"I'm not used to putting bad reviews on games; I consider myself an easy audience, so most of the time, I enjoy everything. It was especially hard for me to accept that I was not enjoying the game after I pre-ordered it for 99€... But here I am, because I cannot recommend you to buy this game, at least not yet. However, I think this game has a lot of potential, really.
First, let's talk about what I enjoyed:
- I like the character customization.
- I really enjoy the environments.
- The dialogues are interesting.
- The game seems really full.
- It's pretty.
- No bugs for now.
- It's in space. (I like space, lmao)
Now, what can be improved as for now, from least to most important. These are the reasons I cannot recommend this game at this point:
(0.5) Only 4h in, and I cannot hear that level-up/new location discovery music. It's too much.
1) I feel like the controls are overwhelming; it's not really easy and intuitive to do what you want to do.
2) The goals and side quests are unclear. As much as I would like to be involved in what's happening and actually getting to know the places, the people, etc., I find it really hard to actually know what to look for and what you can do. I did not even find the quests tab yet; I know I've accepted a few, but I have no clue where they are. So most of the time, I just followed the main quest, but even in it, I often was wondering "wait, why am I doing this?" or "what's the point." It's not badly written; it's just unclear.
3) Space exploration and spaceship driving. This was really a thing I was looking forward to trying. But for my first experience, it's quite disappointing. Most of the time, you just fast travel to a location; no piloting needed. It's not even an option to just drive to your destination. And this was really disappointing. For example, when moving from Mars to Venus or from Venus to Earth, I would have enjoyed actually piloting there, even if it would take 10 minutes or more. Maybe give an option to fast travel (maybe using the space leap), but not making it necessary. Same thing for landing and takeoff; I would enjoy being able to just go straight to the planet and land myself, even if it's a cutscene for landing pads. Not having to enter a menu, select a target, and click "land" and just be face to face with a loading screen. Same for takeoff; I would enjoy actually having to control the ship when taking off and progressively building height instead of just spawning into space after a push of a button. All of this really made the ship experience look like a fancy fast travel more than an actual means of transportation. Maybe in my 5h of playthrough, I can't really judge, but that's my experience.
4) The immersion. This is really a game-breaker for me. Starfield is the kind of game where I like to role-play as much as possible, especially because it's a solo game (see in (5)), and this is only achievable when having a strong bond with the character and the game. But the amount of loading screens everywhere, almost like in Skyrim, really broke that immersion. I played this right after I finished Cyberpunk 2077, and in this game, you absolutely never run into a loading screen. And that's part of what makes you forget that you're in a video game. I could not get that feeling while playing Starfield. I'm sure it was possible to mask those loading times. When you're in a SAS, maybe make it so the maps load while you wait in it, and the SAS doesn't open until it's loaded. Or maybe use some tech from UE5 (I don't know what engine they used) that makes the terrain load when you're near it. But please, those loading screens are really bothering. It's the first time in years since I've seen that many loading screens in a game, really reminding me of Skyrim. And for planets, you literally have the space travel; you could take all the time needed to load a planet while we're flying toward it since you could extend the space as much as necessary.
5) Multiplayer. Yes, I was expecting this to be a multiplayer game. I didn't want to get spoiled, so I almost read nothing. I can only blame myself. But when I heard about being able to make houses, ships, thousands of planets, and stuff, I really thought this was gonna implement some kind of multiplayer. Being able to make a house with someone, showcasing your cool ship, trading maybe, ship fights, etc... Exploring together. I really thought it was gonna be a thing. I imagined it a bit like No Man's Sky or Destiny. Like it's a solo game, but you can see other people if you meet them.
6) This was maybe the biggest experience-breaking part of my playthrough. The dialogues.
- Our character has no voice. I read it was intended; I understand, but that still breaks the experience for me.
- BUT THE WORST is the fact that every time you talk to someone, the game switches to a cinematic camera look, straight to the person you talked to. And in dialogues with multiple people, it keeps switching back and forth. This was really terrible. Might be personal, but again, breaks my immersion. I will again take the example of Cyberpunk 2077. In this game, when you talk to someone or engage in a dialogue, no matter how important it is, you will ALWAYS have full control of your body and view. Improving a lot of immersion. I didn't know how good it was until I played Starfield today. It really made me look in the settings to see if there was any way to disable it. This just ruins all of my experience. It may seem like nothing. But it's really disturbing. When you're talking to a character, your camera changes, your FOV, the DOF, the position, everything. I can't manage to put words on why it's bad. But trust me it is. It really feels like when you're talking to someone, the game stops, your soul is leaving the body of your character, and you end up in a confession TV show with the person you talked to. As if they were talking to a camera. Really bad experience. I'm usually someone that likes to go deep into dialogues, trying to talk as much as possible with NPCs. But here, I can't; it's really painful. Not smooth at all. I really think a system similar to CP2077 would be perfect and should be implemented.
- Dialogues in a spaceship. This was also terrible. Remember what I was talking about in (3)? Ok, now imagine that in the small time you ARE actually able to drive your ship, you're into a dialogue. It would be really nice if you could talk to your crew while piloting, moving toward the planet. But when you're in a dialogue in your ship, your ship becomes static; you can't move anything, not even your view. Thismade those dialogues more painful than enjoyable. WHY would I stop my ship because you are talking to me? We just did a several light-years travel, so why would we be static, here, just after a 20-second loading screen when we're in front of our target... I don't know. I guess you will make your opinion yourself about that. But it was frustrating.
All of these points make it so I cannot recommend this game for now. It isn't "bad"; it really holds a lot of potential. But, as it is, it really misses the sense of immersion that I'm looking for in this kind of game. I cannot get myself into the game; I cannot go past that barrier of "this is a video game." I really had that weird feeling during my playthrough that I couldn't get immersed. When I played, I just wanted to run to the points asap, which I never felt in any other game. I'm used to liking to take the time to appreciate the views, the places, the people, etc... But here, I just wish for a longer stamina so I can arrive quicker. And that's not normal.
This aside, the game looks good, and I really liked landing in a random place on the moon, going to a random thing that looked interesting in the distance, to figure out that there was someone, and she asked me for help and ended up in a side quest, this is immersive. but yeah, right now I don't think I will be able to play more in those conditions.
