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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Starfield - Personal Review

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pokoko said:
Azzanation said:

Starfield was one of those games that has received a lot of flak for its release. Probably due to its exclusivity since a lot of the flak does not make a lot of sense. The best game comparison to Starfield is The Outer Worlds, another IP I enjoyed a lot of.

Starfield is not a No Man Sky and that's not a bad thing, I am in fact glad it isn't as I do not enjoy NMS, sorry for those who do. Starfield is a Fallout in space, or The Outer Worlds on roids experience. Let's get into it. 

I've seen a lot of people try to invalidate Starfield criticism by blaming the console wars but that does not work for me.  Many of those who are disappointed with the game are PC gamers and long-time fans of Bethesda.

It is also NOT Skyrim/Fallout 4 in space, which is a big reason why those Bethesda fans are unhappy with it.  

Personally, I feel like it threw away the best parts of Fallout 4 and several aspects of that game that I hoped it would build upon.  In fact, despite being a much newer game, I would say that it went backwards from Fallout 4 in multiple areas, which I find to be absolutely baffling.

Most prominently, exploration is but a shell of what it was in previous titles and quickly becomes boring once you've been to the same copy/pasted location 5+ times.  This is a massive downgrade from the thrill of crawling through downtown Boston.  The game also makes you waste far more time running from one point of interest to the next over empty terrain.

Actually, I've never played a game that respected my time less.  It felt like most of my play-time was spent either running or dealing with inventory.  At least console commands and batch files helped on PC.

Speaking of downgrades, building outposts is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as it was in Fallout 4.  They took one of my favorite things and made it clunky and annoying.

On the other hand, they did a great job with ship building, which is easily one of Starfield's best aspects.

I was also very disappointed in the writing for many of the quests, which forced players into nonsensical directions with limited options.  The Freestar quest, in particular, had many people very unhappy.  

I could have written several pages of criticism and analysis last year but now it's been months since I've touched it.

Thats an interesting take you have, and you are entitled to your opinion. The game was also hated for it being an exclusive, everyone decided to get the magnifying glass out for this release due to it. 

I can agree with some of your points but the exploration point, I don't. I infact liked what they tried to achieve with the exploring. Space is meant to feel empty, and it added to the immersion. I enjoyed going to a planet that was barren or a moon. The game has a ton of variety of different sceneries and creatures. Sure, a few structures were reused but the assets that weren't reused were done extremely well.  

I will also agree on the clunky menu screen and inventory management, something they can fix down the road so it's no concern, it didn't ruin my time with the game, I've played worse games with bad inventory management. It is my biggest gripe with the game was the amount of times I needed to pause for fast travel, scanning planets, selecting abilities and Inventory selection. I am grateful it was designed on the new SSDs as last gen fast travel would have been a nightmare.

The Story isn't for everyone, it was what I expected which wasn't bad nor amazing. I can understand people won't like it.

I definitely agree the ship builder kept me hooked in the game. I loved upgrading my ship, changing it and it never got old seeing it take off or land.



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Eh, Starfield is kinda mediocre in a boring universe.



Morrowind to Skyrim I enjoy fallout never captured me the same way idk bored me to death actually lol but if elder scrolls don’t come to ps5 I’ll just play Witcher and BioWare I enjoy and have been playing their games since kotor original Xbox



Azzanation said:
pokoko said:

I've seen a lot of people try to invalidate Starfield criticism by blaming the console wars but that does not work for me.  Many of those who are disappointed with the game are PC gamers and long-time fans of Bethesda.

It is also NOT Skyrim/Fallout 4 in space, which is a big reason why those Bethesda fans are unhappy with it.  

Personally, I feel like it threw away the best parts of Fallout 4 and several aspects of that game that I hoped it would build upon.  In fact, despite being a much newer game, I would say that it went backwards from Fallout 4 in multiple areas, which I find to be absolutely baffling.

Most prominently, exploration is but a shell of what it was in previous titles and quickly becomes boring once you've been to the same copy/pasted location 5+ times.  This is a massive downgrade from the thrill of crawling through downtown Boston.  The game also makes you waste far more time running from one point of interest to the next over empty terrain.

Actually, I've never played a game that respected my time less.  It felt like most of my play-time was spent either running or dealing with inventory.  At least console commands and batch files helped on PC.

Speaking of downgrades, building outposts is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as it was in Fallout 4.  They took one of my favorite things and made it clunky and annoying.

On the other hand, they did a great job with ship building, which is easily one of Starfield's best aspects.

I was also very disappointed in the writing for many of the quests, which forced players into nonsensical directions with limited options.  The Freestar quest, in particular, had many people very unhappy.  

I could have written several pages of criticism and analysis last year but now it's been months since I've touched it.

Thats an interesting take you have, and you are entitled to your opinion. The game was also hated for it being an exclusive, everyone decided to get the magnifying glass out for this release due to it. 

I can agree with some of your points but the exploration point, I don't. I infact liked what they tried to achieve with the exploring. Space is meant to feel empty, and it added to the immersion. I enjoyed going to a planet that was barren or a moon. The game has a ton of variety of different sceneries and creatures. Sure, a few structures were reused but the assets that weren't reused were done extremely well.  

I will also agree on the clunky menu screen and inventory management, something they can fix down the road so it's no concern, it didn't ruin my time with the game, I've played worse games with bad inventory management. It is my biggest gripe with the game was the amount of times I needed to pause for fast travel, scanning planets, selecting abilities and Inventory selection. I am grateful it was designed on the new SSDs as last gen fast travel would have been a nightmare.

The Story isn't for everyone, it was what I expected which wasn't bad nor amazing. I can understand people won't like it.

I definitely agree the ship builder kept me hooked in the game. I loved upgrading my ship, changing it and it never got old seeing it take off or land.

Is the bolded something that just happened on forums or do you believe this affected official reviews? As someone else mentioned the metacritic score of starfield seems in line with other Bethesda games recently. Do you think it deserves higher than low 80s and that its exclusive status lowed its reviews?



...

APerfectCircle said:

Morrowind to Skyrim I enjoy fallout never captured me the same way idk bored me to death actually lol but if elder scrolls don’t come to ps5 I’ll just play Witcher and BioWare I enjoy and have been playing their games since kotor original Xbox

The Witcher is so much better indeed but it doesn't have that ES exploration spark in it. That said, I have no faith in Bethesda anymore to even get ES6 right. 



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I found the discourse around Starfield interesting. PS Fans seemed to want it prior to it's release. Then it dropped and that sentiment changed. Then it shifted to Xbox fans saying people downplayed the game because it wasn't on PS5. Meanwhile I got the game for free with GPU upgrade and felt like I was playing a game from 10 to 15 years ago. Is it a bad game? No. It's just a woefully average one. There does not seem to be a robust mod scene to bail Bethesda out this time.

So many aspects of Starfield lag behind games that preceded it. The weapons from Cyberpunk 2077 seemed more futuristic despite it being set a half century in the future. The gun play was average. The conversation interactions lag behind in Mass Effect 1's. The thing that Bethesda excelled it, well crafted environments that would lead to you something interesting off the beaten path was absent. They traded hand crafted interesting environments for generic and boring procedurally generated ones. If I had bought the game on Steam I'd have refunded it.



This thread is starting to feel.. aggressive. Way too much blaming.
All reviews are subjective. Your opinion of something. So blaming it on others isn't helpful.
It also doesn't really help in a lot of cases.

The game didn't review well on steam for a long time. You can't blame that on console waring.
It went from "maybe on PC" when no one bought it.
So it wouldn't come to PC (probably) with Playstation.
To day one PC (and steam) with Microsoft.

So steam users had zero reason to be angry at MS, You can verify these results by how long someone played the game. So people out there bought the game, played the game, and gave it a negative review. With zero reason to be mad about who bought what.

So cut the crap and stop talking about biases.

Talk about what you like and dislike. Don't blame others or I will lock this.



You are bound to love Earthbound.

Lowkey, your whole reviews just kind of comes off as biased.



Bandorr said:

This thread is starting to feel.. aggressive. Way too much blaming.
All reviews are subjective. Your opinion of something. So blaming it on others isn't helpful.
It also doesn't really help in a lot of cases.

The game didn't review well on steam for a long time. You can't blame that on console waring.
It went from "maybe on PC" when no one bought it.
So it wouldn't come to PC (probably) with Playstation.
To day one PC (and steam) with Microsoft.

So steam users had zero reason to be angry at MS, You can verify these results by how long someone played the game. So people out there bought the game, played the game, and gave it a negative review. With zero reason to be mad about who bought what.

So cut the crap and stop talking about biases.

Talk about what you like and dislike. Don't blame others or I will lock this.

Care to explain who i am blaming? Steam Reviews are not the media. They are User Scores which we see time and time again and inconsistent.

Also this is an aggressive post coming from a mod.

This thread is my personal review of the game. Not yours.

Last edited by Azzanation - on 27 May 2024

TheTitaniumNub said:

Lowkey, your whole reviews just kind of comes off as biased.

Because i liked the game?