Recent reviews by Sun3vi1

Edited review... my initial first impression was very bad based on performance from old hardware and audio lag issues that stemmed from running from a HDD instead of a SSD.

The updated review below is post-upgrade to a new 14th gen i9, M.2, and RTX 4090 build.

The Good:
- Starfield is visually stunning on capable current gen hardware. Both my fiance and I have been playing it at 4K on RTX series cards and have found the experience to be smooth and immersive. Hers is an RTX 4070 card and it works very well at 4K as well with 15-20% upscaling.
- At ultra settings and 4K, texture crispness (rocks and stone in the landscape are super crisp) and lighting effects stand out as particularly stunning next to just about every other game in my library. I've opened up skyrim, Fallout 4, and others and there's an immediately noticeable difference in fidelity. The compromises made for visuals at are probably also responsible for the experience being worse than the typical game on average hardware. i.e. the textures are probably much bigger.
- Incredibly, with no upscaling, the game pushes the 4090 near its limits with 97% utilization in some scenes and the occasional sub-60 FPS at 4K though upscaling can give you significant margin with that level of hardware.
- I really think the creator's vision was to create a stark contrast between the cities with the remnants of humanity and the beautiful, brutal, often near-deserted landscapes across the galaxy that reinforces this sense of being a small part of the universe. In other words, Fallout cities in space, meets NASA exploration.
- I'm very early in the game but the quests so far have been interesting and there's definitely some rewarding story elements.
- Now that I've finally built a new computer spec-ed specifically for Starfield, I can't say I've been too disappointed with the experience. A lot of the issues mentioned in reviews (my first included) are fixed via recent hardware, especially an SSD.
- Viewed through the 'desolation of space' lens I really think it works well but I can understand how it may be different than some folks expect. I can particularly understand being disappointed walking across a desolate planet if there's no narrative payoff and the visuals are low quality.

The Bad:
- Unlike most Bethesda games, there is little point in non-quest exploration of planets. Upon landing I've found many labs and structures which look interesting. I've invested hours sometimes in navigating them, looking for a narrative payoff, just to find they contain random loot and no story elements.
- My understanding is that many of these non-quest locations are auto generated in some way. I think this is the 'soullessness' folks have alluded to in other reviews. The scope of the land is just too large to have hand crafted stuff everywhere so things off the beaten path are mechanically generated. IMO, just stay on the quest lines and it's easy to ignore this issue but it may feel disappointing to long time Bethesda fans who enjoy unstructured exploration.
- The analogy is dungeons. Dungeons in skyrim don't need a story but with deserted labs you kind of expect one. This is one way the Bethesda formula didn't translate well to this genre.
- Performance is horrendous on old hardware. I had a Steamdeck + PC with ~10 year old i7 and GTX 980 SLI and neither broke ~30 FPS. While the desktop is an old rig, it was extremely capable at the time and has been able to play most recent AAA games at at least medium settings. Even on the absolute lowest settings it would barely break 30 FPS at 1080p and looked terrible whereas games like Prey, Soma, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. would play at 3X the resolution at ultra and 60FPS and look massively better.
- A big part of the problem is that the game doesn't support SLI anymore (fair, it's been unsupported a long time). This puts it in stark contrast with the performance of games that are just 3-4 years old that do support SLI.
- Requires SSD -- audio is streamed from disk and lags without an SSD. Loading screens are horrendously long without one as well. With M.2 drive it's about 2 seconds per load screen.

TL;DR: if you have a capable very recent PC (RTX 3000 series or newer + SSD) it seems like it will be a fantastic experience. If your hardware is even close to aging it might be worth waiting. The experience is largely hinged on the visuals IMO and lacks luster when the game isn't running smoothly and at medium+ visuals.

Feedback for the developers: consider the median hardware spec when designing a game. A game that runs poorly for most people will not be generally well received.

Actually a really fun game with great mechanics! Would be a 9 out of 10 if it weren't buggy as hell. Instead gets 7.