Ty Brown

Have a really hard time not comparing this the AC 4 Black Flag (The devs said it’s inspired by it so not my fault). It’s worse than that 11 year old game in almost every way by the same Publisher.

As a big BGS fan since the early 2000's who has been enjoying Starfield (mostly), I'd have to honestly give it a 3.5/5 stars. - Is it fun? Mostly. The gun play and general combat is the best from BGS but certainly not a top fps contender. Exploring can be fun, but also boring/slightly frustrating. - Story? The main story is serviceable BUT the beginning is a slow burn for several hours (even more than previous BGS titles) and the ending leaves so much to be desired. It takes time to really connect with it. The side quests can be absolutely incredible though. Absolutely do side quests. Time can fly with this game but you may be beside yourself when you “finish” the game. Just fair warning. - Is it expansive? In its own disjointed way, it's massive but with a major caveat (constant loading). You can't even traverse a single building without having to load between sections. I know this is in every BGS game but it's 2023 now. Seriously. - Are the visuals good? Best from BGS but still appears 2017-2019 AAA standard, particularly with faces. - The world building though... Hate to say it's one of BGSs weakest for me. I believe because it feels disjointed as it's not one big sandbox like traditional Fallout or Elder Scrolls along with the procedurally generated portions that can feel cookie cutter. It's big, but in the way that it's a world built with many, many smaller spaces. - Graphical bugs are in this game, it’s a big game so it’s inevitable. It’s quite possibly the least buggy BGS game but I still had 3 crashes in 80 hours of gameplay on XSX and plenty of character, world, and ship bugs from clipping, repeating animations, spinning in place, floating, disappearing collectibles etc. BGS very clearly put so much work into this game (like they do with all of their single players titles.) But I can't help to feel that much of the effort they did put went towards the wrong areas. This is a must play for Gamepass subscribers. It has enough content to objectively justify the full sales price but I can’t personally recommend a full price purchase for it, especially since you can try it through Gamepass to at least see if you like it first.