Is this game worse than Outer Worlds?
The outer worlds falls apart the moment you hit Monarch, the setting is mostly a "corporations bad" joke that gets old so fast to the point where starfield's juvenile unoriginal space adventure themepark with a billion rip-offs from science fiction works is honestly preferable, and Obshitian somehow managed to make even worse itemization in TOW than bethesda's looter-shooter approach.
Hell even the character system is shittier because for all it's faults like no attributes (I prefer systems where attributes do limit character potential and lock skills/perks/feats, although I don't remember how much they did that in TOW), Starfield at least gives you a decent selection of useful perks where you do wonder what to pick next until (even at level 50-ish for me, although I did put points into crafting, outposts and ship combat and those are huge sinks), while TOW was infected with sawyerism or whatever to the point it barely has anything good to pick and it very quickly turned into a "ok what is the least shit thing I can spend my point on?" thing and actually a fucking chore. Calling it anti-fun doesn't do justice to TOW's character system.
Never before TOW has a game with RPG mechanics made me NOT look forward to another level-up. With both that problem and the crap itemization (you pretty much get the best gear way too soon) you have pretty much seen/experienced it all but closure to the storyline by the point you land on Monarch, which is the reason why I had to force myself to finish TOW. Also I fabulously optimistically thought that I might get some storytelling payout from it, but there was nothing good later in the game apart from
revealing that it seems greater human civilization collapsed and contact was lost with humans outside of the system which was one 5 minute point of enjoyement I had from it in the who knows how many hours since I landed on Monarch.
What TOW does better is the art-style, maybe enemy variety, and the main quest design although barely, mostly because bethesda phoned-in 70% of it in Starfield with filler "go to X" objectives with no combat/character challenge, plus wasted a rather decent and original idea for the plot with their crappy writing and quest design. Maybe TOW had better choices and consequences and some reactivity because bethesda sucks with this, and I'm trying hard to erase any memory of TOW besides why it was shit from my mind as a warning to my future self, so I can't fucking remember if it did or not.
tl;dr Starfield gets boring slower than TOW.
