I love Starfield. My mates love Starfield. It’s Fallout meets No Man’s Sky meets Mass Effect.
It’s just another kick ass Bethesda game in a long list of kick ass Bethesda games IMO.
its a solid B
75/100
It’s good.
It’s not earth shattering, its not game of the year.
It scratches that Skyrim RPG itch but in space.
It’s less buggy and less crashy than people were expecting.
It’s not without its flaws.
It’s a solid B
This might be the most concise and accurate review I’ve seen. Nothing long winded, no excuses, no fanboyism, being fair and holding it up as it is.
That wasn’t a review, it was a bunch of statements stringed together. At most it could be the conclusion of a review.
A review needs to offer some explanations about what’s good (or bad) and why.
Personally I’d give it like a C or maybe B- at the top. It’s fine, but there are so many missing basic quality of life features that should be there.
My biggest gripes are all focused on outposts though. Outposts seemed to be one of the focuses from the marketing material, but they’re a pain in the ass to actually use. There’s somehow no list of the outposts you have, let alone a way to view what they’re producing. Outposts need to be linked together, but there’s no way to sort or auto-delete items, so it all eventually will get clogged up with lead, or whatever other resource doesn’t get used often. You’ll have to manually go through your containers to remove the clog and just dump it on the ground, where it’ll remain for the rest of your playthrough. There’s no snapping for anything except storage containers and the habitation modules. Everything else has to be placed by hand with manual rotations, so nothing is ever lined up. The alignment will also change after you place an object, so literally nothing will ever be aligned.
I have issues with many other parts of the game too, but outposts seem so incomplete, and somehow generally worse than what we had in FO4. Yet, outposts were prominent in their marketing. How?
I’m not sure where you’re from, but in the US a 75/100 is a C. B would be 80-89.
It’s another subpar Bethesda game in a long line of subpar Bethesda games. Lifeless bland NPCs, tons of glitches, bad gameplay issues, and the same “shallow ocean” criticisms we’ve been going over since Skyrim.
It’s clear to me that Bethesda thinks Skyrim was peak Elder Scrolls, when I think Morrowind was peak Elder Scrolls. Unfortunately, it seems too much to ask for a decent story and interesting side content.
So I just don’t buy Bethesda games anymore. I was disappointed in Skyrim, and Fallout 4 wasn’t really my thing. It also doesn’t help that I don’t like the leveling mechanics of RPGs either and tend to prefer ARPGs like Ys and Zelda where leveling isn’t a major part of the game loop. I know what Bethesda offers, and it’s just not what I’m looking for these days. I play RPGs for story and immersion, not for graphics, character builds, and mods, and Bethesda seems to be more interested in the latter than the former.
But that’s what I appreciate from Bethesda. They’re pretty consistent at delivering a certain experience, it just so happens that it’s not for me.
Bruh, Bethesda arguably peaked like 20 years ago with Morrowind. Everything else since has been more or less downhill lol.
My guilty pleasure is to install Morrowind again and commit to replaying it, but to instead do another Skyrim playthrough because I just have more fun for some reason.
There’s something about the newer Bethesda games. I’ll go and install legacy games from other companies all the time for the sense of nostalgia, but despite having beaten almost all of them going back to Arena, if I want a Bethesda game I always end up playing Skyrim or FO4. And now (I presume) Starfield
They were certainly Bethesda games. I’m not even remotely fond of multiplayer fallout. But for 4, it’s a marvelous modding world that I’ve sunk over a thousand hours into.
This is the moat insane thing i have ever heard. Or it’s some sort of burn because how shit they are.
I’ve never played 76, but 4 is one of my favorite games of all time. I think most people who didn’t like it were going into it desiring for it to be something it wasn’t. What it was impeccably good at was being a scavenging looter shooter with addicting weapon and armor modification and a fun outpost building system that wasn’t for me, but did let me make my own little home.
Bethesda made way more games than that. Are you new to gaming? You should check out their website.
But those are their most recent offerings. I care more about the quality of what they produce now and not their glory days decades ago.
Anything is better than No Man Sky, after a trillion updates they still haven’t fixed the one issue the game has. There is only a single planet but a million copies of it with different colors.
From what I’ve seen that’s also starfield lol, the same desert planets copy/pasted with different colored smoke/sand
Ou for fucks sake people, games dont have to be perfect tens Its okay to be a 8/10 or 7/10
The funny thing is that “Publisher Bethesda was not permitted to pay additional royalties for the RPG because it scored 84 on Metacritic, according to Fallout New Vegas developer Chris Avellone. It appears that Obsidian’s publishing contract included a deal that meant the studio would be issued bonuses if the game hit a Metacritic of 85.” scores matter to Bethesda a lot even enough to ruin relationships and screw developers.
i know that one, and my comment was 100% not about that none, really just about people really
I think Bethesda knows how to make one game in different settings, sadly that game was most popular in the early 10s.
What a wierd take, given that people STILL play Skyrim, Morrowind, and Fallout games in droves to this day. And that there are a ton of YouTubers that have made careers exclusively off of Beth lore and build videos and such.
Also given the post is about the game shifting to “mostly positive” on Steam. Which means the vast majority of reviews on steam are actually positive. And a lot of the negative reviews have to do with performance and technical issues, not the gameplay itself.
Also the fact that other “open world story-based shooters with rpg and crafting mechanics” are actually really popular - you know like Cyberpunk, or Mass Effect, or RDR2, or arguably, Jedi Survivor.
If you don’t like Beth games, that’s fine. They’re not for everyone. But it doesn’t mean your opinion is universal.
I think this is an accurate way to put it. I happen to like that game but if it’s not what you were expecting or you’re tired of it you’re not going to like the game.
I have to say the best change from FO4 is ditching the voiced protagonist. That was a big mistake at the time.
Is the score of Starfield really the only gaming topic Lemmy has to offer since like 4 days?
Some of it is organic hype and some of it is Corporate Funded social media teams / personnel who do their best to control the online narrative. Happens every time a Triple A game launches, no matter how many times that Company has betrayed it’s audience and succumbed to greedy scummy practices. People even still talk about Activision Blizzard titles as if it won’t just be another cashgrab.
Personally, I’m always super skeptical about these sort of games having a positive reception. I think the fast decline in user scores since launch is a perfect example of how unreliable the hype is.
Yeah, and I don’t get why. We quite literally got exactly what we expected with Starfield, and nobody said we would get anything different. For those of us who enjoy it, we got precisely what we were promised. For those who don’t enjoy it, nobody tried to pretend they were getting something different.
If I have one complaint, they did not manage to brand it as effectively as they branded Fallout (the blonde cartoon, music, etc). But then, they never managed to brand tES that way and we’re all still alive.
My 2c. Isn’t it a breath of fresh air that we got a complete game without $100s in day1 DLC required to make it playable?
I remember people hating on Skyrim when it came out, then Fallout 4, surprisingly not Fallout 76, you are right they never lied about it or promised stuff we didn’t get, I don’t really have interest in the game so I haven’t been following it to much but I don’t recall there being any classic Toddisms either
Starfield is as Generic Bethesda as it gets(which is a good thing) they didn’t introduce shit from other AAA games, like you said, no annoying Battle pass, day one DLC etc and other than early access, was there preorder bonuses?
The hate just seems odd, I can get the hate for most AAA shit but it seems really misplaced for StarField
You’re right about the branding, nothing to me sticks out for the series’s brand, maybe they didnt want another vault boy esq thing, so the game could stand alone, I dont know
Also, I guess also the cutscenese/animations everywhere, launching ships, docking, landing can get annoying, I understand the complaints about those
You did have to pay $100 to play this one on day 1. The plebs that bought the $70 version had to wait a week.
I don’t understand the people who spend a hundred hours on a game to then give it a bad rating, calling it boring. Why don’t they just quit much earlier and play Chrono Trigger or something?
Plays game for 2 hours, rates poorly
“How can they review it without completing it”
Plays game for 60 hours, rates poorly
“Why are they rating it poorly if they spent so many hours on it?”
It’s such a bizarre, but real issue. I’ve always been boggled by the idea that you can’t offer your opinion on some games without first giving them a full work week. “I know you just sat there for the length of 5 movies and didn’t like it, but it doesn’t really get good until you sit through another 10.”
If you give it 2 hours, a game should have made it worth your time.
2 hours is more than enough for general impression IMO. Just imagine watching a 2 hour movie that is boring AF. I can’t judge them for quiting.
2 hours doesn’t let you experience even 10% of what a game like this usually offer, less alone giving you time to tinker with the systems and see if they actually work, and furthermore if they are actually fun once you’re good at them.
I think there are too many exceptions to this that the best way to truly know is to play it for yourself. I hated Death Stranding, Control, Days Gone, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Fallout 3 and many other games in their initial few hours, but as they opened up they quickly became my one of my favourites. I’ve started my first playthrough of Witcher 3 and in the first 3 hours I’m not yet impressed, but I’ll give it a good chance before dropping it. Not sure if Starfield is any good but given its systems, it’ll probably need some buildup time I guess.
With some games after 20+ hours the honeymoon phase is over. But I want to finish it so that all this time doesn’t feel wasted. And there’s hope that the game will get better. I mean everybody else loves it so it must be a great game right?
However, often it just feels like work and it makes the flaws of the game even more obvious. And I just end up despising it.
This is the best answer, players are invested after a certain point, but the realization that they don’t like the game comes later in the process. The more you play the game you don’t like the more you’re frustrated with it and the more likely you are to give it a poor rating, especially when the things that are your biggest complaints feel like obvious bug fixes that should have already happened, but continue to exist.
If a narrative-heavy game takes 60 hours and then fucks it up on the third act, it deserves the hate. Games having a bad payoff 200% warrants bad reviews.
Oh sorry, this isn’t a Danganronpa thread.
Wait you think danganronpa fucks up it’s third act? I was absolutely hooked from start to finish for danganronpa 1 and 2. Not yet had the time to play 3 properly yet though but I’ve looked what I’ve played so far.
You can put a ton of hours into a game and not like it. This isn’t a new concept.
Ask any LoL or Destiny 2 player.
But in all seriousness, sometimes a game is just too massive to form an opinion on in any reasonable amount of time.
Yes, this was exactly how I felt when playing Fire Emblem Engage. God. I hated how the hub world basically sucked an equal amount of time for each map I cleared. Sure, the mini-games are optional,But so is brushing your teeth.
I may be getting older but it feels like a lot of games are just padding their runtime with gameplay that doesn’t mesh well at all.
Hello, I have 80 hours on Skyrim recorded in Steam.
I do not like Skyrim.
Why did you spend so much time with it then? Surely you would’ve stopped after a few hours of not enjoying yourself, no?
That is a great question! I’ve certainly asked myself the same thing and the only answer I can come up with in 2 parts.
1: The game is compulsive. While you are playing you want to keep playing. And while the moment to moment interactions are dull (imo) but not so dull as to drive me away. There may be plenty of Oblivion nostalgia keeping me playing.
2: Many of the games problems appear in retrospect. The dumbing down of the subsystems, for example. Much like Outer Worlds; it feels fine while you’re in there but once you stop and step back you realise how crappy they are.
That’s all I got for now.
To be fair, the game is so massive, any review (positive or negative) done on less than 60 hours probably won’t do the game justice. It’s entirely possible to hold hope for redeeming qualities only to be a bit disappointed in the end.
Customers aren’t professional reviewers. Paying customers are entitled to have their opinion at any time. Tiny Tina’s Wonderland immediately put me off with that lame overworld. I think I clocked around 3 hours and then uninstalled it. Never ever would I spend dozens of hours in a game where a significant portion massively annoys me.
IDK, I think 10 hours is plenty for any game, and 2 hours is enough for most. By two hours, you’ve likely discovered the core gameplay loop and seen how it handles progression, and by 10 hours you’ve seen whether that core gameplay loop changes throughout the game.
I don’t like negative reviews for games when they’ve spent double the time HLTB gives for a playthrough. I don’t expect to play much more than “main + extras” on any game, so any review that’s expecting content beyond that just isn’t useful for me.
The thing is, with big RPGs like Starfield, you decide what your core gameplay loop is. It has multiple.
So if you find out the core gameplay loop is not for you after 2 hours, you can just try an other one.
Honestly, the games that take the most time I often have more negative opinions about. The Assassin’s Creed games, for example, purposefully waste your time. They shove a bunch of junk in and try to make you interact with it when I could be doing something enjoying with my time. Enjoyment per hour should be the measure of a good game, not hours alone. If the game takes me 300h to complete and I only enjoyed 10h of that, it’s a bad game.
Yes exactly!
Games are meant to entertain. If they aren’t fun or force you to do unfun things, then why waste your time on them?
I got the same with collectibles in games. Chasing collectibles is boring to me, and you will never see me going for one that isn’t directly on my path. It is meaningless fluff.
Well they kept getting told this game is a slow burn, so they kept at it, waiting for the fun.
(Just cracking a joke here folks, based off the reports it takes a dozen hours for it to get good)
I’m sorry, are you mocking me for replaying Chrono trigger? That shit is a masterpiece.
Chrono Trigger was the first example of a game that came to my head that’s just great. I replayed it a few weeks ago as well. It’s time better spent than playing a shitty game for 100 hours.
IDK, I bailed around halfway through. I got to the Magus fight, and it felt really RNG dependent. If he attacked in a certain order, I would lose a team member and eventually lose because I couldn’t keep up with healing.
Maybe I was too low level, or maybe I didn’t have the right items equipped, IDK, but I completely lost interest when I failed several times without knowing what to do differently except hope that he attacked in a different order. So I bailed.
Maybe I’ll try it again sometime. I originally played on my phone, but maybe I’ll have more patience on my Steam Deck. I really enjoyed the game up to that point, but I just couldn’t bear the RNG. I have no problem failing over and over (I love the early Ys games and some bosses took a dozen tries), but I need to see some sort of progress.