I'll start my review by quoting former Bethesda design director, Bruce Nesmith, "We started to talk ourselves into the fact of we were infallible. There was nothing we couldn't do. And clearly that's wrong." Which was written in the context of Fallout 76, and clearly still hasn't left their system on the release of Starfield.

A lot of people have already mentioned the bad far better than I ever will within their own reviews, so you should refer to them, instead I'll actually just base my review off the developer responses for the currently most popular reviews.

Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.

Starfield, at least in my opinion, is marketed as a game about space exploration, especially given that the faction you're initially forced to join entirely revolves around that concept. As is typical of Bethesda games, they tend to pride themselves in environmental story-telling.

However, declaring that a planet is meant to be empty by design entirely seems like an excuse for reducing workload, when in actuality.. it is boring. The difference is, I am sat at my desk, staring at a monitor made up by a bunch of pixels that poorly mimics a planets surface, I cannot explore in any direction for too long before the game throws up a text message telling me I went too far, and once you explore a handful of surfaces, you've seen them all, because nearly every planet uses the same random generation of assets and landmarks. If you deleted 90% of the planets and populated the 10% with a vast array of content I'd be infinitely more pleased than having a large percentage being "empty by design".

Quests were made to be completed in several ways. You get to decide who lives and who dies at crucial points of the story, as well as how to go about meeting any given objective.

This is not true, the vast majority of quests have objectively 'good' dialogue responses or a RNG based persuasion system that determines a generic 'positive' outcome or a 'bad' outcome. It's no more intuitive than this, you do not have the creative freedom to solve many tasks yourself and I often find myself just picking what the game wants me to pick instead of what I'd think truly reflect my character I'm trying to build up.

If you are looking to feel "OP", we recommend looking at completing the quests that grant you special powers to go along with your heavy weaponry. If you don't feel unstoppable then, we are not sure you will feel like that in any game!

Special powers and heavy weaponry is a cop-out justification for face-tanking spongy enemies, it's artificial difficulty and most actual combat is entirely reliant on sponging. As the original review this was sent under accurately pointed out, one fight pretty much summarises all the fights you'll have in the game.

We recommend playing around with ship building and increasing the difficulty you play on if you find it underwhelming. Its a completely different experience playing a fast ship that can dodge projectiles vs a slow tank of a ship that is shooting at enemies in a shield depletion race.

Spaceship combat is a welcome addition, as is this modular customisation, both elements I enjoy. But it's underutilised. The combat can be reduced down to very basic dog-fighting, of flying behind a spaceship so it can't shoot you, and holding down left and right click until the on-screen health-bar hits zero. It's not particularly involved, and even outside of combat, flying ships has absolutely no purpose as the vast majority of travel is done from the fast-travel map. I spend more time in the workshop on my ship than I do actually piloting it, so it has just become a glorified flying outpost.

Outpost creation is helpful for those who want to be able to craft resources or to proceed with building an area where advanced research can be done like Alien breeding. You will always gain lots of XP for your production progress as well as the ability to continue to expand your own outpost.

Alluring to my previous point about the ship, I keep all my companions on the same ship (despite needing an unnecessary amount of steps to get a crew larger than 4), I use my ship entirely for storage, I use my ship entirely for travel, I use my ship entirely for modding weapons and researching. It's just a flying outpost, to the point of making actual outposts totally redundant.

So of course, I may need an outpost to gain resources right? That can totally be skipped as there are a great variety of vendors that provide any resources you need for sale, as well as the fact that the majority of the resources you need can be collected by hand fairly quickly with the cutter.

It makes the process of waiting between genuine hours of loadscreens, of scouring the universe for perfect resource planets, then to interlink all your individual outposts, make sure they're all powered and producing resources, perhaps even populating them, and then producing the desired end product, totally futile. I can alternatively just go through 1 loading screen to Jemison Mercantile, and buy the titanium I needed for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tactical grip on a gun I'm going to bin in a few levels.

If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband.

No. The side quests are mostly glorified fetch missions that have a linear outcome and smidge of interesting content at the best of times, I often find myself doing them for LACK of anything better to do, to unclog missions list of reiterations of the same task and score a few creds, rather than as a genuine source of entertainment. The smuggling side of things is just pretty much pointless when I have enough fuel to skip all the way to the Den and sell them without worry.

Companions can be valuable allies and assets, if you choose to invest in them. Just like Crew members, Companions can lend a hand in the field. Your companions can provide extra storage, extra firepower, various bonues, and much more. They can also be customized with different weapons, outfits, spacesuits and helmets if you did not like what they started with.

The companions are woefully one-dimensional, they all have backstories and a place in the plot I'm sure, but none of them particular stand out to me as anything but "mildly-quirked up space explorers". While in cyber-punk I was having genuine trouble picking who I wanted to invest my time into, or the outer worlds where I felt compelled to help Parvati simply just for existing.. I like Barrett for his care-free, quip cracking nature but.. I cannot for the life of me bring myself to care about him while the game just thrusts information about the characters onto me for dialogue at inappropriate times (while I'm stealing aurora in Neon city, Barrett decided he wanted to talk to me about his dead husband ) where the range of my available responses is "noooo I won't help you loser :P", "yeah sure thing buddy i am here for you :D" and "i am going to kiss you because i am attracted to you", quite genuinely, it even labels the option to start romancing someone with [Flirt] before you even select it.

[h1] Here we are again, another title which is playable to the point of earning a positive review, but the content available is more deserving of a 'mixed' review if it were an option. [/h1] I'll start my review by quoting former Bethesda design director, Bruce Nesmith, "We started to talk ourselves into the fact of we were infallible. There was nothing we couldn't do. And clearly that's wrong." Which was written in the context of Fallout 76, and clearly still hasn't left their system on the release of Starfield. A lot of people have already mentioned the bad far better than I ever will within their own reviews, so you should refer to them, instead I'll actually just base my review off the developer responses for the currently most popular reviews. [b]Some of Starfield’s planets are meant to be empty by design - but that's not boring. “When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored." The intention of Starfield's exploration is to evoke a feeling of smallness in players and make you feel overwhelmed. You can continue to explore and find worlds that do have resources you need or hidden outposts to look through.[/b] Starfield, at least in my opinion, is marketed as a game about space exploration, especially given that the faction you're initially forced to join entirely revolves around that concept. As is typical of Bethesda games, they tend to pride themselves in environmental story-telling. However, declaring that a planet is meant to be empty by design entirely seems like an excuse for reducing workload, when in actuality.. it is boring. The difference is, I am sat at my desk, staring at a monitor made up by a bunch of pixels that poorly mimics a planets surface, I cannot explore in any direction for too long before the game throws up a text message telling me I went too far, and once you explore a handful of surfaces, you've seen them all, because nearly every planet uses the same random generation of assets and landmarks. If you deleted 90% of the planets and populated the 10% with a vast array of content I'd be infinitely more pleased than having a large percentage being "empty by design". [b]Quests were made to be completed in several ways. You get to decide who lives and who dies at crucial points of the story, as well as how to go about meeting any given objective.[/b] This is not true, the vast majority of quests have objectively 'good' dialogue responses or a RNG based persuasion system that determines a generic 'positive' outcome or a 'bad' outcome. It's no more intuitive than this, you do not have the creative freedom to solve many tasks yourself and I often find myself just picking what the game wants me to pick instead of what I'd think truly reflect my character I'm trying to build up. [b]If you are looking to feel "OP", we recommend looking at completing the quests that grant you special powers to go along with your heavy weaponry. If you don't feel unstoppable then, we are not sure you will feel like that in any game![/b] Special powers and heavy weaponry is a cop-out justification for face-tanking spongy enemies, it's artificial difficulty and most actual combat is entirely reliant on sponging. As the original review this was sent under accurately pointed out, one fight pretty much summarises all the fights you'll have in the game. [b]We recommend playing around with ship building and increasing the difficulty you play on if you find it underwhelming. Its a completely different experience playing a fast ship that can dodge projectiles vs a slow tank of a ship that is shooting at enemies in a shield depletion race.[/b] Spaceship combat is a welcome addition, as is this modular customisation, both elements I enjoy. But it's underutilised. The combat can be reduced down to very basic dog-fighting, of flying behind a spaceship so it can't shoot you, and holding down left and right click until the on-screen health-bar hits zero. It's not particularly involved, and even outside of combat, flying ships has absolutely no purpose as the vast majority of travel is done from the fast-travel map. I spend more time in the workshop on my ship than I do actually piloting it, so it has just become a glorified flying outpost. [b]Outpost creation is helpful for those who want to be able to craft resources or to proceed with building an area where advanced research can be done like Alien breeding. You will always gain lots of XP for your production progress as well as the ability to continue to expand your own outpost.[/b] Alluring to my previous point about the ship, I keep all my companions on the same ship (despite needing an unnecessary amount of steps to get a crew larger than 4), I use my ship entirely for storage, I use my ship entirely for travel, I use my ship entirely for modding weapons and researching. It's just a flying outpost, to the point of making actual outposts totally redundant. So of course, I may need an outpost to gain resources right? That can totally be skipped as there are a great variety of vendors that provide any resources you need for sale, as well as the fact that the majority of the resources you need can be collected by hand fairly quickly with the cutter. It makes the process of waiting between genuine hours of loadscreens, of scouring the universe for perfect resource planets, then to interlink all your individual outposts, make sure they're all powered and producing resources, perhaps even populating them, and then producing the desired end product, totally futile. I can alternatively just go through 1 loading screen to Jemison Mercantile, and buy the titanium I needed for a god damn tactical grip on a gun I'm going to bin in a few levels. [b]If you feel that things are getting boring, there is so much more to do than just the main mission! There are many side missions where you can learn more about the people and story of Starfield. You can take time to explore various planets for resources and items. Break the law by smuggling and selling contraband.[/b] No. The side quests are mostly glorified fetch missions that have a linear outcome and smidge of interesting content at the best of times, I often find myself doing them for LACK of anything better to do, to unclog missions list of reiterations of the same task and score a few creds, rather than as a genuine source of entertainment. The smuggling side of things is just pretty much pointless when I have enough fuel to skip all the way to the Den and sell them without worry. [b]Companions can be valuable allies and assets, if you choose to invest in them. Just like Crew members, Companions can lend a hand in the field. Your companions can provide extra storage, extra firepower, various bonues, and much more. They can also be customized with different weapons, outfits, spacesuits and helmets if you did not like what they started with. [/b] The companions are woefully one-dimensional, they all have backstories and a place in the plot I'm sure, but none of them particular stand out to me as anything but "mildly-quirked up space explorers". While in cyber-punk I was having genuine trouble picking who I wanted to invest my time into, or the outer worlds where I felt compelled to help Parvati simply just for existing.. I like Barrett for his care-free, quip cracking nature but.. I cannot for the life of me bring myself to care about him while the game just thrusts information about the characters onto me for dialogue at inappropriate times (while I'm stealing aurora in Neon city, Barrett decided he wanted to talk to me about [spoiler] his dead husband [/spoiler] ) where the range of my available responses is "noooo I won't help you loser :P", "yeah sure thing buddy i am here for you :D" and "i am going to kiss you because i am attracted to you", quite genuinely, it even labels the option to start romancing someone with [Flirt] before you even select it.