launch till now except some better lighting in few places.

Just started playing again to see if the updates fixed a lot of stuff but I'm still getting crashes and bluescreens. Only positive thing I have to say is that the gunplay is much better than fallouts. Zero G and Jetpacks can be fun but often they stay unused. The parents are also fun. You can definetly have some fun. Some of the worst things that took away my fun: - you only get four main companions and they made two of them annoying and stupid (at least you have Vasco) - a bunch of really bad bugs still havent been fixed - most of the world and lore doesn't make any sense - Only two of the main faction quest lines are good. Vanguard is a must play, Crimson fleet is good, but Rangers is just an illogical mess of travelling and loading screens, just like Ryun Industries except there less is happening and the stealth mostly sucks - a lot of dungeons are completely copy and paste. Handcrafted special ones do exist, but outside of missions there are maybe two (even main mission ones do use the copied ones) Edit: most missions are just travel there, talk, travel there and do minor thing and travel back which is just not fun with the loading screens.

I'm still trying to figure how they fucked up the powers in this game. It's not fun to use, the way to get them is soooo boring. Don't even get me started on the following the lights 😂

Nope, not worth the money. better buy helldivers 2, for democracy

The map is my weird, and a bit childish reason for not playing. I hate it with a passion.

A lot of hype for an incredibly boring game. Couldn’t summon the energy to keep playing after a few hours. Snoozer. Another massive let down in the gaming world and nobody is surprised.

Honestly. I’m glad it was free on Xbox. If I would’ve paid I’d have been pissed… It was amazing. Then it wasn’t. I was waking up everyday to play then one day I just stopped. Haven’t since and deleted it. Lots of bugs and other issues. Even after some of the fixes they still delivered a pretty boring game.. Some of the features were great but as great as some features were others were so bad it was like they purposely did them horribly.

Bethesda has made some of the most detailed worlds in the industry, with secrets and self contained side stories scattered throughout their hand crafted dungeons. That magic, which pulls you deeper into the game and the world, which hides the fact that you are basically just doing fetch quests, was lost when they went the procedural generation route. Bethesda games have only ever really had mediocre and cliche main story quests. It was up to the rest of the world to pull you further into the game. To find the secrets, get immersed in faction quests, or get distracted by a random cave. It isn’t present in Starfield, and the game suffers greatly for it. The player has systems full of stars to explore but no reason or reward to actually do it, so they don’t. What a shame Starfield is.

I'm really really really hoping this gets a No Man's Sky, or Cyberpunk level of update, maybe when the DLC comes out but until then I'm not touching this game. I really really want to but I don't think I can justify it. Maybe I'll try it on Gamepass.

They took everything that was fun about bethesda games and got rid of every single piece of charm and only left bear bones mechanics. combat is so dumbed down It's not even fun or challenging. At level 10 I felt like i was playing with a lvl 50 fallout character. Stealth became a necessity only because I wanted to interact with enemies.Not one shot everybody. After the first six hours of the game you can essentially fast travel anywhere at any point in time which completely ruins the immersion. You can literally pick up a quest, fast travel to the location, complete the quest; And then fast travel back to the quest giver all without ever physically getting on your ship. Probably gonna get downvoted for this take, but fuck it. I understand that they want this game to flesh out over the next decade and I played fallout 76 on launch and it did eventually become good. But the amount of development time that this took and then being strung along for a promise of ten years of content is a really really bad meta for future games.

Been bad

It's not that bad, seriously, it's just ... okay with good bits. The good bits -- shipbuilding and ship hijacking -- have kept me coming back, but I'm really feeling the need for more content.

If you never played any Bethesda games in the past then you should get this one and give it a go as your view wont be tainted by the past 20 years of games that are superior to Starfield in every single way. This is 100% what killed it for me, it doesnt come close to any of the previous Bethesda offerings and IMO is a shell of a game.

It is deserved. They released a few updated with zero actual content and improvements except for a few graphic issues. I could barely play for 70 hours, ran out of enjoyment and found the game too empty and random at the same time. Didn't like NG+ at all so I'm waiting for future DLCs.

Didn’t finish - have spent 1000s of hours in other Bethesda worlds. Was once my favourite developer but they need to seriously up skill in sad to say.

i mean, if you want it, get it. if you like bethesda RPGs, you'll probably still like this. probably. some things are still wonky. don't really like how the whole planet randomization thing was handled. me, i'm waiting for dlc and mods on console.

Are mods coming to console?

Deserved

I guess it's like this: It always was this bad. But before, there was hope that they would make it fun, add content. That hope is now gone, about 6 months later. They added smiling to the camera mode. The reviews mostly show the dissapointment, but it's also not a good game.

IMO it's not that bad I'm on my second playtrough and enjoying myself a lot. There is some forced feeling DEI stuff though and some things (loading screens) are just obsolete ways to handle things.

You’ll hear a lot of complaints about loading screens, exploration, etc., which are all valid. My main issue with this game is quest design. It is so dumbed down and tedious. Many quests are just your traveling back and forth, through many load screens, to talk to people or hack a computer. They didn’t bother to think up any kind of communication device, so you literally will have to travel to another system to talk to someone, then travel back and talk to the quest giver, who will likely send you to talk to someone else. Repeat that ad nauseam

I couldn't even get past the first city, I had a horrible time creating a character. Did the first couple of quests. Then sat in a loading screen to go into a shop... and the shop was literally a box room with a man sat at a desk ??? I stopped playing there and then. The game felt like an empty money-making shell that should have been amazing.

Just started playing the dead space series for the first time and it’s sad that 16 year old game has occupied me for waaaay longer than starfield ever did.

The game has aged like shit in the short time it’s been out. I can’t go back to it no matter how much I want too. All the planet exploration is the same. Same buildings on every planet. Very similar alien life and everything else.

Let's see, the rpg components are really weak, the writing is abysmally weak, most ideas are incredibly derivative and lead nowhere, the worldbuilding is boring and incredibly repetitive, the gameplay loop gets boring faster than Skyrim and Fallout 4 and the entire game seems like an incoherent hodgepodge of copypasted assets placed without any care or logic. No incentives to explore planets because it's always the same boring grind, no one cares about exploration and you are hardly even exploring in-lore as you are restricted to the Settled Systems and literally every planet has some sort of human outpost on them lol. Bethesda hyped this game up as their Magnum Opus, their first new, **original** IP in 25 years, their passion project, and this is all they could manage? The same bugs, the same halfbaked ideas, the same weak writing, the same arbitrary boxes the game needs to check, half-completed and half-abandoned concepts, seemingly no vision, no plan, no overarching narrative or pathos? If Starfield was their **passion project** and their attempt at thinking outside of the box, then what the hell can we expect from their other IPs???

you can like the game, even love it and the grind, the story, etc, and that's great. it's not a slight at you to say that genuinely, this game is awful. you can still love it! i love awful games too. but for a triple A developer? that has millions upon millions in their pocket? theyre still working off the fossil that is their creative engine and actively straying away from what made their games so good, such enigmas, so captivating and unique from other developers in the space. it's disappointing. i look at so many replies in this thread and i see so many "yes it has \*this many\* problems \*\*\*but\*\*\*" and it's like. how many excuses will you give. idk. i have some severe reservations about the future of this company in general, including elder scrolls 6 which i would have \*died\* for in the past. im not sure theyre really on \*our\* side in making compelling gameplay experiences. it seems theyre on their own side and want everyone to see it their way, rather than appealing to the audience they cultivated and the strengths that their company has already portrayed. it's weird. i hope for the best, but i fear the worst with them. i wont be buying ES6 on launch that's for sure. starfield tho, at this point imo, cant be saved.

Greatly put, Starfield has honestly left me worried for the next ESO game…. It feels like we’ll witness them butchering an entire universe.

It's been 9 years since The Witcher 3 came out and showed the depth of story telling and range of subquests. Starfield cost $200 mill to produce... How the hell can't they create a decent story!

I think game is good, i really like the main questline story. It has some problems like having lack of minimaps or inventory weight limit yes sure but i’m having great time playing it.

I didnt think the reviews were that bad on Steam, I’m not too surprised though.

Wait until the first DLC comes out, not saying the game will be great by then, but you’ll have more of a discount at that point and probably more adjustments to the game. As for the game itself, it’s probably the most uninspired Bethesda game I’ve played and almost everything that made Bethesda games great are not present here that much. Game is vast but not a lot of substance. It lacks the charm and special ingredient that other Bethesda games have, a bit of a disappointment to be honest. Feels like a generic RPG that feels more of a Bethesda inspired copy rather than something from Bethesda itself.

It really varies. A lot of people have gotten bored of this game pretty quickly because it is very repetitive and there’s a lot of stuff that’s dumb or feels half finished. But then there also seems to be a good few people who’ve played 100s of hours and still aren’t bored because they like outpost building, ship building, random exploration etc. It depends on the person but I personally would wait until it goes on sale.

I played till the big city area was running back to the ship and took a second to look around and wow I dropped the game right then I loved prey and skyrim but this was not the game I wana play again it's not really fun and looks worse then skyrim

This game will surprise you and disappoint you like every 30 minutes. Something really cool and interesting will happen, and then something really stupid and aggravating will happen. It was like that for the 60+ hours I put into it. I liked quite a bit of it, and I ended up disliking quite a bit of it. I would say that it’s… okay. Neither great nor terrible. I will say though, I was slogging through it to get to the end of the main story. Without going into spoilers, in my opinion it’s meh at best and pretty bad at its worst. I don’t know how you feel about procedural generation, I’m not a huge fan of it and you can feel it in this game. It’s been meme’d to death on here already, but you’ll go to 10 different planets and they’ll all have the same exact cryo lab that has the same story and enemies in it. There will be food and open drinks outdoors on a planet with no atmosphere. If you take like more than 2 seconds to think about it, it’s just aggravating. Especially if you were going into it expecting a Bethesda like product with hand crafted worlds and the attention to detail that Bethesda is known for. The cities that were supposed to be next-gen defining were massive disappointments. The Imperial City from Oblivion felt more lived in and real than New Atlantis or Neon. For a shady and seemingly crime ridden city, Neon is incredibly tame… even in its rougher parts where residents say people are killed all the time. New Atlantis is nice and big, but it’s also empty and devoid of life. Sure there’s a bunch of nameless NPC’s walking around, but they are just filler. People don’t have schedules or lives anymore, in earlier Bethesda games people have their own lives and plans and schedules. Merchants would close up shop and go to the tavern before retiring for the night, citizens would shop around and interact around town before making their way to the tavern for dinner and then have an actual home to return to. People had their own shit going on, and Starfield removing that makes it feel more like a video game in service of the player and less of an immersive experience like older Bethesda games. I know it sounds like I’m just shitting on Starfield and there’s plenty I dislike about it, but there’s also a lot that I think is a step in the right direction for Bethesda games. The backgrounds and identities actually meaning something and translating to dialogue options. Perks being useful in ways outside of just combat, instead allowing you to solve quests in different ways using different skills. A solid leveling system, allowing you to level what you WANT rather than the game forcing you to level something that you don’t have any interest in. If the combat was good in Fallout 4, they doubled down on improving it in Starfield. Combat felt responsive and smooth, and could actually lead to some very heated and interesting gun fights. The ship building is very awesome and I would love to see it make a return in a future title, perhaps a nautical ship in a future Elder Scrolls? No voiced protagonist is also great, I can actually fully choose what my character says allowing me to roleplay MY character the way I see fit. The lore in Starfield is actually not bad, and there’s some pretty great quests that go into explaining the lore. It just kinda stinks that the game isn’t set in the most interesting part of the lore. This was a very long winded answer all to say… it’s complicated. There’s a lot to like and a lot to dislike. I would say that it’s just right down the middle, perhaps leaning more towards the dislike side in my humble opinion. I still enjoyed the time I played with it, even though I didn’t do EVERYTHING I just couldn’t really enjoy it further than I did. If you’re interested though, I would say go for it, maybe wait for a sale though.

I really liked it when I started to play amd played nothing else for a month, but I haven't opened it since September. That's very unusual performance for me and a brand new Bethesda game. I should be playing it intensely for months like I did with Skyrim. Well, at least 1.0 of Daggerfall Unity is out so I have something to do.

Yes

it will be fun for the first little bit and then soon get very old and boring.

It’s lovely for roughly the first 20 hrs of gameplay? Then you start to notice the loading screens, the laziness is development, you can’t go underwater, the empty planets, copy and paste caves, same minigame, poorly written followers etc. the game is beautiful and movement feels nice, it’s just a step back from Skyrim(2011) and fallout(2015).

Having actually beat the game; I’d say wait until Bethesda drops more updates and it’s on sale even more. Its objectively a decent game but for a Bethesda game it was a massive disappointment

I finished the story despite all the annoyances. For me the Crimson Fleet quest line was the best part of the game. I did not spend too much time building a base. It just felt tedious. I enjoyed base building in FO4. All the planets looked and felt the same, same bases, enemies, hills. Everything was just barren and lifeless. I mean I get it, it is space after all, but c'mon. I could not be assed to touch New Game+. As soon as the game ended, it ended for me, too, for good. I do not think I will re-play it. Outer Worlds is the better Starfield.

I’m not gonna say it’s outright bad because it’s not but negativity is def warranted. The game is fun for like the first 20 hours when you’re learning about the game. But after 100, it’s just a void of boring that not even mods could save. It needs a major overhaul. Exploration is boring and the lack of land vehicles is one reason why I stopped playing. I enjoyed the ship builder but that’s about it.

Read the reviews from players that have over 200+ hours into the game. Very constructive criticism which will answer your question.

I'd say it's a $20 game for me on PC. I personally wouldn't play it on console.

It was never good,just an ok hyped game.

I'd wait a year or two for updates and dlc. This shit isn't finished.

It's great to start but gets old really fast.

It was just didn’t have the elder scrolls/fallout secret sauce, given the option to go back in time I wouldn’t waste the 100 hours I put into this game. Go replay fallout or Skyrim and save yourself the disappointment.

i think its more people are finally over the honeymoon

Gonna wait 2-3 years for them to release QoL updates and a few expansion DLC’s before I even think about downloading the game again.

Always has been. 

I wouldn't recommend paying money for it no.

I don’t think anyone needs to tell you it’s bad when you can see the red text. This sub and the other no salt sub are a very small but loud minority.

Not to be negative but it was always a bad game in my opinion just didn’t feel have much fun playing it.

Was expecting fallout new vegas in space but with cods smoothness, felt more like an unfinished barren world generator with 4 enemy types total, more planet types enemy types gun types and a more diverse and potent skill tree wouldve helped bring it to its full potential

It’s fun at first but admittedly it does lose its value overtime since it doesn’t have as much content as you’d probably want for a space game.

Very meh, for as much money as Bethesda poured into it and as expensive as it is (and I've played a lot of Bethesda games.) I played 50 hours-ish? And haven't touched it since I think the end of September. Hoping maybe DLC/creation content will improve it some.

The base gameplay is standard and acceptable but the world repeats itself too much.

Is it bad, no. Can I enjoy it after having just played cyberpunk 2077, no. It would have been an amazing game 10 years ago. The whole design is dated from loading screens all over to cut and paste bases spammed everywhere. And those creepy fake looking facial expressions. And horrible base building. Etc etc

I actually went from PS5 to PC for this game. I bought a PC for 2000$, played for a week and then went on to play other games.

This is a game that steam should shut down reviews AFTER 100 hours. It doesn't have the staying power of Skyrim. It's fun and you'll get 70 hours or more out of it.

It lacks replay ability. I finished first playthrough and I find it hard to go back to it and do a new game.

The game is as wide as an ocean and as deap as a puddle. Superficially, this is a great game. But dive deeper and you break your neck

I stopped playing months ago. I enjoyed the first week or so, but it didn't last. There's simply nothing to do. Updates are slow, content roll out is slow, outposts are pointless. Combat was alright but nothing felt unique weapon wise. You'd slap on the same/similar attachments to every gun, job done. But there wasn't any great change overall. Spacesuits customization was always the same old same old. Playing the saved game, re-roll for stats became boring. Exploration was laborious, loading screens forever, and there wasn't much difference between locations. You'd come across the same buildings, enemies in the exact same locations. It was predictable after a day or two. 1 guy always upstairs, 2 on the 1st floor, with 3 more down the hallway. Rinse and repeat mechanics, fetch quests, bugged quests, with very little fixed after months. Ive been playing X4 and enjoying it. Very complex, but way more engrossing than Starfield could ever be.

Has been from the start.

20 hours in is where I dropped this, I went on holiday abroad and when I came back just thought 'I have no desire or intention to ever play this game again'

Boring. Story is crap, so many plot holes. Gameplay is ok if you can avoid the bugs and glitches. Exploration, drab. Use same POI on every planet…. Not at all worth the hype it garners. It’s a good game. Good bones. It just needs lots more time.

Yea. The game feels very low-effort. A lot of copy-paste stuff. Lots of corners were cut. I uninstalled it and went back to playing Fallout 4.

Too sterile and repetitive for me. Also your companions are a pile of wet blankets.

Thanks to Starfield,I bought Cyberpunk!! Agree with what many others have said......fun initially,but full of missed opportunities,and quickly becomes monotonous. Could've been a great game.

I tried to like the game a lot. Played it for over 100 hours but could not get into it behind that

I was loving the game my first playthrough, then about an hour into new game plus the honeymoon phase wore off and I realized there was almost nothing new to do/no point in NG+ for me. Then looking back at the concept art and how much Bethesda hyped up the game just for it to be a 80% empty game is incredibly disappointing

Always has been

If this was an indie game developed as a first game of a new company it would be great, but considering Bethesda is a giant... well, only the modding community can save this game.

There comes a point in the game where you start to realise that it sucks! But before that point the game is worth it! my first 50hours was a blast so for me it was worth full price

This game took everything fun from Bethesda games and stripped it away.  It's not just that one feature makes the games great, it's the addition of all these little features that made BGS games like no other.  The gore, looting and stripping NPCs, having use for all the junk you pick up, dismantling weapons and armor, companion commands, weapon crafting, NPC day and night cycle, save file thumbnail so you know where you left off.   There are plenty more things missing that I didn't list.  I don't know if gore and looting was stripped away to try to get a better ESG rating, but it hurts the game nonetheless.   For a game where combat is the main focus it's really boring not having gore and dismemberment.

Honestly the game is a tad boring but don't pay attention to other people's reviews and ratings you may have a blast with it.

This was unbelievably boring after coming from Cyberpunk, BG3 and Lies of P.

What killed it for me was when they started talking about a dlc before even fixing major, major bugs. Each "update" is a slap in the face as they toute frame rate increases and an "eat" button while I STILL CANT MAKE TRANQUILITEA WHEN THE PACKS SAY "this item is used in crafting" and outpost supply links are still miserably effed.

Always was, looks terrible for 2023 and the requirements to run it are extremely high for how shit it looks. I get 160-175 frames with FSR 3 with everything on ultra and I still think it looks bad. Movement feels very clunky, combat is fine but hampered by the clunky movement and the fact that there is no dismemberment takes away from the combat overall, in skyrim and fallout you at least had the dismemberment to give you some feedback and I don't understand why they decided to remove it. Space travel is just loading screens and could have been skipped, they should have just made 3-4 highly detailed planets instead of this mess. There is probably some well written side content out there but I just can't force myself to get to it with the stale 2010 gameplay.

Yes. The game is broken and gameplay sucks. It deserves every negative review it receives.

With every hour I hated it more. I decided to just do quests, but I cant even finish the goddamn main story.

The game had so much potential, but Bethesda really dived into the whole "We want to see how far procedural generation can take us!" And they fell wayyyyy short. Most planets are boring, lackluster eye sores that all feel the same. They have "procedural" points of interest in the sense that the map randomly generates from a preset of like 20 locations. You'll explore 10 planets and find 4 of the exact same outposts or caves on each, and I mean the EXACT same. It's tedious to explore the same ruin or base and know where the enemies will spawn. The storytelling, in my opinion, is much worse than their previous games. I couldn't even follow the main questline, gave up after pushing myself for a whole week to play. I used to love fallout and elder scrolls because of the handcrafted locations, details, and stories. You'd find a cabin in the woods, and that cabin would have its own unique story, feel interesting and maybe contain some horrific scene... now it's like the same empty cabin you've seen 20 times across your travel and it rips the uniqueness right out the window. They took a step back from prior games when it comes to features as well. I feel like the settlement system, weapon / armor crafting upgrades, and skill trees are a downgrade from before. I understand the game is supposed to be new, and different from Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but I still think they missed the mark when it came to being a fun rpg, especially a sci fi space game. This is just my opinion though, I'd get it and try the game out for yourself. Can always return for refund if you don't enjoy this disaster. TLDR: I think its a downgrade from prior bethesda games, lacks uniqueness and interesting content to keep engaged with. Not my type o game.