Mini spoiler review from me. 7.5/10.
Preface:I just completed Starfield with 65 hours in the game, alot of side quests, and the main quest done.I haven't really played a lot of Bethesda games before, Fallout 3 and 4 being the only ones, because I enjoy the fallout franchise. I don't think defending shortcomings of any Besthesda game with "it's a just a bethesda game" is justifiable. For the record, I was underwhelmed by both fallout 3 and 4, and felt they did not live up to the expectations of fallout 1+2 and the entire franchise as a whole. On to the review...
Story, world building & writing: Bethesda games were never really the pinnacle of storytelling, world building or writing for me, and Starfield is no exception. The main quest is incredibly boring and slow-going, and only really picks up until the final missions, but actually ended on a pretty interesting note in terms of the multiverse and starborn stuff, that interested me, and I had hoped they would explore that more. But up until the last few missions, the main quest was painfully bad, and that is really worrisome in a big grand RPG, that is very story driven.
Now, a lot of the sidequests are actually pretty cool, specifically the faction side-quests, and I enjoyed most of those, especially the UC and the UC Sysdef ones. But nothing about the side quest overall story and especially writing blew me away. They were decent to just OK in most areas.
The overall writing style just feels abit, neutered, bland, tame, it lacks some spark, and I'm not talking about some crazy dialogue with all crazy shit happening, or action and drama happening every 5 seconds, theres just something about the written dialogue that is somewhat off-putting to me as a whole.
Choices and Consequences: Something I normally look forward to ALOT in big RPGs is C&C, choices and consequences. You made that choice? Well here's how the entire world is affected by it, or this and that NPC. Entire quests are missed, entire towns/planets are now inaccessible and so on. Starfield doesn't really have alot of C&C. It has some, but it doesn't feel very deep. Your actions doesn't really seem to matter all that much, other than a few lines of dialogue from whatever NPC drives the quest. That's sad. I wish they have explored this much more, especially given the NG+ effect of the endgame.
UI+ This area is where the game really annoyed and lost me. The UI is terrible, simply put. I am constantly fucking encumbered, I have to jump to hoops all the time, to make the UI tolerable, it's micromanagement at its worst. Menus feels slow, clicks everywhere, it just doesnt feel intuitive. The UI needs ALOT of work, and actively made me hate the game. Just equipping items was a hassle, scrolling through all the junk. Not to mention all the fucking useless junk you can pick up, but it has weight to it.
Having no in-game map on the ground also annoyed me quite abit, as I got lost a few times, and would have loved a little map to orient myself in the bigger areas.
Graphics/aesthetics: Starfield is actually not a bad looking game, overall. The worst part of the entire deal for me, were definitely the character models and animations. They are very poorly done, and the creation engine really shows it age. It is super terribad? No, but it's enough to break he immersion for me when talking to people.
The planets, the landscapes, the little finer detail of each room, those things were all pretty cool and great.The design of the space suits, the design of the quests and worlds were surprisingly cool, and that "NASAPUNK" vibe they went with, worked surprisingly well.
Combat/space combat: Combat actually feels pretty good and solid. The weapons pack a punch, sound great, and they feel like they belong. Alot of weapon variety too.
Space combat, however, was incredibly frustrating for me. Espectially on "Very hard" as enemies blow you up instantly. The UI and controls, it all feels very clunky and annoying.
Enemy variety is VERY bad, however, I felt I always fought generic "SPACER" nr. 500, or the terrormorph or some form of that. The game needed alot more enemy variety to make it interesting in combat. You get bored of the combat quite quickly.
Sound/Music: Another thing Starfield doesnt relatively well, is the sound design, and the music. The music was intense at times, and felt beautiful and great. The sounds from weapons and the world were very nice. I enjoyed it alot.
Exploration: The explorative aspects of Starfield have been talked about alot, and for me, I don't mind the constant load screen, and the warp jumping all over, but alot of the worlds simply feel dead.Overall, I actually enjoyed the exploration, but its tied to many of the side quests, so its kind of hand-crafted exploration, which I dont mind. I loved finding stuff on planets for side quests, exploring the facilities and what happend etc.
Technical implementation/performance: Starfield is not bug-free, despite what many people claim. I didn't even have many bugs, but they were definitely noticeable. Enemies stuck on stuff all the time, npcs clipping through stuff, slow downs and just stuff not appearing.
The performance of the game is TERRIBLE. It didn't even launch with DLSS, and even with DLSS on lower systems, the game runs just "okay". If you have to rely on mods to make your game run ok, something is wrong.
Conclusion: Starfield is actually a decent game, a fun game. It has some really high highs, but also some really terrible lows for me personally.
So why only the 7.5 score? Well, for me, a big singleplayer story driven RPG, needs to hit a homerun in that department if you want 8.5-9-10 scores, on top of having top notch combat, top notch UI, visuals and everything else. Starfield doesnt have that, but comes close in different areas.
If you enjoy Bethesda type games like Skyrim, morrowwind, and whatever, fallout 4 I guess, I can understand why you would perhaps rate the game higher at like an 8/10 or even 9/10, but that's still not really objective in my opinion.
Will I replay Starfield in NG+? Maybe, but maybe not. I am at the moment not terrible keen on jumping into the game again after having just completed it with 65 hours playtime and seen the best sidequests.
