I tried so hard to enjoy this game. I'm no stranger to setting my own goals in an open world game, or finding things to do. But Starfield is by far the most disappointing game I played during 2023.

The general feel of the Gameplay is one of the very few things about this game that aren't outright terrible. The gunplay is nice, the ship controls aren't the worst, and the verticality with a boost pack is fun. However, this can only be entertaining for so long with such a lack of things to actually do. Outpost building, resource gathering, and traveling are by far some of the worst aspects of the gameplay, alongside the absurd amount of loading screens/unscippable animations. The perks within the game are almost all uninteresting in their effects or mechanics. There is little variety in build aside from "what flavor of weapon do you want bonus damage for?" The weapon and armor modification perks are arbitrary and just a way to force players to waste levels just to be able to put a completely useless modification on their item. The gameplay loop of the game is also incredibly dull, and can be made even less interesting when you realize that siding with the pirate faction eliminates an entire enemy faction that will spawn in dungeons, because attacking them is a crime if you're allied with them. This leave all of three other factions, one of which I hardly ever encountered. The majority of locations you find will be filled with Pirates, Spacers, or the Eclipse, all with the same exact note items talking about how their bosses want to control more areas. I'll get to my issues with dungeons more later. Yet another problem are the quests. I ran into so many different moments where Bethesda could have done something so, so well, but they didn't. So many of these quests lack any sort of excitement because there is never an actual climax to any of them. Instead, what we get as what should have been a climax, is some watered down, no thought or effort put into it at all, lackluster conclusion with a "big" fight at the end if you're lucky. The biggest examples of this I can say are the entirety of the Terrormorph questline, but especially Londinion, and The Red Mile. Bethesda, how in the world do you manage to make something that's supposed to be a super dangerous death gauntlet, into nothing more than a leisurely stroll through the snow even on the highest difficulty? On top of the fact that you made a better death gauntlet for a DLC for Fallout 4? Did you just entirely forget how to make things interesting? That is one of my biggest issues, at every turn it seems like you could have done something more, something that REALLY puts on a show in so many of these instances in Starfield but you just didn't, why? Did you run out of time? Did you decide that would be too exciting? Did you decide that instead of making things interesting or exciting, that the most important thing was to make sure this game was as corporately acceptable as possible? Come on, I know you can do better, you should have done better.

The item variety here is a mixed bag, there are some genuinely cool guns on offer here while others are much less appealing. There's also the issue of some guns just feeling absolutely useless due to "balance". But in terms of space suits, the variety feels so dull and lackluster. So many of them feel exactly the same, their modifications are all uninteresting and or an obvious only one option thats worth taking. Also, you should have had an option to make visors opaque if theyre weren't already. This is all on top of the system of item rarity plus leveled items. The special perks range from absolutely insane melt anything in seconds to a perk that's entirely pointless because double damage on the first shot for an automatic weapon is about as useful as having a superpower that lets you breathe oxygen. This system yet again has the same issue it had in Fallout 4; unique items you get are almost all completely uninteresting and not actually unique whatsoever. How are you gonna have a unique gun that drops with no perks, at low level, and the only detail is it has a special skin? If it were up to me, I'd have made it so you can dismantle items you get with perks you don't like for a material to add perks to other items. That way players wouldn't be stuck with getting items that are made totally useless because of rng, and they'd be able to make those unique items actually feel special. Is also a major issue in the fact that there are so few melee weapons. Yes I get this is a space game, yes I get guns would probably be most used, but that's not an excuse to have melee weapons be an option only to not make it nearly as in depth or intuitive as using a gun instead. As an extension of this, melee enemies are laughable. Using the power that disarms people is just an immediate easy fight because melee weapons are so non-threatening.
Yet another issue is clutter, there are so many items that just exist as flavor for the environment, and serve no other purpose. They are not worth selling, they cannot be dismantled, and they are all over the place/in the way of actual loot. The countless food and drink items are also all almost entirely useless even with the perks to make them better. This is compounded by the fact that the weight of everything feels extremely excessive to the point that you should only carry about one weapon and just use the rest of your capacity for materials. And what makes this even worse, is Bethesda deciding to bring back the ridiculous idea of having limited weight in storage containers, including those you build in an outpost. So inventory management becomes this horrible, annoying juggle of fitting enough on your ship to fly home, drop everything off in the single storage area without a limit, going back to your ship, and then going back to what you were doing. There's just nothing about any of the loot in this game that's exciting because it's all just a diceroll to see if you get a busted combo. And even then, once you get to the special point in the game, all of your loot becomes entirely meaningless because you have to do it all over again.

This one is a little more subjective than my other points. I really tried to like some of the companions, I really did. Absolutely none of them did anything to earn a place in my heart. The only one of them that I care for is the robot because at least he has an excuse to be soulless, and despite that he still has more personality than any of them. Another issue I have is just, how, much, they, talk. And that wouldn't be a bad thing if they had anything interesting to say, but they don't. I'm not gonna care about this lady's backstory just because she keeps telling me every five minutes that she wants to talk, nor am I gonna care about Mr. Cowboy when his entire personality boils down to divorced father with daddy and grandaddy issues. Having them remind players they want to talk is fine, but having them do so every five ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ minutes, and in the middle of dialogue with someone else, or even more stupid, when being shot at isn't fun, it's annoying. It makes me want to avoid even getting remotely close to any of them cause they're just gonna say "Can we talk" and then waste ten minutes to give you a dialogue option that boils down to either "say something supportive" or "be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥". Also, bringing back the system of companion affinity is just as, if not even more annoying here than in Fallout 4. At least the companions in Fallout 4 were consistent with what they did or didn't like. But the companions in Starfield? They are completely nonsensical. One moment they'll chastise you for even thinking about telling a lie or hearing someone out about an idea but NOT EVEN AGREEING TO IT, and then that same companion will hear you agree to do something awful and be like "always fun to get up to some mischief".

TLDR: Starfield had potential, but none of it is ever realized.