Well here is one example. Jim sterling gave the game a 4/10

Here is a quote from his review

"To call Starfield the least broken Bethesda game is akin to calling any single TERF the least embarrassing fascist. Then again, given how Zenimax and Bethesda seem to treat trans employees, that comparison may hit too close to home."

https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/starfield-empty-spaces-review

Ill let you process that and come to your own conclusion.

What a terrible way to start a review, by dismissing the opinions of those that didn't enjoy the game. A lot of the flak makes perfect sense if you're just willing to acept that people can and do have different opinions.

Just for the record, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, and I did too, almost through the entire game, but there is certainly room for a lot of valid critique, which is evidently somewhat divisive. I agree about a lot of the critique the game has got, but it didn't hurt my experience too badly for dozens of hours - but I have little trouble seeing how it could ruin the entire game for a lot of people. I saw the people initially receive the game well on Steam, only for the reception to turn quite sour after the people got to spend more time with the game. Personally I couldn't recommend the game in good conscience to anyone without knowing their taste really well, because the game has a fairly high chance of disappointing unless you know what you're getting into. For a game I got for "free" with my new CPU, I'm quite happy, but I'm also really happy I didn't have to (explicitly) pay for it (not that I would have, because I knew long in advance that the setting simply doesn't interest me that much, but I digress).

Azzanation are you claiming Jim Sterlin is a console warrior who is playstation biased, and thats why he gave it a 4/10???

That dude is a huge PC guy, afaik.


Also look at what he said about bugs:
enemies getting stuck in doors
NPCs materializing out of thin air
stuck on dialog screens, unable to advance a conversation
trapped in my ship’s cockpit, unable to move until I’ve sat back down in my seat and stood up again.
Companions have just disappeared on me.
Mission-critical enemies have spawned inside walls (rendered almost impossible to kill.)
gotten softlocked more times than is forgivable, and I dread to think how much progress I’ve cumulatively lost as a result.

"While Starfield’s galaxy is nebulously “big,” its vast array of barren planets populated by recycled assets"

"On a fundamental level, Starfield plays exactly like any other Bethesda game, only with features borrowed - and subsequently lessened – from No Man’s Sky and The Outer Worlds. "

"The same rudimentary combat (only without VATS to wallpaper over how sloppy it is). The same archaic approach to exploration and questing. The same stilted dialog propelled by non-sequitur exchanges. The same moronic A.I. and robotic animations. The same old narrative cliches in a world of cardboard where every stranger tells you their life story and immediately trusts you with sensitive tasks for seemingly no other reason than the fact you’re a videogame protagonist and they somehow know it. "

He even adresses the No Man Sky's take people have had:

People are entitled to their opinions, but I don't agree with them which is my personal take on it. Everything written about the game seems way too extreme. No where am i calling Starfield a 10/10 game but some of the complaints mentioned in alot of the media reviews did not affect my time with the game.

No where did I call Jim a Playstation fanboy. I brought up his review and I disagree with it because when you review a game and bring up outside politics like he did, it defeats all purpose of having a valid opinion on a video game. Thats how I see it, you may disagree with that logic, but I won't. 

And yes, Jim is a PC guy. I know. 

That's one review out of a 100? all games play by these rules, there is always going to be scores way off the mean for valid or invalid reasons (I am not sure where Jim's review fall, but really, he's not wrong about Bethesda being less broken than before isn't worthy of celebrating at least). 

Mate, you don't need to feel the pressure to justify Xbox terrible record on exclusives. Besides, the game will come to the PS5 sooner than later, and it will be re-reviewed again and you will see for yourself that exclusivity had nothing to do with the score (unless they ship a vastly different game).  

Well, I think the game got a lot of undeserved flak online as well, but it did review quite decent and in line with what I personally feel about right. Starfield got a 83 on Metacritic and a 84 on OpenCritic. This is a lot higher than many other games, which didn't get as much backlash online. So I think the reviewers are fair with the game and about 80 feels right on a personal level.

True is also, that online users are very against the game. The User Score on Metacritic is only 6.9. That is lower than the 8.0 for Stranger of Paradise, and not much higher than the 6.2 for Immortals of Aveum - very mediocre games. That cannot be right, Starfield is clearly better than these.

So yes, some users unfairly put down Starfield. Is it due to platform exclusivity? I kinda doubt it. Basically for me Starfield was what I expected, in line with Fallout and Elder Scrolls. But for many it was a disappointment. Somehow people expected something much, much better than Skyrim and Fallout 4. I don't knwo why, Bethesda has a pretty clear formula and never showed much ambition beyond that (core Bethesda, Arkane and Tango were different stories).

Todd Howard probably didn't help, telling everyone who wanted to hear and also everyone who didn't, that Starfield would be the next coming of Jesus Christ or something. I personally completely ignore the hogwash Todd Howard tells, but I can understand if people were disappointed after that. But it wasn't Todd Howard alone, people seem to think on their own, that Bethesda somehow evolves, even though we clearly see with Elder Scrolls, that they only slowly adapt to modern tech but otherwise have basically the same game.

Starfields setting isn't helping, as they were going for a more realistical setting (instead of the very phantastic universe of No Man's Sky for example), the result is a bit predictable.

Also the year had really great games with Hogwarts Legacy, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake II and Baldur's Gate III. In a more normal year Starfield had probably stood out more.

But if you get away with all the expectations and comparisons to other games, what you are left with is a decent and entertaining game. It has it's flaws, but so do Skyrim and Fallout 4, which are highly valued. It has glitches and bugs, but again, so do Skyrim and FO4. All of what I found with Starfield matched pretty much what I expected to find with a new game by Bethesda and given the setting. Not better, but also not worse. It is the next little step in the Bethesda games as they had before. But people allowed their expectations to fly off the handle. And this lead to this enormous backlash.

All of this makes me worry for TES VI. It will be another Bethesda game, the next little step. It will not radically change, as the Bethesda games never really did. It will look better and fix some stuff here and there (while still having lots of bugs and glitches) and it will streamline some stuff to appeal to mass market which will enrage the core players. But already I see people expect too much, expect the sky and beyond for TES VI. If that goes on and Todd howard inevitably will chime in and add to ballooning expectations, then I already see how people will be massively disappointed by TES VI.

I for one look forward to the next evolution, not expecting the best game ever, but another Bethesda game, which will be good enough. Hopefully the universes Bethesda own (Fallout, TES and now Starfield) can be used by other Microsoft studios as well, which might bring some good results. I certainly would enjoy to see a TES spinoff by Obsidian in the style of Awoved and an isometric strategic Fallout from InXile. And also I look forward to Starfield 2. It is a good world. Bethesda can build upon it.

^ to be fair, they have patched it alot since.
Stuff like the storage space issues have been adressed, and I'm sure they bug fixed alot of issues and glitches it had.
Not to mention they did a patch for performance issues, and added stuff like FSR and frame generation (I think I read?).

I wouldn't be surprised if maybe it scored slightly higher.
That said the fundamental issues plagueing the game, arn't really easy fix's and likely wont ever be.
So I dont think it ll score massively differntly.

People were looking for fallout in space, with humor, and exploration and neat little things to discover.
From what I've heard, its very lacking in this aspect. The story isnt really compelling either ect.
Which just left people feeling let down about it.  Then theres the stuff about like flying to any star system / planet you want.... and thats not actually true (even though the marketing push basically said so, bless Todd Howard and his crazy claims)

If you dont choose to quick load, to a place, but manually fly forever to reach it, it turns out its just some sprite floating in space, that you cant interact with, or land on ect.

Alanah Pearce even after not working at xbox anymore, was/is a huge xbox fan.
She was super hyped to fly anywhere, and choose to try doing so live on stream.... only to be let down, when she couldnt fly anywhere or do anything that way.
Was it a sun? moon? something she flew right though, and it was just a sprite hanging in space.
She spent like 4 hours flying to it, only to find out she couldnt do anything.

Its the same experiance for people that wanted that exploration itch scratched, from fallout.
They go to a random planet, and asides from the outposts, and mining some rocks, theres nothing on the planets.
So much so, its pointless to explore. Its just not there, like in fallout, where there's tons of small little side things you can discover ect.

Various people seem to be misrepresenting or misunderstanding why quite a few Elder Scrolls/Fallout fans were unhappy with Starfield.

Let's start with the idea that the flak the game has received is mostly due to it being an exclusive. I was in the Starfield subreddit months before release and bought the game at launch--something I only do with Bethesda games because I generally know what I'm getting.  I know when the criticism is real.  I've read many, many long and detailed posts from PC gamers and Bethesda fans expressing their disappointment and pinpointing real issues and problems, most of which I've encountered as well.

These are people who were incredibly excited for Starfield, fans who are forgiving of bugs, fans who are used to the quirks of the engine.  They wanted Fallout in space, Skyrim in space, they weren't asking for it to 'advance the genre' at all.

However, a significant number of them were not happy with the final product.  

Let's take a look at Steam--

Fallout 4 -- ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (240,175)

Fallout 76 -- ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Positive (57,658)

Starfield -- ALL REVIEWS: Mixed (98,311)

Now people are pointing to the fact that users are suddenly LESS forgiving of Starfield when historically they've been MORE forgiving of the problems inherent in Bethesda games as proof that there is some kind of agenda undermining it.

That's not what's happening.  The disconnect between the critics and the fans is something very simple.

The truth is, Starfield has a big problem baked into the design that games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 didn't have.  The baseline enjoyment of someone who plays those games is essentially static.  If you loved the first hour of exploring Boston in Fallout 4 then you're probably going to feel basically the same way after 20 hours.  If you loved the first 20 hours then you'll probably love it after 40 hours, and so on.  The same with Skyrim.  The experience doesn't change that much as you move from one side of the map to the next.

On the other hand, for many people, especially those who love exploration, Starfield gets ACTIVELY WORSE the MORE YOU PLAY.  Critics who push through the game quickly are much less likely to experience this but the players who are looking to take their time and immerse themselves in all facets of the game have a better chance to discovering this for themselves.

Why?  Because Starfield has a very small number of unique 'Points of Interest' and instead copy-pastes the same non-unique POI over and over and over.  Understand that when I say copy-paste, that's exactly what I mean--the Robotics Lab POI on one planet is going to be EXACTLY the same as the Robotics Lab on another planet, right down to the same knick-knacks laying around and the same notes laying on desks, written by the same people.

Run into the same POI 10 times and you start feeling kind of annoyed.  Run into the same exact POI 20+ times and you start looking at the game differently.  It's not just the POI, either.  The "puzzles" that you need to do to get your space magic are the EXACT SAME at every temple--even Skyrim had that beat.  There are only 3 enemy factions in the game but they're really just people wearing different space suits.

Starfield is much, much bigger than the playable areas in Fallout 4 and Skyrim but I found it to be way less interesting.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't positives about the game.  It does plenty of stuff quite well.  The problem is that some of the things it fails at are things that Bethesda fans REALLY, REALLY LIKE.  

I don't feel like it's very fruitful to argue about opinions. For example, the frequency of loading is a common complaint. It bothers me too, but it doesn't ruin the game for me. But I don't have a need to dismiss opinions that state that loading ruins the game, because the game has so much loading that it doesn't seem too far-fetched that for some, it might kill one of the greatest things about Bethesda games (the sense of exploration). The same goes for a lot of the critique I've seen: It hurts the experience for me, but I have little trouble admitting that some people might not take it as well as I do. I haven't personally seen many unreasonable opinions that might stem e.g. from exclusivity, it's all just people disappointed they didn't get the Bethesda game they expected and wanted.

If it releases on other platforms and it's the latest version, it's expected to review better, but you could also argue that it scores better because it is multiplatform. Sea of thieves on XB1 scored a 69, came out again on PS5 and its sitting on an 81. It is nothing new.