Starfield - A 'Key' Review

[Key]

Instead of posting this in my journal, I wanted to post this as a separate thread as I think it'll work better as its own respective thread. So, yeah, what am I here to talk about today? Well, I finished Starfield, well at least my first playthrough of Starfield, and I've got a lot to say, so sit tight:

Starfield - Full Review (First Playthrough)
Just a disclaimer, there may be minor or major spoilers in this review, as well, this is a review from my first playthrough of the game. I do know of the new game+ feature, and I did mention before that I wasn't considering checking that out, but I might. So for now, this is just a full on thought review of my time with Starfield. And at the moment, I finished the game at right around the 70 hour mark. What do I think? Well...

Starfield, for me, is the best game Bethesda has ever put out. And not only is it the best game they've ever put out, it's both my favorite of the bunch as well as being the most well-built game they've ever done, especially on launch. What do I mean by this? Well, you know how it goes. Bethesda is no stranger to buggy games, however that doesn't mean they don't make great games. That's sort of been the joke with them is that despite them making really great groundbreaking RPG's, they still seem to lack the expertise to build the game to the quality that they want. They definitely proved that they do have what it takes with Starfield though. I even got to the point where the game was telling me the in game photo gallery was full because I kept taking too many pictures. As this is a full review, I'm going to stay away from putting pictures as I really want to get my thoughts out and I feel those are the most important aspect of this review.

I'm going to start off by talking about the things that I really liked about the game, and in the next paragraph will go over the things I didn't like or didn't necessarily were at their best in regard to the whole package. Let's talk about the space fighting and space travel right off the bat because it honestly seems to be that the space traversal and anything to do with space is certainly the weakest of the mechanics in the game, at least that's how it felt for me when I was just starting the game. Though, I will say that by the time I had gotten my stats up and upgraded my ships, etc, the space fights and traversing the galaxy felt a lot more satisfying. In that I mean I wasn't constantly dying by enemy ships. I started to figure out the best ways to tackle those situations and eventually prevailed and finished the quests that dealt specifically with space fighting. Not a whole lot more to say there other than just give it time. The space fighting definitely felt frustrating at first and at times it felt like I really wasn't going to get strong enough, but eventually you do. It became one of my favorite parts of the game because of how it grew over time. Next I'm going to talk about the combat and the combat is kind of an interesting take here because parts of it will fall into my favorite parts of the game and parts of it will fall into my gripes. What did I like about the combat? Well, it felt pretty good to be honest. The different types of weapons you can find throughout the game is so expansive that it never really feels like you're using a weapon that is necessarily weak or not fun to use. The big thing I want to mention is that they scrapped the whole idea of degradable / breakable weapons which honestly makes the combat way more fluid. That sort of thing works really well in the Fallout games because it makes sense, but I'm glad that when they took the space route, they took out breakable weapons entirely. It just wouldn't make sense for space age weaponry and technology to break after use. Definitely a welcome change that I didn't have to worry about my weapons breaking all the time. Allowed me to be a bit more creative with my overall build and weapon choices. There's also plenty of ammo and weapons to loot in the game so if you ever feel like you're somewhat overpowered, just do a few quests or side quests and you'll be fine.

Bethesda has always been one to bring in good writing and certainly good voice actors to take on their characters in game, and I gotta say, I never had a moment where I was cringing at a voice actor or how something was written. I found myself completely immersed in the dialogue choices and conversations you would have with your companions. It always felt very organic and natural and never really seemed like you as the character were saying things completely out of left field. Sure, there were moments where you can be a total smartass or say something dumb as shit, but that's what makes it fun. All in all, I thought both the dialogue choices and companion options were some of the best Bethesda has ever done. I do love the old school classic Bethesda voice acting that tends to be a meme now these days, but I think Starfield is a step in the best direction. Really good performances all around in this respect.

While I did say that the space travel and fighting can take some time to get used to, I was overall really impressed with the planet system and how many different planets and systems you can travel to, which also had their own little unique things to find within those planets and systems. Maybe you're going to one to get an artifact or you're going to a different one to do a side quest. It never really felt like a chore to travel planet to planet because even if you had already done a lot in that system, the game adds more stuff for you to do so that your time doesn't feel wasted. Hell, maybe you'll run into a guy singing sea shanty's or maybe somebody will ask you to upgrade your insurance coverages. It's all really well made, and I'd say it's definitely one of the strongest aspects of the entire game. I mean, hell, the game is based around going from planet to planet doing quests so it damn well better be one of the strongest parts of the game. It is. It really is.

After also giving it a bit of time, originally one of my gripes of the game was the space building and outpost building, and while I have not done as much outpost building as I'd like, I found that I have warmed up to both. I can't say for sure at the moment what I plan to do with the outpost building, but I have absolutely loved experimenting with the ship building to see what kind of crazy things I can make. The internet has certainly been posting around some of the funniest and coolest ones. Really lets your creativity shine. It very much feels like the crafting / building of Fallout 4 / Fallout 76 and I really don't mind that. I feel its the most intuitive for things like that. It could use a little bit of work like maybe adding in a sorting option, but otherwise nothing crazy.

Now, I'm going to touch on a few things that weren't necessarily the greatest things to run into when playing Starfield, but not necessarily opinion altering. These are just little gripes so I feel one paragraph should suffice. First off, when you reload your weapons, I absolutely cannot stand that the reload gets interrupted by enemy attacks. If I press reload, I want it to quickly reload and I'm on my way. Often times I found myself having to run away from a fight because even though I thought I had reloaded my weapon, it hadn't finished the animation. Bit of an oversight if i'm honest. While I did love getting the new powers that you have to travel to the temples for, I thought the way of getting into the portal to acquire those weapons was to put it frank, dumb. Having to fly around the room fast enough to make the portal spin fast enough feels so clunky that at times, it took you longer than it should have to simply pick up the power and move onto the next. Didn't really allow for good flow, but it's manageable. Although the game does have a lot of fast travel and space travel, the number of loading screens that you run into is obnoxious. One to get out of your ship, one to get to your mission location, one to get out of mission location, one to get in ship, one to lift off, one to break the atmosphere etc etc etc. That severely needs to be dialed down. I saw a quote that represents this very well. "Spent an hour playing Starfield. 15 minuts of gameplay and 45 minutes of loading screens." I don't know if this was a specific choice on their end but it needs to be fixed. Other than the occasional frame drop and broken graphics, the game actually ran extremely well despite all the little gripes I had with it. Notice that I said virtually nothing about its performance. I don't think it's fair to compare the performance because I rarely had any issues with it, and I know a lot of other people rarely had problems with it. So it's whatev.

Where does this put me now? Well, I'm going to be taking a break from Starfield and gaming for a few days, and perhaps jump into something else that has released over the past month. Either that, or I may jump into the new game+ mechanic and see what that has to offer. As it stands, I'm happy I did everything I wanted to do in my first playthrough. I don't know if i'm going to have the motivation to do another subsequent playthrough. We'll see. My final rating? I give Starfield a resounding 9/10. Nearly a perfect game for me, and pretty much the perfect Bethesda game for me. It's not for everybody, but I really enjoyed my time.

o7

[Guybrush]

Hey, nice to see Starfield get its own thread 🙂

I'm still playing it myself and am enjoying my time. I actually already posted my thoughts on it, but I'll make a quick summary of what I think are some pros and cons.

Pros:

• Combat is fun and satisfying, even if I have to play with a controller (seems to lack k/m support on Xbox)
• Ship combat and those encounters are fun
• It's cool that you can board other ships
• The quests are generally solid and engaging
• Voice acting and characters in general seem more lifelike and interesting than in earlier Bethesda games

Cons:

• It feels like a universe filled with small towns. Even New Atlantis feels small. Akila city is a hamlet. Neon city is like ravers took over an oil rig. There's like a dozen free star rangers? That's a tiny police force. Aren't these supposed to be empires?
• The universe is also nonsensical. If you fly up to a space station, they are tiny, but they're big when you board them. The huge waterfall in New Atlantis makes no sound, which is odd. Going from Spaceport to MAST through The Well is really short, but then you can also take the NAT for how many metres? How many abandoned facilities with criminals are there?
• Exploration is poorly executed - uglier, less interesting worlds with less to do on plus lots of loading screens - compared to the much older No Man's Sky which seems like a significant source of inspiration.

So the world is kinda ugly and weird and full of loading screens and often empty, so I get a feeling of quantity over quality and miss the exploration aspects of their more designed (as opposed to more procedurally generated) game worlds.

Still, gameplay is good and killing things in not-so-abandoned facilities is still a lot of fun.

For me, it's a 7/10 so far 🙂

[DJChameleon]

So I haven't read all of the review yet but I wanted to ask you two. Doesn't that other space game(No Man's Sky) do the space stuff better than this game?

[Key]

So I haven't read all of the review yet but I wanted to ask you two. Doesn't that other space game(No Man's Sky) do the space stuff better than this game?

I've seen this comparison passed around a lot and I'm going to answer it the way I always do: this is a Bethesda title. It leans far more heavily on the story, dialogue choices and RPG elements whereas No Man's Sky is a far more open ended space simulator. While I understand that people see both as the same thing, having played both I can say that they both stand as their own. If you want a standard Bethesda RPG in the likes of Skyrim and Fallout, play Starfield. If you want to focus more on base building, exploring space, and going through it in a more sandbox style, play No Man's Sky. I think that's the best way I can put it. I don't think it's too fair to put them both under one umbrella but I also understand why people are doing so. Neither of them do better or worse, I would say the experience and enjoyment is solely based on what you're looking for.

[DJChameleon]

I've waited a bit on playing this because I would have to play it on PC. Seeing as it's only on PC and Xbox. I just have my lowly PS5 but Spiderman 2 is coming out soon so I will have that to drown my sorrows. 

[Key]

To be fair, y'all got Final Fantasy 16 so I don't wanna hear nothin! 

[DJChameleon]

I still haven't touched it yet. I just started Jedi Survivor this morning. I am way backlogged. I also need to finish God of War Ragnarok.

[Mr. Waffles]

Yeah add me to the ps5 and pc only fam. Idk if I'll pick up starfield on pc. If y'all think it's close to older Bethesda stuff that is. I played a lot of the Skyrim port for ps5 too recently idk if I'm ready lol.

[Lexi Darling]

I love Starfield.

"I hate Mondays... in space."

[DJChameleon]

I feel like Starfield is Fallout in Space correct me if I'm wrong people that are hours into the game.

I would get it based off of that alone.

[Lexi Darling]

I've never actually played a Fallout game but hot damn those games have great choices of music. As someone who has always been enamored with vintage midcentury era aesthetics and concurrent media, I used to always listen to a YT playlist of all the oldies on the Fallout 3 and New Vegas soundtracks.

[Guybrush]

I feel like Starfield is Fallout in Space correct me if I'm wrong people that are hours into the game.

I would get it based off of that alone.

Yes, sort of. But you don't have the VATS targeting system (where the game pauses and you can target and auto-shoot body parts), so Starfield feels a little more like an FPS at times.. and of course it doesn't have that Fallout designed world to explore, instead swapping that for procedurally generated environments that are more boring, but practically endless.

You also have space combat.. but then most other things are pretty much the same.

[Key]

I still haven't touched it yet. I just started Jedi Survivor this morning. I am way backlogged. I also need to finish God of War Ragnarok.

Please tell me what you think of Jedi Survivor when you get around to it. It's an absolute banger.

I've never actually played a Fallout game but hot damn those games have great choices of music. As someone who has always been enamored with vintage midcentury era aesthetics and concurrent media, I used to always listen to a YT playlist of all the oldies on the Fallout 3 and New Vegas soundtracks.

Fallout 3 was my first introduction to Bethesda and it's still one of my favorite games of all time.

Yes, sort of. But you don't have the VATS targeting system (where the game pauses and you can target and auto-shoot body parts), so Starfield feels a little more like an FPS at times.. and of course it doesn't have that Fallout designed world to explore, instead swapping that for procedurally generated environments that are more boring, but practically endless.

You also have space combat.. but then most other things are pretty much the same.

I agree with this mostly. I haven't really gotten bored yet but I also really love space so this is hitting all the right spots for me. I would say No Man's Skyrim is the best way to put it.

[Key]

Starfield
(New Game+)

I was rather silly if I thought my full review was going to be the last time I talked about this game. Here I thought I was compiling all my thoughts together and though I am pretty happy with my overall thoughts on the game, little did I know that I was only just getting started. I did it y'all, I have been diving deep into the new game+ mechanic trying to figure out the best way I can approach it. And I decided that it's best for me to go into it with just a fresh point of view without any outside sources causing me to lean either way. I've seen the conversation structured for both sides and I think I simply fall in the middle on the issue. So I suppose I'm going to ask the question and explain what I think about it. Is new game+ worth it?

Before I get into my overall opinion about this particular subject, a bit of context. Originally, when I beat the main quest of the game, I dove right into the new game+ mechanic with no regard to the companion quests and side quests that I left behind. Thankfully, I had a save right before the main quest ended so I was able to go back and do all of that stuff and lemme tell ya, once I got back into doing side quests, I saw myself wanting to go to every system and every planet to explore everything, so I set off to do that. And while things did start to feel a bit repetitive, I love the whole idea of losing a couple hours from exploring planets among planets. Yes, the planets are pretty baren, but mods will fill that in. For me, I want to basically have that feeling of "I did everything I set out to do and now it's time to see what else the game has to offer." When I beat the game and just went right into new game+, I didn't have that feeling, I more felt like I was leaving some unfinished business behind. Once I did all that, I felt more comfortable taking on new game+, which I have heard up to this point how daunting it can be but also how rewarding it can be.

Cohhcarnage is one of the streamers I follow the most and I tend to not really rely on his opinions of a game more-so I'm usually always interested in what he has to say about a new game that I'm either interested in or am already playing. His opinion on Starfield overall aligns with my own. If you're a Bethesda fan, you'll enjoy it. If you're not, well you may not. He points out that the game is not perfect and I also an open to the dialogue regarding the criticism of the game. However I think in a lot of cases certain criticisms are coming out of left field, but I digress. Back to the point, Cohhcarnage made a video and then a follow up video explaining what exactly new game+ actually was. And from the minute I heard that you can carry your character progress with you, I was interested but not exactly sold. The way I typically play Bethesda roleplaying games is that I like to get all the companion quests done, all the side quests, all the collection stuff, main quest etc etc. At first, I wasn't sure which was he was swinging on new game+ but eventually I realized that him and I are aligned on this topic -
do your big sandbox full playthrough first and then jump into new game+. So, that's exactly what I did. major spoiler alert:

Spoiler

While I was not a huge fan of the story altogether, I always think the idea of multiple universes is interesting be it a bit cliche at this point. I think Bioshock Infinite went this same route, and even then I enjoyed it, but it just felt a little bit cliche.

[close]

End of major spoiler alert

Now having experienced the new game+ mechanic for myself, here's what I have to say about it - while it does seem a bit odd to meet with your companions again and they basically have little to no recollection of who you are or what you did in your previous universe is a little bit daunting, at first. I'm the kind of person that gets really deep into the roleplay aspect of Bethesda games. Marrying your companions etc etc. So when I walked up to the companion that I had been traveling with for 60+ hours only for them to be like "you seem familiar" was a bit hard to stomach. But overall I think the idea of repeatedly going deeper and deeper into different universes is really neat and it's a mechanic that I think really works with a game of this nature. Do I think it's necessary? I think if realistically Bethesda wants the game to last for years to come, I think this is a good push in the right direction. I think the base game on its own could use more but mods will fill in all the gaps on that. I like it, overall. But if you really want to connect with your companions and do all the quests and get really deep into the lore, I strongly suggest you get to the very end point of the main quest, and before traversing into new game+, get everything done that you want to get done. It's how I've been playing it and I'm at about the 80 hour mark now and in my new game+ i'm doing resource gathering and things that I didn't do in my previous universe. It's at the very least interesting enough for me to want to keep going through this worm hole to see where it takes me. I've been hearing word that by the time you reach new game+ x10, things get pretty nuts. I'm looking forward to seeing how things change over time, and of course I'm also happy to just keep playing Starfield.

There's been rumors of potential DLC and expansions for Starfield, and you're damn right I'll be checking that out. At the moment, I'm enjoying the game for what it's delivering now and I will see you at the 300 hour mark.

Safe Travels!