Starfield is the first new IP from Bethesda in nearly three decades which has finally landed. And the conclusion is that this is definitely a Bethesda game, whether that is good or bad is entirely up to the individual player. I have always been a fan of their previous works except for Fallout 76, so I can say that I had a relatively positive experience with this game. But it has definitely dawned on me now that it doesn't really matter what IP you're playing from Bethesda because you're always going to be having a very similar experience. And that is my biggest problem with this game, it's way too safe. So even though I liked playing through this game, it felt like I had played this game many times before, because I have. Now the game looks really good, for the most part. Planets that have a distinct location look really great and very cool. But the thing with Starfield is that you can land on virtually any planet available which are over 1000, in more than 100 star systems. But even though this sounds incredible, it's not. Because a lot of these planets are very dull and have literally nothing to tell them apart from other planets, except for maybe terrain but there are many different planets with the same terrain. So exploring these different planets pretty much boils down to mining materials which I don't find very fun.
Animations, and here I'm mainly talking facial are a hit and a miss. They can sometimes look good, but at other points look absolutely awful and very robotic. This makes interacting with characters feel very uncanny valley and I had a hard time to connect with them.
Gameplay is very cut and dried. There is gunplay and melee combat which feels pretty nice, but nothing groundbreaking. It kind of just feels like a slightly better Fallout, but even Fallout had the V.A.T.S. system to make things a bit interesting. The story is very boring to begin with but kind of picks up as you go along, which makes it just kind of mixed overall. The side questlines though were a lot more interesting, so much so that I completely got lost in them and completely forgot there was a main quest. There is also one more issue I'd like to discuss and that is the menus. They are absolutely awful, it's so unnecessarily confusing to navigate, and there is no local map which can make traversing bigger cities such a hassle. Now this review may sound like it's on the negative side but I really did enjoy this game, I sunk about 65 hours into this game and I was never really bored during that time, but I don't really have an incentive to continue. It all boils down to this being a Bethesda game through and through, and even though I'm a little disappointed that they didn't really innovate at all, it had been almost 8 years since I last got to enjoy this type of an experience with Fallout 4. If you weren't a fan of Bethesda's previous titles then this game won't win you over. If you were however a fan of their previous titles then you will most likely also enjoy this one.
Animations, and here I'm mainly talking facial are a hit and a miss. They can sometimes look good, but at other points look absolutely awful and very robotic. This makes interacting with characters feel very uncanny valley and I had a hard time to connect with them.
Gameplay is very cut and dried. There is gunplay and melee combat which feels pretty nice, but nothing groundbreaking. It kind of just feels like a slightly better Fallout, but even Fallout had the V.A.T.S. system to make things a bit interesting. The story is very boring to begin with but kind of picks up as you go along, which makes it just kind of mixed overall. The side questlines though were a lot more interesting, so much so that I completely got lost in them and completely forgot there was a main quest. There is also one more issue I'd like to discuss and that is the menus. They are absolutely awful, it's so unnecessarily confusing to navigate, and there is no local map which can make traversing bigger cities such a hassle. Now this review may sound like it's on the negative side but I really did enjoy this game, I sunk about 65 hours into this game and I was never really bored during that time, but I don't really have an incentive to continue. It all boils down to this being a Bethesda game through and through, and even though I'm a little disappointed that they didn't really innovate at all, it had been almost 8 years since I last got to enjoy this type of an experience with Fallout 4. If you weren't a fan of Bethesda's previous titles then this game won't win you over. If you were however a fan of their previous titles then you will most likely also enjoy this one.