Caleb Becker

Buggy mess on PC. Borderline unplayable.

As someone who’s grown up with the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, I have to say… Starfield is a bit of a letdown. Both Skyrim and Fallout 4 had epic and captivating intro quests that kickstarted the games. Starfield’s intro quest is… bland and boring. The areas you explore at the start are hazy and dull. The UI is… clunky and disorganized to say the least. The AI enemies are brain dead. I’m in some building now and honestly… I can’t even remember why I’m here. This is the main quest and it’s so uninteresting I’ve already forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve played for 3-4 hours now and honestly, I have no desire to boot the game back up right now…

I want to like this game, but there are some seriously glaring issues. First of all, the UI is terrible. When trying to select equipment, the description box that pops up covers up your stat screen, making it really hard to tell if the gear you select upgrades the stats you want, which is an unacceptably sloppy oversight. Second, almost all of the sidequest are trash. You'll accept a quest stating, "Bring my husband his lunchbox in the ruins for X reward." So, you travel to the ruins and give him his food, but you get no reward. "There's no fork. Go get a fork from my wife." You end up having to run back and forth like 3 times, which is a major hassle and NOT what was initially agreed upon for said reward. Lots of quests do this and it'll drive you mad. Finally, the combat. I enjoy a good challenge, but the game is made difficult for all the wrong reasons. You're attacks are woefully underpowered. Spending all of your Brave points and attacking is about as effective as a regular attack from a Final Fantasy game. So encounters feel painfully drawn out unless you want to spend all your MP in one fight. Spending all your Brave points and attacking MIGHT kill an enemy, but then you get to sit there and wait until you can move again. So... lots and lots of waiting... yay. Furthermore, many enemies counterattack everything you do for extreme damage. Their weaknesses are to elements you don't have access to in this stage of the game, like Light. Or, sometimes they are even immune to your weapons! Trying to level Jobs and relying on melee for most your damage? Better hope the enemy isn't immune to swords or something or you're screwed. Not that it matters because you hit like a wet noodle most the time anyway. It's infuriating! Against bosses, I find myself resorting to just casting Poison over and over again until it finally applies, then spending the next hour just... healing/defaulting until Poison slowly kills the boss... How fun.

Boring and very preachy. Would rather sit through Statistics class than watch this mess again.