This is pretty much how I feel about Starfield.
It's got some strengths, but none of them able to cover for the sheer amount of bad boring writing and in general hamfisted story.
It's good... if you ignore all the bad parts.
The needlessly underdeveloped mechanics are what got me. A few examples:
You can board and take over other ships, but selling them is useless and - even worse - you can't fucking swap parts into your own ship!
Having a crew is cool, but they do fuck all.
Flying around in space is cool, but the game goes out of its way to make sure that you know that "space" is not a vast openness but little boxes in front of the planet sprite.
You can have multiple ships but not have AI fly them and have a cool squadron you jump around with
You can build a base, but no snap to grid
Nothing in your base moves stuff around, it just gets teleported along imaginary wires. Conveyors are a thing, you know?
I could go on and on, but I'm too busy playing no man's sky which I restarted after 29 hours in Starfield.
It dips its toe into a lot of things but doesn't go deep enough to make any of them feel meaningful.
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Sure, Starfield has space combat, but if that's what you're looking for, why not play Elite Dangerous?
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You can build an outpost in Starfield to harvest materials and make items/upgrades with, but I could also just play Satisfactory.
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Starfield allows you to explore a variety of randomly generated planets, but so does No Man's Sky, and it's not like it's significantly better compared to how NMS launched.
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You can enjoy rich worldbuilding, investigate political intrigue, and party up in the cyberpunk station of Neon...but Cyberpunk 2077 just had its 2.0 update and I could do that instead.
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You can enjoy a barebones RPG story with a crew of forgettable companions in Starfield, or you can enjoy the best RPG in recent memory with a solid cast of companions to adventure with in Baldur's Gate 3.
It really is the epitome of "jack of all trades, master of none". Especially in its skill system, which feels the most restrictive of any Bethesda RPG yet.
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Flying around in space is cool, but the game goes out of its way to make sure that you know that “space” is not a vast openness but little boxes in front of the planet sprite.
I'm one of the few people for which this is a "strength" of the game. I have severe thalassophobia and games like No Mans Sky where I'm allowed to free-roam in space actually make me feel super anxious and nauseous. I get the same feeling when swimming in large bodies of water, or in big underwater levels in video games.
So like, a real space sim like NMS is so hard for me to face without feeling ill, but somehow, these fake little boxes in Starfield make it so I don't feel that way enough that I can actually play it. I still get twinges of anxiety, but it's nowhere near as bad.
Oh starfield so much wasted potential.
Tl:dr: starfield is loading screen the game.
I wanted to play it, because I wanted to play something like no man sky with real npcs and good voice acting and good gunplay fallout like not what no man's sky has. I wanted really to ignore the bad stuff but I got so mad at this game, everything is a loading screen, to lvl sneak was impossible because enemies could see me and instant get agro even when they were on the opposite of the room (100m) and only my head was visible. How should I level sneak when I need to make stealth damage?! The story was hyped for science the vision of the artifact ended in disappointing after doing the first 2 missions. It was just fech quests and to much loading screens. Goes to planet, loading screen, lands on planet, loading screen, goes inside underground city, loading screen, need to go to another room of city, loading screen, aks where person is who I search, needed to go to another planets orbit, loading screen, sneak against ship in space worked, need to to another station, loading screen, docks station, loading screen, kill some enemies, need to go to another planets orbit, loading screen, shoot a ship to board it, board it, loading screen, kill some enemies, rescue a dude, go back to new Atlantis, loading screen, goes inside building to end quest, loading screen, quit game.
Luckily I didn't buyed it and only used game pass, and even for that i got the money back after canceling the subscription.
That's me with Starfield
That's just how Bethesda games work though. Fallout 4 isn't good, but it's fun.
Morrowind is a masterpiece but it's janky as fuck.
yea I loved Morrowind
Same here. I played about 30 hours and realized I wasn't actually having fun with it. I was just going through the motions. Because ultimately, it's a really empty game. A mile wide and an inch deep.
Refunded it 30 mins in, Baldurs Gate broke the Starfield illusion for me
Yep. It scratches my looting itch and it looks pretty. But damn, like you say, it's really shallow
When your spouse tries something new for dinner but you're still trying to get laid
Ark.
Everything about Ark is shit, but everyone who loves it lives in denial lol
I had a lot of fun playing ark on a private server with like 8 people a few years back but that shit is definitely broken as all fuck.
The review is helpful if you ignore that it's not
This is exactly how I feel about DK64. Except I’m aware that I’m delusional and nostalgic and would not leave a recommendation for it lol
Donkey Kong 64 was bad? What makes a game "good" other than it being fun?
Nothing. Games are meant to be fun, and that's it.
If I enjoy it, then it's a good game to me.
Yes, it’s a bad game. You’re allowed to like it anyway, I love it as well. It is charming, and I have fond memories with it, but it has pretty major technical and design flaws. The tag barrel system and the ability to only collect certain collectables as certain kongs (namely the blueprints) adds hours of pointless backtracking. Then there’s also the fact that it barely runs on the n64 and lags all the time. Rare introduced a crude delta time implementation that sped up the player’s movement to compensate, but that causes all kinds of jank and issues with the collision. A common saying in the speed run community is that “walls are optional” in DK64. Now from what I understand, you do have to try to clip through a wall, but not very hard (and I have seen people clip out of bounds accidentally in certain areas as well).
If you must play that game nowadays, I recommend using the “tag anywhere” patch, which lets you switch kongs with the dpad, and the “free trade agreement”patch, which makes it so blueprints and golden bananas can be picked up by any Kong. And play it on Project64. It cuts out most of the lag which circumvents most of that weird speed up jank, in addition to just being a smoother experience.
Oh man. That's on my short list of games that I 100%ed when I was a kid, alongside the banjo kazooies and Mario 64.
Now I'm itching...
I tried replaying Mario 64 on an emulator, and it made me realize what I really miss are the friends I had and the place I was in my life, moreso than the game itself. Memories are nice, but there's no going back. At least, that's what I've found.
Average Bethesda enjoyer.
Every Destiny 2 player.
