Recent reviews by MrPajitnov

Frontier Developments has consistently disrespected their players' time with punishing grinds and 'use it or lose it' mechanics, and I find I'm just not willing to engage with that sort of design philosophy anymore. It's a fun game if you pick it up on sale and want to fly around a bit, but be warned that FDev does not care about your time.

From 11/2019-07/2021 I had invested thousands of hours and an embarrassing amount of money into this game, but the Odyssey implementation was so botched and the new gameplay was so disappointing and even more grindy that I couldn't bring myself to play it for over a year. Watching E:D languish while FDev sunk millions into several franchises that failed on launch did little to encourage me, but I came back for a while after the Thargoid story line started. I found that the gameplay I enjoyed the most (BGS and some amount of power play) was a shadow of itself, and the new content required yet another obnoxious grind to be able to do much of anything. Seeing as I have a job and a family I shelved the game for another year and went on my merry way.

After some encouraging announcements about the future of E:D this week, I decided to reinstall the game again to see how things are, only to find that my fleet carrier has been decommissioned and much of my inventory has been wiped out. That's billions of credits, thousands of tons of valuable inventory, and hundreds of hours just gone. I could not have asked for a better sign that it was time for me to give up on this game entirely.

It's not a bad game, it's just not particularly fun or interesting. The universe is bland and flat, which is typical of Bethesda games since Oblivion. But where Oblivion, Skyrim and FO 3-4 could coast on the deep lore established in earlier games, this feels like a modern Bethesda sandbox with almost no flavor or character. There are some fun side stories and quest chains to stumble into, but the main storyline is predictable and repetitive while the writing feels like it was done by a committee in many areas.

The mechanics are all ~fine~, but nothing really stands out as something Starfield is doing better than any other space game. It fact, the map and travel system seem to encourage you to bypass your spaceship entirely. Space flight and dog fighting are simplistic, with added fun in the form of hostile boarding actions. The gun play ranges from acceptable to downright fun while melee feels like an afterthought.

Might be worth picking up on sale, but I'm regretting the $70 I paid for it.