Completion time: 65:08:00 (one playthrough)

I find it difficult to really express my true feelings for Starfield, especially when my thought are at odds with each other on a number of planes. This was a game I had been anticipating for so long. I also happened to have a top of the line PC that I got earlier this year, and that would enable me to play Starfield in the way I felt it should be played. After 65+ hours, I’m walking away from my experience both gratified with what I played, and baffled by certain aspects.

I’ll just get the bad out of the way first, which were a number of things really. Planetary exploration – I was thoroughly enjoying myself searching through the first several planets I set off to visit. It was a treat using my scanner to find points of interests, visiting them and, if they were enemy infested, taking down whoever stood in my path. There was a solid sense of investment early on with exploration. After the first few planets though, it just felt samey. There was a distinct lack of fascination or trepidation once I knew what kind of POI’s existed. Sure, some planets did have some eclectic aesthetics, but the scanning and searching became redundant on each planet I visited. I had a bigger sense of grandeur exploring planets on No Man’s Sky, mostly because the mining could lead into some really fascinating underground caverns and such. With Starfield, once you know everything (and it doesn’t take long to learn), there’s less and less incentive to trek through the galaxy into the “unknown”.

Speaking of trekking through the galaxy, space combat is woefully dull at best, vexing at worst. The dullness comes in the lack of consistent randomness when entering a new system (not instances of ship battles/bounty hunters), and once you’ve experienced all the options, it just becomes a chore to travel through space. Vexing comes from combat with multiple adversaries. It feels like no matter how you approach those situations (which usually happen when you are trying to get somewhere important and don’t want the fuss of a fight before reaching your destination), you’re going to take a beating, and oftentimes find yourself being blown up and sent back to a previous checkpoint. Granted I didn’t dabble much with ship customization beyond elementary tier 1 upgrades across the line, the space combat was still something half baked. There was no sense of exhilaration with the battles. Hell, Halo Reach, another game that didn’t feature space combat previously in the franchise/company, excelled in that area, while Starfield faltered.

The enemies, in both variation (not taking into account beasts and creatures found on planets) and type, are mostly run-in-the-mill types, without much of a deviance. Even when you reach the point near the late game where you’re running into certain enemies that I can’t elaborate much on since that would spoil some of the game from the second half on, it was nothing special after an encounter or two. I ran into two legendary spiders on two different planets, and the rest of my journey was bereft of any further confrontation. Were the rewards for felling these legendary foes worth it? Hell no. It also doesn’t help that everything is a massive bullet sponge, even with headshots. The two legendary monsters were an absolute slog to battle as a result of it.

Itemization didn’t feel very special. Sometimes you’ll run into a “unique” weapon that’s kinda neat, but in the end they just feel like boring ballistic weapons, yawn-inducing laser weapons, and so-almost-useless-I-forgot-they-existed EMP weapons. Melee weaponry had some neat looks between them, but in the end, nothing feels truly special. Nothing ever ends up as paramount. What probably further killed itemization in regards to armor is running into a certain task maybe 30 hours earlier than I should have, and getting a helmet, suit and jetpack that never needed to be replaced for the rest of the game. On a somewhat similar tone (since these are items), the way Starfield handles lockpicking was, at first, unique and enjoyable. After the first ten hours or so, you’ll wish you had a master key to instantly open any chest, door or CPU that’s locked.

Finally there’s the token Bethesda suite of bugs. While Bethesda games have been notorious for the plethora of quirks and oddities, Starfield, for better or worse, isn’t a ubiquitous bastion of fallacy and game-breaking SNAFU’s. Many times it features someone you’re talking to slowly stepping forward and walking away from you, occasionally engaging in dialog with some NPC’s had them facing away and talking to you, sometimes it’s a companion sprinting like the Flash into a corner until you change rooms. There’s nothing outright game-breaking, unless you consider the laughably terribad AI just standing there at times as broken (more of an immersion break). My favorite though had to be this one NPC I needed to talk to so I could progress a task. I entered the room, and I see him sitting Indian style, slowly ascending towards the ceiling, and then completely through it and likely drift off into the sun. On the one hand, I was in a shock and awe over that was transpiring, but on the other, oh crap – I can’t engage the NPC in the dialog I need to progress the quest in the manner I was aiming for. I had to reload the save several times because he’d keep floating up to heaven as I reached him. Finally I loaded the save and ran into the room and jumped up towards him and triggered the conversation, and was laughing my ass off at how I finally got to trigger the dialog from said NPC.

This all sounds like a must miss experience filled with stuff that’s just not savory, but the fact of the matter is that there’s still more than enough to enjoy with Starfield, even if the list may seem meager in comparison. The main storyline was actually a lot of fun to follow along with. Towards the midway point it becomes bizarre, and entering the third act, it’s just downright zany. I never really had any affinity towards any of my companions though, outside the lovely Sarah and her lovely accent. The journey you take though, is filled with a lot of twists, weird ass turns, and moments that will leave you flabbergasted, but all in a positive manner. I only engaged with one side mission arc, the Ryujin storyline in Neon. That on its own was such a fantastic and always engaging storyline, which nets you a pretty cool thing that I can’t elaborate any further on, although I completely forgot I had it after an hour. The ending though…best I can say is “it’s the journey that matters most, not the destination”. The lead up was kinda moving, but the actual engagement of triggering the ending left a ton to be desired, even if I understand why things were done in such a way.

You won’t really ever run out of anything to do in Starfield, whether it’s combing through planet #420, the painful space combat, the myriad of missions and story arcs, etc. You can also work on customizing your ship, as well as upgrade your gear and other tradeskill type activities – none of which I really dabbled much with, but it’s there! Random encounters on planets and in space adds a bit of spice as well, even though seeing every variation starting to repeat becomes monotonous.

I played Starfield on PC, so my visual experience was augmented that much more, in both fidelity and mod support. On the whole, it’s a prettied up Bethesda game, minus city and town NPC’s looking even worse than citizens in Watch Dog: Legion (and holy crap were they atrocious). Early on I decided to get a couple of mods to help make the visuals a bit “cleaner”. DLSS and Frame Generation were two of those additions, although I had to delete Frame Generation as it kept crashing the game. I also added a FOV mod since, for some baffling reason, there wasn’t one provided (it’s being patched in soon along with other common features the game lacked at launch). The most beneficial of the visual mods was the one that removes that hideous color tint that made it look like I’m viewing the game through a glass filled with eggnog or pea soup. It’s a substantial game-changer removing that tint and it really does enhance the immersion.

Audio wise, it all feels like something you would hear from a space themed game or movie. I do have to give kudos to the soundtrack though. At times it gave me Mass Effect vibes, other times just accentuated whatever was unfolding at the time. There’s one particular track that usually goes off during a particularly hectic moment, and it’s almost an adrenaline rush.

Gunplay is your typical Bethesda fare. If you’ve played any of the first person Fallout titles, you know more or less the kind of experience you’ll be getting in to. I did appreciate the way Bethesda handled the “weapon wheel” in Starfield, although being the packrat that I am, twelve was way too low of a number, which led me to pausing quite a bit just to activate things that the weapon wheel had no room for.

The one thing that really stands out to me from my 65+ hours playing through Starfield was just how much I enjoyed the game world and my journey as a whole, blemishes and all. Each night that I wasn’t able to stream it, I was desperately craving some more Starfield. Even if I saw all of the random encounters that were available on both land and space, there was always this feeling of joy just going wherever I wanted. Following along with the Ryujin storyline or the main storyline was a blast, and I regret not engaging with other side story arcs before completing my first playthrough.

— — —

Here’s the true $64,000 question – is it worth getting? This has a number of layers to it:

• do you have a PC powerful enough to run the game at 60fps with most everything maxed?
• do you only have a Series X/S?
• do you have Game Pass?
• do you enjoy Bethesda RPG’s?
• should you buy Starfield or use Game Pass?

Basically these are your answers (in order):

• if yes, play Starfield, if no, don’t
• if yes, play Starfield via Game Pass, just be wary of lack of mod support (for now), 30fps cap and less fidelity
• if yes, play Starfield, if no, subscribe for a month and try it out
• if yes, play Starfield, if no, don’t
• play Starfield via Game Pass, if you want to own it, wait for a half off sale

While my lofty expectations were a bit too high into the clouds for my own good, Starfield was an enjoyable 65 hours spent and well worth the experience. Was I disappointed with what I got? Somewhat, but the blame is solely on me for inflating the hype as much as I had. The overall journey was worthwhile, even with the laundry list of issues. In a way, Starfield reminds me of Final Fantasy XVI in that both of their stories were excellent and worth playing through what’s more or less a decent game built around unfolding its exposition. If you have Game Pass on PC and a beefy system, definitely give this a go. Series X/S only but you have Game Pass? It’s worth trying. Temper your expectations though – it’s more or less Fallout in space, with a much larger scope and a ton more redundancy, but there’s definitely fun to derive from your trip through the galaxy.

Rating: 7