I really wanted to like this game. I wanted it to be my game of the year. But it fell short of the expectations I had in mind from the trailers.

One of my biggest complaints is the lack of immersion. I spend just as much time in a menu as I do in a game. This is essentially a fast travel simulator. Sure you can go the slow way and go back to your ship and go to space and try to fly in an immersive way. But there's so many loading screens and cutscenes involved that I found myself just opening up the starmap and warping wherever I need to be whenever possible.

There is no space travel in this game. Space flight literally just exists for combat.

The main Constellation story was also the only interesting story for me. The faction's missions were just too short and hardly entertaining.
- I did Ryujin Industries' stealth missions first when I had low stealth skills. It was a miserable time because stealth awful in this game. It also never makes clear that you need to open your inventory and unequip your spacesuit and helmet for stealth to be more effective. But I still found it incredibly easy to get spotted, even with a chameleon ability.
- I did not like how the Crimson Fleet always spoke down to me and gave me passive aggressive threats. Small things but after hearing the same threat for the hundredth time, I started blasting away any Fleet members I came across, not caring about the bounty it gave me.
- The Freestar Rangers were meh. Could have been more interesting if you took on more than just one case.
- I never got around to the UC Vanguard. I just assumed it wouldn't be any better than the previous factions you can be a part of.

Despite having hundreds of star systems you can visit, and thousands of planets and moons you can land on and explore, this world feels so much more dull than previous games. I could get lost in the worlds of Skyrim and Fallout and wander from location to location and do in-depth exploration where I could, soaking up everything I could. I couldn't care less about this game's world. Traveling from location to location is just boring and seeing the same building I've already explored but in a new location thanks to procedural generation just makes it unrewarding.

The economy is very out of wack. Maybe it's for balance. But when I see something valued at 40,000 credits, but then it only sells for 2,000-4,000 credits, I'm left disappointed. Vendors also only ever hold 5,000-10,000 credits, meaning you can only sell a handful of items at a time. I collected high value guns to sell for money. I had like 1,000 cargo capacity consumed on my starship just full of guns waiting to be sold.

The lack of being able to set a resolution is just baffling. I have a 4k monitor, but for a GPU I have an RTX 2080 Super. I couldn't handle playing the game at 4k. So my workaround that I shouldn't have to take is open up my display settings and set my monitor's resolution to 1080p just to get a playable framerate. The lack of DLSS support is also a shame.

I'd love to give this a mixed review if I could. This definitely isn't the worst game of the year. It kept me addicted for 100 hours. However with how shallow quite a bit of the story is, and then comparing it to previous Bethesda titles, I wouldn't recommend buying this game at full price.