50 Reviews liked by Half
Balatro
2024
This proves that, given the chance, I'd absolutely develop a gambling problem
Balatro
2024
actually dangerous for your productivity, good shit
Balatro
2024
what the hell does balatro mean
Cocoon
2023
My brain hurts. It just cannot fathom how anyone could possibly come up with some of these puzzles. But Cocoon works so well because none of these puzzles trick you, they're all incredibly satisfying to solve, and everything you need is in plain sight. It just needs a bit of grey matter exercising to put 2 and 2 together.
Cocoon is a beautifully crafted video game. Soothing visuals and sounds are the perfect accompaniment to the assortment of puzzles, which gradually increase in scope, scale and difficulty as the roughly 5 or 6 hours it takes to complete the game passes.
I also thought that the puzzles were perfectly pitched in terms of challenge and timescale. Not one seemed to overstay its welcome - there was certainly a few forehead slaps when I worked out a puzzle that stumped me for a while, but that was my brain's fault, not the game's!
I think a sign of a truly great game is when you wake up thinking about it. Or when you think 'just another 30 minutes' late at night, and you stay hooked for a few more hours. Cocoon did both of these to me - it's one of the coolest and inventive games I've played in a while.
Cocoon is a beautifully crafted video game. Soothing visuals and sounds are the perfect accompaniment to the assortment of puzzles, which gradually increase in scope, scale and difficulty as the roughly 5 or 6 hours it takes to complete the game passes.
I also thought that the puzzles were perfectly pitched in terms of challenge and timescale. Not one seemed to overstay its welcome - there was certainly a few forehead slaps when I worked out a puzzle that stumped me for a while, but that was my brain's fault, not the game's!
I think a sign of a truly great game is when you wake up thinking about it. Or when you think 'just another 30 minutes' late at night, and you stay hooked for a few more hours. Cocoon did both of these to me - it's one of the coolest and inventive games I've played in a while.
Catherine
2011
Someone needs to steal the puzzle parts of this game and put it in a game that isn't horrible in its treatment of women and LGBT+ themes
Catherine
2011
This review contains spoilers
"False dichotomy the video game" is how I always refer to this game. The premise of the game's plot is that you play as Vincent, a sheepish coward of a man who is engaged to a woman named Katherine-with-a-K. One night while at the bar you frequent nightly with your friends, you meet a girl named Catherine-with-a-C, and end up cheating on your fiancé with her. This becomes a regular thing, and the central conflict of the game is making binary choices that decide who you'll end up with. The whole game is broken into two distinct sections. While you're awake you are at a bar with your friends, and this is where all of the story bits happen, talking with everyone there. While you're asleep you are trapped in a nightmare realm in which some monster representing Vincent's relationship fear of the night is tormenting him, and he must do a block moving puzzle game to escape death. The two stars I am giving this game are because the puzzle sections are genuinely good, and if that was all this game was I would love it.
Unfortunately, this game has Things It Wants To Say™ and those things are pretty horrible. At the end of each puzzle section you are put into a confession booth and given a series of false dichotomy questions to answer. The one that always stuck out to me was "Does life begin or end after marriage?" To answer this question honestly in either direction is equally cynical, marriage can be a part of life, but it is neither the beginning nor the end of it. During one of the the bar segments I also remember a patron asking a similarly asinine false dichotomy question, "Who do you hate more, men or women?" These are the two examples that stick out most in my memory, but every question the game throws at you is like this.
The reason every choice in the game is framed this way is because the game has an extremely sexist assumption at its core. I suppose if I were to apply a more feminist framework to my dubbing of the game as "false dichotomy the game" I could instead give it the moniker of "virgin-whore dichotomy the game." You see, each of the two options of every question you've been answering falls into one of two categories, "freedom" or "order", and each of these ideas are represented by Catherine and Katherine respectively. There is zero room for grey here, if your answers were too close to a 50/50 split throughout the game, Vincent ends up alone as he can't decide what he wants. If you choose "Order" you end up with Katherine, who the game frames as mature, dull, and controlling, but stable. And if you choose "Freedom" you end up with Catherine, who the game frames as infantile, sexy, and exciting, yet erratic. You cannot be free with Katherine, and you cannot have order with Catherine, according to the game you must choose, virgin or whore. If you think I'm being too harsh, here is the pièce de résistance: in a final twist at the end of the game it is revealed that Catherine is literally a succubus.
And on top of all of this sexist garbage, they also decided to throw in a trans character just to treat her transness as a Cool Bit of Lore™ that you can find out about if you pick up on hints, or get this, if you see them deadname the character in the credits. This is the only Atlus game I've played and apparently queerphobia and transphobia are trends in their games, and it's the one thing that makes me hesitant to get into any of their other works. After all of this, I'm not quite sure how I can end this review with anything other than a resounding "fuuuuuuck this!"
Unfortunately, this game has Things It Wants To Say™ and those things are pretty horrible. At the end of each puzzle section you are put into a confession booth and given a series of false dichotomy questions to answer. The one that always stuck out to me was "Does life begin or end after marriage?" To answer this question honestly in either direction is equally cynical, marriage can be a part of life, but it is neither the beginning nor the end of it. During one of the the bar segments I also remember a patron asking a similarly asinine false dichotomy question, "Who do you hate more, men or women?" These are the two examples that stick out most in my memory, but every question the game throws at you is like this.
The reason every choice in the game is framed this way is because the game has an extremely sexist assumption at its core. I suppose if I were to apply a more feminist framework to my dubbing of the game as "false dichotomy the game" I could instead give it the moniker of "virgin-whore dichotomy the game." You see, each of the two options of every question you've been answering falls into one of two categories, "freedom" or "order", and each of these ideas are represented by Catherine and Katherine respectively. There is zero room for grey here, if your answers were too close to a 50/50 split throughout the game, Vincent ends up alone as he can't decide what he wants. If you choose "Order" you end up with Katherine, who the game frames as mature, dull, and controlling, but stable. And if you choose "Freedom" you end up with Catherine, who the game frames as infantile, sexy, and exciting, yet erratic. You cannot be free with Katherine, and you cannot have order with Catherine, according to the game you must choose, virgin or whore. If you think I'm being too harsh, here is the pièce de résistance: in a final twist at the end of the game it is revealed that Catherine is literally a succubus.
And on top of all of this sexist garbage, they also decided to throw in a trans character just to treat her transness as a Cool Bit of Lore™ that you can find out about if you pick up on hints, or get this, if you see them deadname the character in the credits. This is the only Atlus game I've played and apparently queerphobia and transphobia are trends in their games, and it's the one thing that makes me hesitant to get into any of their other works. After all of this, I'm not quite sure how I can end this review with anything other than a resounding "fuuuuuuck this!"
Catherine
2011
absolutely hates women and denies them any personhood at all but simultaneously tries to be a critique of impotent men who hate women and deny them their personhood
IT FAILS REAL BAD!!!
A real shame because some of the satoshi kon-esque psychological imagery can be fun and the puzzle gamplay is devious and interesting.
The transphobic stuff is just repulsive and sad. The fact that this game was branded as some dark and cerebral adult drama that analyzes relationship dynamics is a pathetic joke. There's less nuance here than a Two and a Half Men episode.
IT FAILS REAL BAD!!!
A real shame because some of the satoshi kon-esque psychological imagery can be fun and the puzzle gamplay is devious and interesting.
The transphobic stuff is just repulsive and sad. The fact that this game was branded as some dark and cerebral adult drama that analyzes relationship dynamics is a pathetic joke. There's less nuance here than a Two and a Half Men episode.
Catherine
2011
i wanted more puzzles and both of these c/katherines suck doodoo
Solar Ash
2021
I'm pretty sure that if you took this game and cut out all the dialogue, npcs, exposition, collectibles, enemies, boss fights, and the ability for you to even take damage, and just had Solar Ash be this ambient vibes-focused exploration game, with stunning art direction helping form these mysterious alien worlds that you can just glide through near-effortlessly, it would honestly just completely own.
Baldur's Gate 3
2020
I am kind of a hater. My bitter soul shivers with icy excitement at the opportunity to nitpick that which is well-loved. BG3 offers a lot of nits to pick, especially if you are a story-motivated player. The overall story is, imo, surprisingly not good for a game that has received so much praise in that department. The strain of trying to weave together so many plot threads really shows. There are a lot of names thrown around that are probably supposed to be important, and goofy fantasy words that are probably supposed to mean something, and like twelve magical MacGuffins, and it all feels a bit like an AI was fed a long list of D&D tropes and tasked with fitting them in the same game. Also, whenever the story flirts with horror, it feels a bit like a bad FromSoft pastiche?
That said, there are quite a few scenes and character bits that work well in isolation. What probably happened is the developers were afraid of the game feeling too meandering and directionless, so they tried to superimpose a structure onto all these scattered backstory and sidequest ideas they had. Although I understand the impulse, the main plot is easily the dumbest and most boring part of the game, unfortunately. I think I would have preferred if the party was only traveling together because they all wanted to go to Baldur’s Gate for personal reasons–no big looming threat necessary.
Nevertheless, even my miserable shriveled little heart was warmed one or two paltry degrees by my time (roughly ten bazillion hours) with Baldur’s Gate 3. At the end of the day, it’s D&D in video game form with lots of fun and hot party members who want to bone you. It’s kind of a hard formula to mess up? Which is silly to say considering it’s also a very hard formula to, like, do, at all, given the bonkers amount of content, so I applaud them for trying. But what I mean is that the game is solid enough that bad writing is not a deal-breaker, and the moments when the writing does work are kind of nice little treats–a bit like eating Lucky Charms with not enough marshmallow pieces in it. Yes, of course, it would be nice if there were more marshmallows, but you’re still going to eat too many bowls like a big dork because hell yes the vampire twink is dtfff
That said, there are quite a few scenes and character bits that work well in isolation. What probably happened is the developers were afraid of the game feeling too meandering and directionless, so they tried to superimpose a structure onto all these scattered backstory and sidequest ideas they had. Although I understand the impulse, the main plot is easily the dumbest and most boring part of the game, unfortunately. I think I would have preferred if the party was only traveling together because they all wanted to go to Baldur’s Gate for personal reasons–no big looming threat necessary.
Nevertheless, even my miserable shriveled little heart was warmed one or two paltry degrees by my time (roughly ten bazillion hours) with Baldur’s Gate 3. At the end of the day, it’s D&D in video game form with lots of fun and hot party members who want to bone you. It’s kind of a hard formula to mess up? Which is silly to say considering it’s also a very hard formula to, like, do, at all, given the bonkers amount of content, so I applaud them for trying. But what I mean is that the game is solid enough that bad writing is not a deal-breaker, and the moments when the writing does work are kind of nice little treats–a bit like eating Lucky Charms with not enough marshmallow pieces in it. Yes, of course, it would be nice if there were more marshmallows, but you’re still going to eat too many bowls like a big dork because hell yes the vampire twink is dtfff
the least traumatizing day in Norway
if you plan to play it do yourself a favor and do it blind. it's better if you don't expect what this game is going to do to you
if you plan to play it do yourself a favor and do it blind. it's better if you don't expect what this game is going to do to you
Cocoon
2023
Really impressive little puzzler. Every puzzle is well designed, the variety of game mechanics are solid, the boss fights are a fun change of pace, the visuals are unique, and the soundtrack is fitting.
My primary complaints come from movement and pacing.
Movement: I'd say you spend the majority of your time walking from area to area, puzzle piece to puzzle piece. After a while, this becomes a massive bore which is so strikingly different from the rest of the game. Cocoon is a very unique and inventive game, so having the movement kept dead simple is confusing to me. You play as a winged creature, why am I just slowly walking from place to place? All I'm saying is a simple dash ability could've really enhanced the gameplay.
Pacing: Cocoon has a very odd problem where it is constantly conveying the message that you are at the end. This is it, take everything you've learned and then you'll be able to take down the final boss and end the game! You complete it, and then... the game keeps going. Now this isn't a bad thing necessarily, it's not like the quality drops, but it is heavily anti-climactic and leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied. It also doesn't help that I didn't find the real ending very satisfying at all.
Overall, Cocoon impressed me in a lot of ways, but also left me feeling like it could've been a bit more. I can't wait to see what these devs do next.
8/10
My primary complaints come from movement and pacing.
Movement: I'd say you spend the majority of your time walking from area to area, puzzle piece to puzzle piece. After a while, this becomes a massive bore which is so strikingly different from the rest of the game. Cocoon is a very unique and inventive game, so having the movement kept dead simple is confusing to me. You play as a winged creature, why am I just slowly walking from place to place? All I'm saying is a simple dash ability could've really enhanced the gameplay.
Pacing: Cocoon has a very odd problem where it is constantly conveying the message that you are at the end. This is it, take everything you've learned and then you'll be able to take down the final boss and end the game! You complete it, and then... the game keeps going. Now this isn't a bad thing necessarily, it's not like the quality drops, but it is heavily anti-climactic and leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied. It also doesn't help that I didn't find the real ending very satisfying at all.
Overall, Cocoon impressed me in a lot of ways, but also left me feeling like it could've been a bit more. I can't wait to see what these devs do next.
8/10
this is what every sewerslvt fan looks like
Cocoon
2023
Coming from someone who thought and still thinks Pizza Tower should've won debut indie, I have no qualms with this beautiful gem taking the title instead.
Also, if you were one of the steam review bombers just because, "iT's NoT pIzZa ToWeR!?!?1" you deserve a whole hearted fuck you.
Also, if you were one of the steam review bombers just because, "iT's NoT pIzZa ToWeR!?!?1" you deserve a whole hearted fuck you.
Starfield
2023
Playtime: 75 Hours.
Score: 6/10
A bit of a let down for me honestly. There wasn't a single game coming out this year that had me more hyped then this one. My first RPG was Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion which is what got me into the genre, and I have loved Bethesda's games ever since then. Plus there my favorite dev team ever aside from Obsidian so I was keen to see what they would do with a new IP. I will prefice this by saying, that this is by no means is a bad game but it just fell short of my expectations, and because I love Bethesda Game Studios so much, I'm going to be giving them a lot of tough love in this review. I have a lot to say and this will be long one so strap in spacers!
Firstly lets talk performance as I know thats a big talking point about this game. I was worried going in to Starfield that my PC wouldn't be able to run it with a lack of Nvidia support (at release) and that I have a low to mid range PC. I have a Nvidia 1660 Super GPU, 32GB of Ram and 2TB SSD storage (I'm not very well versed in pc specs talk). I played it on gamepass and it ran pretty well for me. I constantly switched between medium and high settings and the framerate was solid. On high, my framerate was fine except when I was in cities like New Atlantis or Neon it would dip a little. I ended up just settling on medium since I'd take better performance over graphics any day. Load times were super fast too and I was impressed with the QOL improvments to reduce load times like being able to fast travel to a location straight from the quest log as an example.
The first major improvement is the leveling system in Starfield. On the service, it is basically the perks system from Fallout 4 but its much improved in that you have to complete challenges in each skill before you can advance to the next rank. The other big thing is your build is SO IMPORTANT in this game and you can't be a jack of all trades unless you dump hundreds of hours into this game which is a first in a while for Bethesda since Morrowind and Oblivion. They tend to love the power fantasy approach but in this game every skill point you invest matters and being locked out of things like jetpacks unless you have the skill was chefs kiss for me. You really have to have a build in mind going in and focus on specifc things. As an example I mostly focused on ballistic weapons in combat as trying to do that and energy weapons would have spread my skill points way too thin so I had to pick one style and stick with it. Another thing is, once you go past Lvl 30, things do slow down pretty significantly in terms of you level up so its important you get the basic necessity skills before then.
Roleplaying is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I do love that they went back to the dialogue system of Oblivion and Fallout 3, where the camera zooms in on an NPC and you have your list of dialogue options. I'm also grateful they didn't go with a voice protagonist (even though they apparently tried) as it makes your choices in dialogue so much deeper where as it was very limited in Fallout 4. You do get skill checks but this is an area I was really disappointed by. 99% of the time for me, picking skill check options doesn't do anything to change a quest or what an NPC thinks of you. It really just felt like an extra dialogue option for you to select and nothing beyond that. Only a few times did it actually effect a coversation in a meaningful way. You do get some choice and consequence but only a few had me really stop and think before choosing. In some ways its an improvement over past games and in others it feels very under developed.
Combat is good for the most part. The shooting is slightly improved from Fallout 4 but I never had an issue with it since I care more about the RPG experience. You do have a lot more verticality with the jet packs in combat which I liked. My only issue is some of the enemies can be real damage sponges and they just soak up bullets no matter what difficulty you play on. Stealth gameplay is absolutely atrocious as it seemed like no matter how many points I put into the skill, enemy placement just had them always spot or hear me and I was forced into combat. The most you can do is pick off a few enemies from afar with a sniper rifle but thats about it. A big step down from Fallout and Elder Scrolls for sure. Ship combat was the most interesting for me. In the beginning it sucks because you don't have any good skills, but as you get better ships and crew members who can boost your ships weapons and shields, its a lot of fun! You get a targeting system thats basically like VATS where you can target specific parts of enemy ships. Being able to take out a ships engines and then boarding it to then steal said ship was always satisfying for me!
Oh and theres also powers which basically act as this games version of shouts from Skyrim. There okay, but the process of getting them is super boring. In Skyrim you would be exploring a dungeon, fighting your way through draugurs and traps before finally getting to the shout as epic chanting played. But wait, you need a dragon soul, so go have an epic battle with one to absorb its soul and learn the words of the shout! In Starfield, you land on a planet, follow your scanner finding a bunch of boring anomalies, until you finally get to a temple. Awesome dungeon ahead? Nah, just go into a low gravity room and fly through some floating light bulbs so a ring in the center can spin fast enough for you to get a power. You do this exact same process EVERY. SINGLE. TIME!
Next exploration, which is the one key ingredient to any Bethesda game as they do open world so well and give you so many cool things to find. How is it in Starfield? It reminded me of two games, in that it's a worse version of both of them being Mass Effect 1 and Oblivion. Its ME1 in the sense that your exploring baren, uninteresting planets with a couple of locations to find. The difference is ME1 had vehicles to make it less tedious which this game SORELY needs. And its Oblivion in the sense that a lot of the dungeons are copy and pasted. The difference there is that: Oblivion came out in 2006, Bethesda was a lot smaller at the time and they had only one dev to make all the dungeons, and even then they felt more interesting to explore then this. They really needed to narrow the scope of this game way down. If they maybe did 200 planets instead of a 1000, I think it would have been better. Yes, there would still be procedural generation, but it would feel way less repetitive. The best way to explore is to simply follow the quests as they will lead you to the interesting locations. The cities like New Atlantis, Neon and Akila are cool to explore, but It doesn't make up for the rest of the lackluster exploration IMO.
Some more miscelanious stuff to talk about before companions and story. The music by Inon Zur is fantastic as he captures the wander in exploring the stars but also have some emotional tunes as well. Digipicking is a cool mini game and I like the concept but the issue is that the RNG can really screws you over, as there are times where they simply don't give you enough correct combinations to fit into the required slots. Also you can pick a master lock in this game and get nothing but random junk with no cool weapon or piece of armor guranteed to be inside. YAY! The persuasion mini game is okay, but it also seems very chance based and I honestly prefered the one in Oblivion as it was easier to get the hang of. I didn't do any outpost or ship building, since I hated doing it in Fallout 4, so I just ignored it. I do appreciate that Bethesda didn't force it on you like in Fallout 4 and that you can just play the game like a traditional RPG. Though whenever you buy a house (as opposed to building an outpost) theres no furniture inside and your forced to build and place everything inside yourself. I hated this and would have just prefered a simple buy furniture option like in older games.
Second last, lets talk companions. I was disappointed when I heard that you only have 4 full fledged companions in this game as that is just way too low for an RPG. I think 6 companions would have been the sweet spot and added a little more variety that this game really lacks in. The companions aren't bad but there not great either for me. Sarah Morgan is by far the most interesting with her back story and romance. Only issue is she's a bit of a girl scout with a very black and white view on the world. So if your doing a morally grey quest or making choices with more nuiance to them, SARAH DISLIKED THAT! Barret was by far the most charismatic as he's basically the Han Solo of your crew. I smiled and laughed the whole way through a lot of his quests. Andreja is basically the outsider of the group with a questionable past. I don't think she's a bad companion she's just not really that memorable for me. And Sam is just there. The only real interesting part about him was his daughter, Cora, who accompanies you whenever Sam's on your ship. There banter back and forth was very cute, though get ready to hear the same "buy me a book dad!" lines over and over again. "Over 200k lines of dialogue" my ass.
Finally the main story just fell completely flat for me. It had one really emotional moment for me half way through that presents a hard decision for you to make, which I was honestly shocked Bethesda went that far with it and I appreciate that they did. But beyond that its just really dull as you just collect artifact after artifact. And once the reveal came about the mystery around the artifacts I honestly just rolled my eyes and was like "Really? Were doing this now?!". Just really generic stuff man. The overall writing for the game I wouldn't say is bad, but its not great either. There were certain faction questlines that presented hard choices but I don't feel they went far enough with them. There's has just been so many great RPGs that have come out since Fallout 4 (I'm not counting Fallout 76) that have way better writing and this surface level storytelling Bethesda typically goes for just doesn't cut it for me anymore.
I guess my final verdict is to try this on gamepass, see what you think and then decide whether or not you want buy it. I probably would have preordered it if I had the money to do so, but in hindsight I'm glad I went with the cheaper gamepass option instead though I will eventually get the game on Steam once its heavily discounted. On a postive note, leading up to Starfield's release I had grown pretty sour on Fallout 4 and its many problems, but after playing Starfield I downloaded Fallout 4 to replay it and I had a blast. It definitely made me appreciate Fallout 4 a lot more so there's that.
All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Bethesda Game Studios Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/bethesda-game-studios-ranked/
Score: 6/10
A bit of a let down for me honestly. There wasn't a single game coming out this year that had me more hyped then this one. My first RPG was Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion which is what got me into the genre, and I have loved Bethesda's games ever since then. Plus there my favorite dev team ever aside from Obsidian so I was keen to see what they would do with a new IP. I will prefice this by saying, that this is by no means is a bad game but it just fell short of my expectations, and because I love Bethesda Game Studios so much, I'm going to be giving them a lot of tough love in this review. I have a lot to say and this will be long one so strap in spacers!
Firstly lets talk performance as I know thats a big talking point about this game. I was worried going in to Starfield that my PC wouldn't be able to run it with a lack of Nvidia support (at release) and that I have a low to mid range PC. I have a Nvidia 1660 Super GPU, 32GB of Ram and 2TB SSD storage (I'm not very well versed in pc specs talk). I played it on gamepass and it ran pretty well for me. I constantly switched between medium and high settings and the framerate was solid. On high, my framerate was fine except when I was in cities like New Atlantis or Neon it would dip a little. I ended up just settling on medium since I'd take better performance over graphics any day. Load times were super fast too and I was impressed with the QOL improvments to reduce load times like being able to fast travel to a location straight from the quest log as an example.
The first major improvement is the leveling system in Starfield. On the service, it is basically the perks system from Fallout 4 but its much improved in that you have to complete challenges in each skill before you can advance to the next rank. The other big thing is your build is SO IMPORTANT in this game and you can't be a jack of all trades unless you dump hundreds of hours into this game which is a first in a while for Bethesda since Morrowind and Oblivion. They tend to love the power fantasy approach but in this game every skill point you invest matters and being locked out of things like jetpacks unless you have the skill was chefs kiss for me. You really have to have a build in mind going in and focus on specifc things. As an example I mostly focused on ballistic weapons in combat as trying to do that and energy weapons would have spread my skill points way too thin so I had to pick one style and stick with it. Another thing is, once you go past Lvl 30, things do slow down pretty significantly in terms of you level up so its important you get the basic necessity skills before then.
Roleplaying is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I do love that they went back to the dialogue system of Oblivion and Fallout 3, where the camera zooms in on an NPC and you have your list of dialogue options. I'm also grateful they didn't go with a voice protagonist (even though they apparently tried) as it makes your choices in dialogue so much deeper where as it was very limited in Fallout 4. You do get skill checks but this is an area I was really disappointed by. 99% of the time for me, picking skill check options doesn't do anything to change a quest or what an NPC thinks of you. It really just felt like an extra dialogue option for you to select and nothing beyond that. Only a few times did it actually effect a coversation in a meaningful way. You do get some choice and consequence but only a few had me really stop and think before choosing. In some ways its an improvement over past games and in others it feels very under developed.
Combat is good for the most part. The shooting is slightly improved from Fallout 4 but I never had an issue with it since I care more about the RPG experience. You do have a lot more verticality with the jet packs in combat which I liked. My only issue is some of the enemies can be real damage sponges and they just soak up bullets no matter what difficulty you play on. Stealth gameplay is absolutely atrocious as it seemed like no matter how many points I put into the skill, enemy placement just had them always spot or hear me and I was forced into combat. The most you can do is pick off a few enemies from afar with a sniper rifle but thats about it. A big step down from Fallout and Elder Scrolls for sure. Ship combat was the most interesting for me. In the beginning it sucks because you don't have any good skills, but as you get better ships and crew members who can boost your ships weapons and shields, its a lot of fun! You get a targeting system thats basically like VATS where you can target specific parts of enemy ships. Being able to take out a ships engines and then boarding it to then steal said ship was always satisfying for me!
Oh and theres also powers which basically act as this games version of shouts from Skyrim. There okay, but the process of getting them is super boring. In Skyrim you would be exploring a dungeon, fighting your way through draugurs and traps before finally getting to the shout as epic chanting played. But wait, you need a dragon soul, so go have an epic battle with one to absorb its soul and learn the words of the shout! In Starfield, you land on a planet, follow your scanner finding a bunch of boring anomalies, until you finally get to a temple. Awesome dungeon ahead? Nah, just go into a low gravity room and fly through some floating light bulbs so a ring in the center can spin fast enough for you to get a power. You do this exact same process EVERY. SINGLE. TIME!
Next exploration, which is the one key ingredient to any Bethesda game as they do open world so well and give you so many cool things to find. How is it in Starfield? It reminded me of two games, in that it's a worse version of both of them being Mass Effect 1 and Oblivion. Its ME1 in the sense that your exploring baren, uninteresting planets with a couple of locations to find. The difference is ME1 had vehicles to make it less tedious which this game SORELY needs. And its Oblivion in the sense that a lot of the dungeons are copy and pasted. The difference there is that: Oblivion came out in 2006, Bethesda was a lot smaller at the time and they had only one dev to make all the dungeons, and even then they felt more interesting to explore then this. They really needed to narrow the scope of this game way down. If they maybe did 200 planets instead of a 1000, I think it would have been better. Yes, there would still be procedural generation, but it would feel way less repetitive. The best way to explore is to simply follow the quests as they will lead you to the interesting locations. The cities like New Atlantis, Neon and Akila are cool to explore, but It doesn't make up for the rest of the lackluster exploration IMO.
Some more miscelanious stuff to talk about before companions and story. The music by Inon Zur is fantastic as he captures the wander in exploring the stars but also have some emotional tunes as well. Digipicking is a cool mini game and I like the concept but the issue is that the RNG can really screws you over, as there are times where they simply don't give you enough correct combinations to fit into the required slots. Also you can pick a master lock in this game and get nothing but random junk with no cool weapon or piece of armor guranteed to be inside. YAY! The persuasion mini game is okay, but it also seems very chance based and I honestly prefered the one in Oblivion as it was easier to get the hang of. I didn't do any outpost or ship building, since I hated doing it in Fallout 4, so I just ignored it. I do appreciate that Bethesda didn't force it on you like in Fallout 4 and that you can just play the game like a traditional RPG. Though whenever you buy a house (as opposed to building an outpost) theres no furniture inside and your forced to build and place everything inside yourself. I hated this and would have just prefered a simple buy furniture option like in older games.
Second last, lets talk companions. I was disappointed when I heard that you only have 4 full fledged companions in this game as that is just way too low for an RPG. I think 6 companions would have been the sweet spot and added a little more variety that this game really lacks in. The companions aren't bad but there not great either for me. Sarah Morgan is by far the most interesting with her back story and romance. Only issue is she's a bit of a girl scout with a very black and white view on the world. So if your doing a morally grey quest or making choices with more nuiance to them, SARAH DISLIKED THAT! Barret was by far the most charismatic as he's basically the Han Solo of your crew. I smiled and laughed the whole way through a lot of his quests. Andreja is basically the outsider of the group with a questionable past. I don't think she's a bad companion she's just not really that memorable for me. And Sam is just there. The only real interesting part about him was his daughter, Cora, who accompanies you whenever Sam's on your ship. There banter back and forth was very cute, though get ready to hear the same "buy me a book dad!" lines over and over again. "Over 200k lines of dialogue" my ass.
Finally the main story just fell completely flat for me. It had one really emotional moment for me half way through that presents a hard decision for you to make, which I was honestly shocked Bethesda went that far with it and I appreciate that they did. But beyond that its just really dull as you just collect artifact after artifact. And once the reveal came about the mystery around the artifacts I honestly just rolled my eyes and was like "Really? Were doing this now?!". Just really generic stuff man. The overall writing for the game I wouldn't say is bad, but its not great either. There were certain faction questlines that presented hard choices but I don't feel they went far enough with them. There's has just been so many great RPGs that have come out since Fallout 4 (I'm not counting Fallout 76) that have way better writing and this surface level storytelling Bethesda typically goes for just doesn't cut it for me anymore.
I guess my final verdict is to try this on gamepass, see what you think and then decide whether or not you want buy it. I probably would have preordered it if I had the money to do so, but in hindsight I'm glad I went with the cheaper gamepass option instead though I will eventually get the game on Steam once its heavily discounted. On a postive note, leading up to Starfield's release I had grown pretty sour on Fallout 4 and its many problems, but after playing Starfield I downloaded Fallout 4 to replay it and I had a blast. It definitely made me appreciate Fallout 4 a lot more so there's that.
All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
Bethesda Game Studios Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/bethesda-game-studios-ranked/