Is Starfield Worth the Hype? Let's Talk Pros and Cons

[Aramaa11]

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about Starfield recently and I'm debating whether to buy it. The space exploration and customization elements sound amazing, catering to my love for open-world games. The idea of exploring a vast, procedurally generated galaxy is appealing. However, I've read reviews mentioning the slow pacing and some clunky mechanics like space combat.

For those who have played Starfield, what's your take? Does it meet the hype or fall short in some areas? I'm interested in hearing both the positives and negatives from those with experience. How does it stack up against games like No Man’s Sky or Mass Effect in terms of story and gameplay depth?

I'm undecided and looking for honest feedback before making a decision, so any insights would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Pifanjr]

From what I've read, Starfield is primarily a FPS/RPG hybrid. Everything else is just kind of tacked on to give a sense of immersion if players dabble in it, but none of it holds up on its own.

The spaceship customization for example is generally considered pretty good, but since there isn't much content in space and the modules you can choose from only superficially affect gameplay it should primarily be seen as a fun side system.

The base construction is kind of like the spaceship customization, but at least you see your ship frequently. As far as I'm aware, there is no real reason to build a base, but you can do it if you don't like the idea of your character living on their ship. You would need to go out of your way to actually visit your base though.

Exploring other planets is primarily an excuse to find some more things to shoot. The generated structures start repeating after a while, with all the enemies and items in the exact same spot even if they're on completely different planets. It's probably fine if you occasionally stop on a planet, but if you try to primarily play the game by exploring different planets it's again not going to hold up.

Of course, this being a Bethesda game, there are already a ton of mods that tweak and add content to improve the weaker parts of the game, but I think it's good to limit your expectations of the parts of the game that aren't meant to be the main focus.

 

[neogunhero]

I bought it on Day 1, I’ve since clocked ~80 hours into it but haven’t played much at all this whole year, so my experience is mainly from launch.

It has the bones of a great Bethesda RPG but has some game design choices that make it tedious to play which may not ever get remedied. I love the combat, if you thought Fallout 4 was a step up in Bethesda combat, Starfield took it up another notch. The gunfights, weapon variety and customization is great. Ship building and customization is awesome too. Dialogue, voice acting, and overall story is good. The graphics and soundtrack are awesome also. Soundtrack isn’t as memorable as previous Bethesda titles but the ambient music and combat music does the job and sounds good.

The part that gets in the way of this being a truly great Bethesda game is the same thing everyone complains about, the fast traveling. There is no free spaceship flying unless you are in orbit around a planet and get into a dogfight. To travel from one planet to another you have to watch a cutscene/loading screen and you will be doing this A LOT. Especially if you’re like me and you take time to grind out money, this becomes a massive pain in the rear end. I found the best way to make money fast to to clear out enemy bases, take all their weapons, armor and boost packs then go back to a planet to sell it all. Something like grinding money you want to do without any distraction and as quickly as possible. Having to constantly travel everywhere hampers the experience, causing slowdowns and downtime between actually playing the game.

It’s different from fast traveling in games like Fallout and Skyrim. I suppose it’s because you know you could just walk there or ride your horse there but you choose to do fast travel so the load screen is not a problem in those games. However in Starfield when your one and only singular option is the fast travel everywhere, then it becomes very annoying. Couple this with longer loading times since you aren’t loading a part of the same world but instead a totally different “level”, this becomes a huuuuge headache when trying to play the game.

If I had to give this game a rating I would give it a 6/10. Like I said, it’s got the bones to be a great Bethesda RPG, but there are other features so ingrained into the design of the whole game there may never be a change to how the core mechanics work.

 

[Zloth]

Exploring other planets is primarily an excuse to find some more things to shoot. The generated structures start repeating after a while, with all the enemies and items in the exact same spot even if they're on completely different planets. It's probably fine if you occasionally stop on a planet, but if you try to primarily play the game by exploring different planets it's again not going to hold up.

Strange, coming from the company that made Daggerfall, with its procedural dungeons.

 

[Pifanjr]

Strange, coming from the company that made Daggerfall, with its procedural dungeons.

I agree. I do wonder if they're planning on making the points of interest more procedural later, because it does seem like one of the most requested features next to getting rid of all of the loading screens.

Bethesda games for all of their jank have always been pretty good at making the player immersed in the world and I think most of the complaints about Starfield are about the stuff that breaks immersion the most. Having the loading screens hide behind a take-off/landing/warp speed animation would probably already help a ton with immersion even if you're technically still looking at a loading screen. Similarly, having the locations you find being slightly more randomized in their layout, enemies and items you can find would help a lot as well.

 

[Frag Maniac]

IMO it would be very worth the hype save for not having enough epic missions. Also, the NG+ system if you choose to fully upgrade all the powers is very repetitious with the same exact floating in zero G mini game every time you acquire a new power or higher level of one. To make matters worse, in roughly 7 NG+ runs I never once saw any of the different scenarios the devs said can occur, so everything felt the same each NG+ except for slightly different dialog from the main characters at the start because they no longer recognize you.

Ship building can be hard to understand at first, but once you do it is largely for convenience and aesthetics, meaning you can build a very capable ship just by doing simple modifications to one of two you get free in the game. In fact what many don't tell you is you have to spend a LONG time playing to amass what's required to build those elaborate ships. So while they may be more convenient as far as what you can do onboard, it is far from convenient acquiring what you need to build them.

That said, there ARE ways to setup automated resource farming stations on planets rich with resources you need, but they can stop working out of the blue, which requires you to rebuild that station. This is largely why I just used extra capacity suit perks and a companion to offload resources I mined personally at the nearby stores on Atlantis and elsewhere. I was even using quick tricks to steal high powered weapons and ammo, but still NG+ felt mundane.

It's a shame because the game had so much potential, but you can't make a game look like it has tons of content by offering mostly barren cookie cutter planets that take more time to fully research than they're worth, and a NG+ system that only really changes the amount and level of powers and suit tweaks. Many of the powers make you OP if leveling them up too far, and it's by no means a good replacement for more epic mission content. The poor powers and NG+ systems is why many avoid them.

Mind you, I played it mostly after launch on my previous spec, which wasn't nearly as robust as what I have now, with no HDR capability. I fired it up once or twice on my new spec, but honesty, the HDR is underwhelming, and even though it looked noticeably better overall graphically, with snappier movement due to better performance, I still was not compelled to keep playing it. It just gets stagnate at a point when you realize you've already experienced the best the game has to offer, which is not enough.

Going forward, if Bethesda really care about Starfield and want it to remain sustainable, they're going to have to address the common complaints like not being able to fly manually around planets or from planet to planet within a system, and having to deal with a ton of loading screens. NG+ also needs tweaking to be FAR more varied each playthrough, and as I said, they need to add more epic missions. What worries me about the latter is they might start charging for mission DLC packs.