Recent reviews by rinks361

It would not surprise me if Bethesda just drops Starfield completely. This game was supposed to be the saving grace for Xbox, but the effort on this was so low that I now think it was designed to weaken Xbox even further. Pivoting and releasing Starfield for Playstation may be their only saving grace to make up from this being on Game Pass and losing out on millions in potential sales (that wouldn't have existed even if it were only on Xbox and not on Game Pass at all). The PC sector couldn't even save this game with a nearly non-existent modding community. It wouldn't surprise me if Bethesda goes out of business, but hopefully they put all their chips into Elder Scrolls 6.

This expansion is nothing but a quick side quest that for the money, (half the price of the actual game) is absolutely not worth it. This was a $10 DLC at best. Between the poor writing, cardboard cutout NPC's, and your character of course being thrust into a set of circumstances in less time than it takes to take a breath. The entire DLC like the main game feels rushed and devoid of purpose. Skyrim was the same way until the Interesting NPC's and other mods actually breathed some life into it. Starfield and Shattered Space DESPERATELY needs the same treatment. Vast, empty planets and equally sparse cities and settlements seem more like a movie backdrop than anything meaningful, especially with the number of loading screens that unfortunately an option like "Open Cities" from Skyrim can't fix. I've got no hope for whatever next add-on's Bethesda has planned, if any at this point.

Two hours in and I can already tell this is going to rival The Sims. From the graphics, to the innovative ideas with interactions, AI, facial and motion capture, and the fact that I can have a Zoi wake up at 5am, use the restroom, shower, make breakfast, and eat only for it to be 6am instead of 12pm is fantastic. The pacing is a bit slow, but I'd rather have that instead of ordering a Sim to go to the fridge to make breakfast and somehow walking from the living room to the kitchen a whole hour passes before it even starts cooking. The scheduling system is also pretty cool.

The only thing I don't like so far, which I'm sure is coming soon, is the ability to chat over the phone with other Zoi's or send text messages without having to wait to get a text from a Zoi just to select some pre-generated responses. I see you can type in the text box, so I'm hoping this maybe means adding in some sort of AI chat recognition where you can actually send texts/chats to other Zoi's to respond to?

I'd complain about not having a rig capable of playing this game, but I'm not poor and trying to still run a GTX 980 in 2025 and acting like devs need to create games for users still running Pentium IV and 2GB of RAM. Great looking game. Runs a HELL of a lot better than Dragons Dogma 2 did at launch. Maybe players should just get a console if they're so upset they can't run the game properly. PC gaming definitely isn't for you.

Thank God I didn't listen to the incels mad about having to pick if they're a he or a her in character creation. The graphics aren't nearly as "Fortnite" as they were shown a few trailers ago. The combat is much more action oriented and took some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's fun (playing as a mage right now). I seen someone review bombing on Google saying the performance was terrible. I'm on max settings, full ray tracing, quality DLSS, no frame gen, and playing on the 57" Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 on the 240Hz 5120 x 1440p mode and am getting smooth frames, 129 at the moment during combat, with sync off and gsync enabled. Do note though, if someone is trying to max out settings with trash hardware...well you're going to get bad performance.

For comparison, I'm playing on the Suprim liquid cooled RTX 4090, R9 7950X3D with a liquid cooler, 64 GB of DDR5-5600, and a 4 TB Samsung 990 EVO SSD, no overclocks. To get a grittier look, similar to Origins, I use Nvidia's game filter settings to make the game less "cartoon saturated" like some claim it is (the default is just fine, but again, playing on a potato and everything will look more like Fortnite with little to no textures) and more "earthy" looking. So far I'm a few hours in (a good hour was spent creating characters, backstory, and trying to get as close to the old Inquisition character as possible) and the story is good so far, but I wish there was a side story showing how your character even ends up in the situation to begin with.

So far I haven't had any "woke agenda" pushed into my face. The game is entertaining enough to make me want to call off of work tomorrow, but it's not that serious. Dialog is same as it has been since Dragon Age 2 with choosing different choices using a wheel, but more in line with Inquisition where it shows your tone/attitude/inflection. Branching dialog actually adds things where little side notes appear that (I think) influence the way characters feel towards you like "You decided to x with y" in addition to the previous "X liked that, Y disliked that" pop up messages. You can also go full mystery mode and hide all that UI stuff if you don't want to know how the other characters react to what you choose to do or say.

I also like the weapon switching in this one to choose different fighting styles. Makes the game more dynamic than the boring "hold button to endlessly attack" thing with some hot keys thrown in to do special moves. Give the game a shot. If you hate it, refund it, but if you're getting it just to review bombing it because incels told you it's "woke", you should have your Steam account banned if not at least banned from reviewing games at all. It's pathetic that some people will do that and make others miss out on what's looking to be an amazing game, possibly GOTY contender.

So far I like:
- The character creator (minus the complexions, see below)
- The hair effects
- Performance (hard to believe this is a BioWare/EA game)
- Combat
- No constant loading screens like DA:2 anytime you enter a building or move to another area in a map
- Graphics are up to standard, especially if you go all out with RT options

The downsides to the game (so far):
- Complexions (some have weird, discolorations in the cheeks/forehead, almost like lines that don't match your skin tone)
- Eye sliders (your eyes will either be too closed and you look high, or they'll be too open and you'll look highly caffinated. Can't seem to find a happy medium)
- The cheeks (initial default character had super pronounced cheekbones and looked like he had excessive plastic surgery)
- Lips don't always match the speaking voice
- Main character runs all "dumpy", kinda like you have to shidd or already shidded yourself or you're super upset about shidding yourself and someone made fun of you and now you're doing that hilarious upset running away thing: tenor dot com/view/crying-gif-12980937)
- Main characters eyes are kinda ♥♥♥♥-eyed or lazy looking at times
- Very linear compared to Inquisition, but not as linear as DA:2
- Not a lot of exploration due to the more linear nature (there's some off trodden paths, but not all lead to treasure)

terrible controller support

So broken on Legion Go and Steam Deck

If you love being stun-locked by low level enemies, killed easily while you struggle as some "savior" who is complete trash, and have it passed off as being a "souls-like" game, then this is for you.

Doesn't launch. Says the game is playing but there is nothing, so all 3.1 hours on record is a lie.

Feels like an early access game. NPC's look like NPC's. NPC enemies don't behave naturally, but more like mindless bullet sponges. Takes a few hits with a high powered rifle to take someone down. When you shoot them, they jank around a bit but return to their normal position as if they weren't shot at all. Everyone has dead, lifeless eyes. Not sure why there is a customization option, as there aren't many options to choose from and they're all locked anyways. Also, the dog in the gas station.

Great game in the spirit of the first one with nice additions to make it more modern. Glad they kept the single player aspect instead of going multiplayer. Performance issues are definitely there. Sucks you have to mod in DLSS 3 and framegen just to get decent FPS in cities or highly chaotic battles. The people complaining about microtransactions need to relax. They're completely optional and all items can be found in game.