Recent reviews by hal dente

yeah this game's pretty fun

genuinely incredible game. the moment to moment gameplay is robust and engaging, the build customization factor is satisfying, the exploration and side content is everything it needed to be. the game streamlines many stalwart JRPG staples such as item management by refreshing them at "bonfires", which has the effect of instead of opening a chest and finding an ether you find a piece of gear that'll improve a build or some currency towards that end. combat system often requires you to understand individual enemies' movesets and leads to very satisfying moments where you execute perfectly and completely destroy a boss that was previously destroying you for, on the hardest difficulty, literally hours.

past that, the art direction and cinematography really push this game over the edge. the exploration of grief and how it affects how people think and act is executed so strongly that by the end of the game you'll likely have a pretty weighted opinion on why your choice was justified. and that opinion will ultimately be based on enumerable reasons such as how much side content you did in the game but also including your own personal lived experience outside of the game. which is not such a difference in response from the reactions of the in universe characters to their own personal gommage. I think that sort of reaction is what many pieces of art aim for and I feel that this game has hit that mark. at the very least, you can see the thought behind many of the decisions and story beats in the game; the brush strokes, as it were.

minor gripes: not having a minimap certainly makes the game more immersive but can be disorientating at points especially coming out of battle or a menu. side content is difficult but can make you overleveled for main quests which in turn make those battles too easy. of course that's something you have the choice of opting into however. small things in the long run.

incredible presentation and atmosphere. a very clear sense of vision permeates through every step. resource management leads to some genuinely tense situations and the character cast should keep multiple plays feeling fresh.

just an all around tastefully presented eldritch horror game. if you have any interest in that sort of thing I highly recommend this game

CINEMA

it's peak

perfect for the steam deck

good story, incredible presentation.

main gripes would be some performance issues I had. and also games like this make me very motion sick. and it's a bit short but a good experience.

the latest patch (5) is such a nice gesture of goodwill towards its community. Larian's continued willingness to listen to the criticisms of their players is so very refreshing considering the modern landscape of game development.

if you have any interest in this game whatsoever you should buy it. it is a very rare gem of a game, becoming rarer still unfortunately.

game's fun enough but pretty soulless. definitely wait until it's on sale and modders have fixed the issues with the game.

some general thoughts:
-people keep calling this Fallout in space, but they should specify that it is not Fallout 1,2,3, or NV in space, it's Fallout 4 in space. In fact it's probably more diluted than that considering at best the choices you can make in quests fall down to a binary decision. For example in NV the first major quest has a bunch of different outcomes where you can side with different town factions. In Starfield, even in the most basic throwaway quest the NPCs are immortal - generally meaning that they only created one outcome for the quest, with not even a fail state for it.

-scummy that Bethesda has created a brand where they're basically known for being buggy and sub-optimal with the expectation that dedicated modders will fix the issues on their own time. that practice is scummier even still when you realize that BGS is now attached to Microsoft, one of the biggest companies on this planet and who have basically been the past few years attempting (and succeeding) to monopolize the gaming space (monopoly = bad btw :( especially for the consumer).

-on that note it's clear that some concessions on M+KB controls have been made to cater to console gamers (specifically for the series X) for example the mouse input doesn't have raw input and has mismatched vertical and horizontal movement. some of the UI issues I think also stem from that, having to make it console friendly. they key bindings are also rather strange at times.

-digipicking is fun. space ship building and combat is fun (except if you're up against more than 3 ships on very hard then you just get completely beamed).

-melee combat is a complete afterthought and not viable to main.

-NPC dialogue is strange at best coupled with the uncanny mouth movements and staring makes "immersion" very difficult.

a lot of these gripes can be fixed with mods sure, but it's appalling that a large company like this can get away with not fixing these things because they know their fans will pick up the slack. they could've fixed these issues themselves. but they know they don't have to so they didn't.
there is a lot to do in the game true but all of it lacks polish. some games are clearly a labor of love - Starfield is not one of those games.

undiluted Yakuza soul infused into a job system JRPG with both a coherent and compelling story

You get used to the combat. 3/4 of the final bosses are some of the best in the series. And the story's good too.

The main issue is the minigames. They don't work properly on the remaster's 60fps. And a decent amount of substories are locked behind these minigames as well. Because of that, a good chunk of the Yakuza spark is lost.

If you just do the main story it's not that bad. I wouldn't recommend completing this one though.