izigame.me

It doesn't just work!
- Introduction -
I'm a huge RPG fan, been playing them for over 20 years and they're by far my favorite gaming genre.
I've put thousands of hours into Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, New Vegas and even FO:4, despite its obvious flaws.
Unfortunately I witnessed a constant decline of quality, RPG elements and choice & consequence with Bethesda RPGs since Oblivion, with the exception of New Vegas, which ironically wasn't even made by Bethesda.
Thus my excitement and expectations for Starfield were pretty low, but I was willing to give it at least a try, to build my own opinion and to experience what BGS can create with such a big budget and long development time.
I've completed the main quest line, all factions quests, many side quests and started multiple characters to see how I can role play my character and what choices I can make.
So without further ado, let's get to the good, the bad and the ugly of Starfield!

- The Good -
Backgrounds and Traits
The addition of backgrounds and traits is easily one of the best parts of Starfield.
It gives you more options create the character you want and even occasionally provides you with unique dialogue options.
Its implementation is unfortunately kinda lackluster and the dialogue options provided barely have any effect on the outcome of the quests.
It's mostly there to help you keep the illusion of role playing your character in your head.
Ship Building
Having the option to build your own ships and letting your creativity flow, is one of my favorite aspects of the game .
The ship builder itself could use a little work, like better controls, better UI, options to choose where to put doors and ladders, to build a new ship from scratch and to change the interior of the ships.
Problem is, that ships are basically just glorified player homes and fast traveling tools.
Boarding/Stealing ships
The ability to board enemy ships and steal them for yourself is one of the most fun parts of Starfield.
Makes you feel like a real space pirate.
Even non pirate characters can benefit from this ability. During space battles you can target a ships engines and once disabled you can board it, to fight the enemy crew on board their ship.
Lock picking
Starfields lock picking minigame is in my opinion the best Bethesda has ever done.
Its more challenging than previous versions while also being more fun.
Zero G Combat
Low gravity and zero gravity environments were a fun addition in this game and kinda expected in a space game.
Some of my most fun encounters were in a zero-g casino in space and a damaged transporter floating in space that constantly was switching between normal g and zero g, due to a defect generator.
Soundtrack
Inon Zur is an incredibly talented composer. He created masterpieces of soundtracks for games like DA: Origins, Fallout 3, 4 & NV.
Tracks feel like a mix of Fallout, Star Trek and Star Wars.

- The Bad -
Combat
Combat is an integral part of the game and probably one of the worst. It feels clunky, one dimensional and outdated.
It's a slightly smoother version of Fallout 4's combat, but without VATS, gore, dismemberment and killing animations.
But hey we have Jetpacks now...yeah just like Fallout 4 had!
It also lacks weapon and enemy variety .
Only 3 laser weapons, only 1 melee weapon, because all use the same attack animation and attack speed.
No two handed melee, no energy based melee and no high tech shields.
80% of the enemies are the same reskinned humans and the AI is outdated and bad.
You just fight braindead bulletsponges the whole game.
Stealth
I love playing stealth characters, but not in this game.
Starfield still uses the same outdated stealth system as Skyrim, just heavily nerfed to a point where's its either broken or not viable at all.
Zero improvements have been made since Skyrim, in fact it has been downgraded instead.
No stealth kill animations anymore.
Perk tree
Starfields perk & progression system is easily the worst Bethesda has ever done.
It's incredibly restrictive, unbalanced and grindy.
Everything is locked behind grindy perk walls that require you to waste points into skills you don't want or need just to unlock the perks that you actually want.
It prevents you from creating the build you want and limits your role playing.
Also gaining exp and leveling up feels incredibly slow.
This whole system feels like it was designed for new game plus.
Story
The main story of Starfield is the most boring, bland and tedious story of any Bethesda game.
The intro is so boring and slow it almost puts you to sleep and the writing is just bad and uninspired.
Emil Pagliarulo, Bethesdas Lead narrative designer since Fallout 3, is well known for bad writing and has been criticized for it for ages.
But Starfields writing is just so boring, bland and bad even by his standards.
He follows the philosophy of "keep it simple & stupid" his own words, and Starfield is the pinnacle of that.

Dialogue
To be fair Starfields Dialogue is the best BGS has ever done.
Problem is that it's still bad and leagues behind the competition.
None of your choices truly matter and lead almost always to the same outcome.
Backgrounds and Traits don't do much, beside adding a little bit of flavor to it.
VA is decent for the most part, but sometimes bad as well.
Quest Design
Quests in Starfield show how creatively bankrupt BGS is.
90% are fetch quests and 50% of them are radiant.
Some of the faction quests are decent, but they are too short and rare.
There's no choice & consequence and barely any alternative way to handle the situation.
Every named NPC is marked essential, preventing you from killing them.
User Interface
UI is clunky and navigating through them is tedious.
It was clearly designed for consoles, but even then it's bad.
Also no Local/City Maps.
Art direction
Don't like the Nasa Punk aesthetics and there's not enough sci-fi in this sci-fi game.

- The Ugly -
Bugs
I've encountered numerous bugs in this game.
Some immersion breaking glitches and several game breaking ones.
So much for “least buggy BGS game”
No Exploration & No Immersion
Exploration is a core part of any BGS RPG, world building and environmental storytelling is their bread and butter. That sense of mystery & discovery, when you explore the world.
Starfield has none of that and it's not even open world.
It's a fast travel and loading screen simulator.
You run across procedurally generated empty planets with copy pasted points of interest.
And those POS all look and feel the same, with exactly the same enemy placements.

- Conclusion -
At first I was positively surprised by some of the elements Bethesda has put into their newest adventure, but the more I played, the more the negative aspects became obvious.
My expectations for Starfield were extremely low, yet somehow Bethesda still managed to disappoint me.
Don't misinterpret my long playtime as a sign that I enjoyed the game, in fact I sometimes had to force myself to even boot the game up, that's how bored I was.
40% of my playtime is me navigating through clunky menus or watching loading screens and I lost 60h of playtime due to several game breaking bugs.
This game is just so fundamentally flawed on so many levels.
It's plagued with bad game design decisions, half baked systems, bland and uninspired writing and outdated quest design.
Starfield tries to be good at everything, but accomplishes to be the worst at everything
As wide as an ocean, as shallow as a puddle - is probably the best way to describe it.
Starfield is not "Skyrim in Space", like Todd advertised it, nor is it Fallout 4 in space, like some others have described it.
It's a downgraded, mediocre and soulless mixture of Skyrim and Fallout 4, without the free world exploration and the charm of either!

Score
5/10 (if I'm being generous and only, because I like Bethesda styled RPGs)
If you're looking for a good RPG experience look elsewhere!