Most Skyrim and Fallout games released in an unfinished state, but during their times we were too blinded by their technological achievements to see it. Todd Howard must've thought that we would still be too blind to see it today, because Starfield is a lazy, unfinished and outright disrespectful entry to the industry.

Its progression is mediocre at best, the open world is fucking barren, traversal is needlessly tedious and -- on top of all of this! -- it has one of the worst stories/endings I've ever seen in a video game. There's also the poor optimisation, the plethora of bugs it launched with... the fact that some of you find something redeeming about this game astonishes me. Starfield is an objectively bad release, and to enjoy it is to draw blood from a stone.

Maybe, just maybe, Starfield will be an okay experience after its modding community has years to work on it. But the fact that we are STILL relying on such things to enjoy Bethesda games is embarrassing. We as a community should no longer tolerate such practices from AAA publishers. But I know nothing will change! Todd Howard could shit on a plate and IGN would still give it a 7/10.

If you want a decent space exploration game, try No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, or literally anything else. Starfield may become a decent play years from now.

Utterly boring and uninspired. It really feels like you're playing something from 15 years ago. The design of the cities, the combat, the animations, the lack of QoL features (city maps lol?), all the technical issues and the writing - holy shit the writing - it's all awful. At no point did I care about any of the characters or the factions or the world in general. It's just all so boring. The exploration is terrible. The ship-building is cool but even that feels redundant, as ships are basically no more than slightly elaborate loading screens. After about 30 hours, I stopped playing the game and haven't been able to bring myself to even try and play it again. Bethesda should really do some soul searching and fix their shit. Starfield, even more so than Bethesda’s other games, is thoroughly absent of substance or quality or even a modicum of originality.

Good game, but not a great one. My first couple days with it were exciting and a lot of fun, and the main quest is entertaining enough, but once the honeymoon phase comes to a close you really start to realize how gutless and bland the game world is; it feels far too safe and lacking in charm and/or personality, which is the opposite of what I'd want from a Bethesda title. Most of the time I felt that my decisions didn't really carry any weight, and those loading screens (while short) do add up. I also didn't find many of the central NPCs or companions endearing, I spent 90% of my time in the game traveling alone or with the robot. All in all Starfield isn't nearly as bad as the internet makes it out to be, but the disappointment is valid for what could've been.

It's not that Starfield is terrible, it's that it's a step back from every Bethesda game in almost all facets.

Where do we begin? How about base building? -- Introduced in Fallout 4, base building offered a pretty rewarding experience by allowing us to construct outposts and populate them with NPCs. Starfield's iteration feels like a significant regression. The system is not only buggier and more restrictive, but the incentives for engaging in outpost construction are minimal at best. The generic characters, like "Outpost Manager" and "Mining Captain," lack purpose, and the limited capacity for settlers further detracts from the experience. This aspect of the game feels like cut content -- unfinished and underwhelming. Additionally, the introduction of ship building, while cool on paper, fails to compensate for the base building's deficiencies; specific bays like the med bay are damn near non-functional, unable to produce medicines or offer healing services, lol.

Starfield's approach to faction quests is perhaps one of its most glaring and egregious missteps. A collection of series of faction quests that feel short and superficial, reminiscent of a "theme park haunted house" where players move through set pieces only to exit feeling underwhelmed. The ability to join conflicting factions without significant repercussions dilutes the impact of choice -- these decisions become weightless. The quests themselves feeling like mere box-ticking exercises.

Starfield's companions continue the tradition of FO4, which is to say, generic and forgettable as a whole. The game also restricts major companions to a single faction and homogenizes their moral compasses, leading to predictable interactions and a lack of genuine connection. Notable companions like Sam and Sara are burdened with unengaging personal narratives and repetitive dialogues; they just can't shut up.

Exploration -- something key of Bethesda's titles -- feels lackluster in Starfield, particularly when set against the backdrop of an expansive universe. It is completely broken up behind dozens of load screens and vast spaces of nothing, instead of one, mostly continuous, experience of previous games.

Progression systems. The skill trees have become overly simplified and laden with uninspired percentage-based upgrades, hiding some basic game features behind skill points (a terrible Ubisoft practice of game design).