I have played around 27-30 hours so far, and I am loving it so far.
Many people wanted this to be a blend of No Man Sky and Fallout/Skyrim. If you are looking for that, you might be disappointed. However, if you go in thinking it is more of the first Mass Effect and Fallout/Skyrim, you may have a better expectation of what exploration is like in the game.
For people complaining about exploration and how "boring" most of the planets are: welcome to space. Most planets are empty barren wastelands (at least from what today's science knows). This is a game trying to be grounded in reality when it comes to exploration. If anything, the number of planets where life is found on in this game might be beyond what is actually out there. So far the game captures what most of these planets would be: mostly rocks and looking the same. This game is not set in a fantastical setting like Star Wars, but it is more grounded. Go into it thinking more like Star Trek before contact of other intelligent beings.
I have also seen people complaining about how the game looks. It looks right around I expect a Bethesda RPG to look on Xbox Series X: looks good, but there are better looking games out there. I do not remember when Elder Scrolls or Fallout had the generation defining graphics. StarField falls into this. There are times though when the lighting is just right that the landscape on a planet can be breathtaking. It is not in the same league as Horizon: Forbidden West, but it is still a good looking game.
The game is very much a Bethesda RPG. If you are a fan of Skyrim and especially Fallout, you will feel at home here. Even though I am loving the game so far, here are some of my complaints:
- No Internal or City Map - you have seen complaints about the overall map, and too be honest that does not bother me. What does bother me is lack of maps of cities and/or other internal places (caves, stations, large research facilities). I think having an auto-mapping feature to help you know where you are would be a great improvement for QOL and to help you know if you have explored everywhere. I am not talking about a map full of icons showing your next destination (the tracker helps with that), but a map showing what stores are in the area or simply just a map of everywhere you have gone in cave. The cave map could be difficult though due to how vertical some of these are.
- Frequent Crashes - my game has crashed multiple times a day on my Series X. Last play session it crashed around 5 different times. Thankfully I never lost more than 5 minutes of playtime, but it is still annoying and hopefully fixed soon.
- Little Explanation of How Scanning Works - the game gave little explaining on how scanning planets works and how to 100% a planet in exploration. It took a few planets to figure it out. Also, scanning/looking for aquatic life SUCKS. Unless there is some swimming or something you can unlock later, so far if you are on a planet that has aquatic life and you are wanting to scan in all of the fuana of that planet, good luck. Having to do it from the shore makes it challenging and takes longer than it should.
Those are my main complaints right now. If I was to give the game a review right now I would probably give it an
8.5.
If the game keeps its hooks in me and I continue to enjoy it the way that I am, I can see that number going to the
9.0-9.5 territory for me.
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https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/773
