"For who creates things but Creators? That is what they have been named, throughout the endless circle of time."

Starfield is a great game, muddied by an abundance of content that doesn't necessarily need to be there. It goes against the expectations of a Bethesda Game Studios RPG, simply because a game in this design shouldn't be played similarly to that of an Elder Scrolls or Fallout title. That, of course, is a huge misstep from the studio, and truly one of the reasons why this isn't settling for many people.

During my opening hours, I tried everything offered here, as I role-played my character. Traveling across segmented sections of space, getting into random dogfights in what felt like small boxes, and wandering giant, dead planets only to survey and find resources... it was confusing to see. As someone who hoped for an immersive space sim like No Man's Sky, this obviously didn't check the marks for me. But I was about 10-15 hours in until I realized I should be playing this game less like your traditional RPG and more like Mass Effect; a linear course of actions with branching paths, surrounded by a barren expanse.

I truly think the narrative at play here is the best thing about Starfield. Not only is it going to strap in fans of science fiction, but it also works brilliantly in its form as an RPG. I won't spoil anything about it, which can be a bit frustrating because it's tough to explain what makes this journey so smart without diving into the details, but this truly is an adventure worth discovering for yourself; uncovering the mystery behind the strange Artifacts you find yourself collecting. What first seems like a bit of a knock-off of Mass Effect's story actually twists and turns into something that I personally really loved.
The only advice I would give to new players is to follow the majority saying to mainline the story first before anything else. Focus on the journey first, then enjoy New Game Plus for the side content. It's a much more enjoyable time.

Everything else about Starfield though ranges from acceptable to downright incoherent. From a gameplay standpoint, probably the only feature that really popped for me was how the UI on the starship works; requiring you to allocate your ship's power in real time to certain components like your engines or weapons. Gunplay also feels pretty good, and definitely better than Fallout's, in my opinion. Resource mining is fine too, although I do wish we could get better cutters.
Aside from the segmented sections in space that I mentioned earlier, a pretty significant drawback compared to the open map of Elder Scrolls titles, I think the explanation of things, the progression of certain aspects, and the UI overall aren't friendly. You can level up and gain skill points quickly sure (and I'm pretty sure there's no level cap), but certain mechanics like accessing more ship parts or research recipes are locked behind an extensive skill tree, sometimes requiring at least 10 skill points just to unlock the first tier. To add onto this, when using things such as upgrade benches to improve your weapons and armor, it can be annoying to not only see upgrades listed in a nonsensical order, but to also have some components shown as locked entirely. It's really a moment of "why are you showing me this when I can't have it". The dilemma in this situation is that I could easily see improvements in a sequel... but based on how the narrative plays out and the expanse of things, I don't really think that'll happen.

You know what Starfield and its discourse reminds me of, truthfully? Death Stranding.
That game came out, the wide majority of gamers checked it out, then decided to drop out during the dragged out opening, right before the narrative turned into an intellectual brilliance. That's not to say Starfield deserves praise regardless of its pacing and overall design (which it doesn't), but I think most of the bad rap around it is because everyone isn't giving it the time it needs. However, I do think this game is still behind more recent RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077, which undoubtably has a much prettier animation engine in comparison.

Starfield isn't going to click for everyone. There are certain pieces here that I really love, but also pieces that I personally think could've been cut entirely. Disappointing for the Bethesda fans, I know, but I'm definitely not giving the studio a pass for making a confusing product like this. For fans of sci-fi though, I highly recommend putting the hours into this one. Just go in with as little story knowledge as possible.

As a fan of both TES and Fallout games made by Bethesda, Starfield hits on pretty much anything that makes their games so fun to me. There are a lot of quests of main, side and faction variety, a large number of NPCs, a ton of handcrafted locations, four massive cities and an unreal number of optional systems to engage with. Apart from the faces of misc NPCs, the game is a pleasure for the eyes thanks to its beautiful visual design and a pleasure for the ears due to the fantastic work done on the game's general audio and soundtrack.

I've spent my 100+ hours on this game in a large variety of ways and I haven't even come close to getting through all the handcrafted content yet. Not that the game doesn't respect your time or anything, but it offers you so many options of engagement that it truly is for the player to decide how much time they want to spend with it before beating it by seeing the main story through to the end. That main story takes about 25 hours, but obviously, BGS games have a lot more to offer than that, though the main story is one I did enjoy in Starfield.

Apart from doing main quests for 25 hours, I've done side quests for probably another 25-30, I've traveled to and surveyed planets for about 10 hours, built a ship for 2 hours, dabbled with outpost building for another few hours, read books, visited a Museum filled with lore and talked to all kinds of NPCs for 10s of hours, visited every nook and cranny of two of the four major cities, had multiple run-ins with my in-game parents (an optional trait) and many dozens of random encounters in space and on planets.

My expectations for this game were immense, and Starfield met them. If you're wondering whether you will enjoy Starfield, here are two things: 1) you can play it on Game Pass for $10 or whatever a month costs these days. 2) If you don't want to do that, I'd look at whether you enjoyed Fallout/Skyrim and I'd think about whether it bothers you that you can't manually fly from orbit to planet or from planet to planet within a system. If it would take a few minutes to do that each time, would you be one to really spend your time doing it after the novelty wears off? If yes, that's fair and you probably should stick with a more hardcore space sim experience. If not, then I can only highly recommend Starfield to you.

While I'm going to put Starfield on hold now and play Cyberpunk now that 2.0 and PL are finally about to release, I can give Starfield the highest honor I've given Skyrim and Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas as well, in that I found yet another comfort game that I am looking forward to return to at least once a year and check out all the new mods that come out in the meantime as well. But even without mods, Starfield, for the right player, has enough to entertain for hundreds and hundreds of hours.