Rating down at 77%
Rating down at 77%
Starfield is the first new universe in 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.
I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.
While it was not a Cyberpunk-grade overhype, I think it must still have been overhyped. Because if you see it as Skyrim with better graphics, it is pretty much what you'd expect.
Some of the common criticism seems to be intrinsic to the sci-fi genre. In Skyrim, you walk 100 meters and then you find some cave or camp or something that a game designer has placed there manually with some story or meaning behind it. And as a player, you notice that, because most locations in Skyrim feel somehow unique. Even though for example the dungeons have rooms that repeat a lot. Having a designer place them manually with some thought gives them something unique.
In interstellar sci-fi, a dense world like this is simply impossible. Planets are extremely large so filling them manually with content is simply not possible. And using procedural generation makes things feel meaningless. Players notice that fast. So instead, Starfield opted for having a few manually constructed locations that are placed randomly on planets, unfortunately with a lot of repetition. But that is a sound compromise, given the constraints of today's game development technology. The dense worlds that we are used to from other genres simply don't scale up to planetary scale, and as players, we have to get used to that.
7/10 really seems to be an appropriate rating for this game. It’s not bad, it’s just a Bethesda RPG and nothing more.
I'd agree with you, its a solid 7/10, if reviewed it after only playing the game for a couple hours.
but from the 10 hour mark and beyon, to where I am now, I'd say its a 5/10.
Theres just to many small things that make the game frustrating to hell once you get out of that initial starter window.
Like, Ship parts. You get great details on engines, shields, reactors, etc. But no detail on landing gear, which would be great to have when your error message is screaming at you for more landing gears, and you dont know how much each one supports, or what the difference is, and you have no numbers to tell you how many more you need... And Hab components. Just tell me what work benches each one has, at least, and if things like the infirmary are just cosmetic or provide some boon to having it.
And surveying planets. You know why exploring was fun in skyrim/fallout4? Cause you were going from point A to point B, and were discovering things on the way, and getting distracted. on Starfield, land in the middle of a map, and have to wander around hoping you can find enough to scan to complete the survey for the planet, or at least the biome, before fast traveling back to the ship. This can take hours, even with amp.. and amp's buff time is so little that if you plan on using it you have to stockpile a lot of it, and micromanage it.
Speaking of buffs like Amp.. theres no HUD display that I can find that indicates how much time you have left on your buffs. I barely use any buffs cause of this alone.
And speaking of the HUD.. Why are the things we get given tucked up in a corner where we cant see, at a time when our eyes are in the bottom middle reading text? I have no idea what I've gotten from quest rewards, because I never see the notification.
Also, the artificial delay and slowness built into the interface. Why? Theres mods that easily remove them.. but why are mods necessary? Why make the menu system artificially worse?
While individually, any one of these things (both the mentioned examples, and the unmentioned ones) could just be ignored with a sigh and moved on from, the fact that pretty much every system in the game missed its mark by an infuriatingly tiny step, that would take almost no effort to polish in to a gem, I cant help but just be utterly frustrated with the absolute potential the game had, thats left on the vine to wither, because they decided to stop right before getting things right on seemingly every. single. mechanic and interface.
And not to mention the bigger issues, like improperly handled DirectX calls that can cause bad performance and crashes, that was discoverd yesterday, or the fact that to much basic outpost shit is locked behind perks.
It really feels like the creators didn't do much playing of the game itself. So many things that are just lacking for a game like this.
- inventory being single pane instead of person/vendor/companion
- no descriptions for ship parts. Like the workshop doesn't even say that it has the workbenches in it. Or the landing gear stuff you mentioned. Also, what's with the cockpit variations that have no difference? Like the C1 vs C1X (or whatever) seem to have zero different except cost.
- clunky inventory, even with the starUI mod. It was basically unusable without it.
- animals just killing each other willy nilly for no reason. So many dead animals...
- the cockpit animation being like 6 seconds. And mapped to the same button as lock-on so that you wind up getting out of the chair mid combat. And the lock-on just being terribly imprecise.
- the perk system just either unlocking a core function of the game or just being so uninspired, like do x% more damage. Com'on guys!
Just so many things. Yes modders will fix it probably, but they shouldn't have to and there will likely not be as much interest in doing so since the game isn't as majestic and awe inspiring as skyrim (IMO).
This is exactly the frustration I'm experiencing. You have put this to words so perfectly. Every single menu or ux decision makes me just wanna pull my hair out.
It's so close to being a gem but there's so much friction trying to do the stuff in the game thanks to the UI
Yeah I might even go 8. A lot of the game is very high quality from the quests to the level design and details. Dogfighting is good, the rest of space stuff is meh. Ship designer is good overall.
I really wish they could have let us fly more freely, or at least give that illusion. There is also a lot more room for polish and quality of life improvements. Like let us walk through ships before we buy them, and maybe fly it in a simulator without spending money. That tech should be easily available. Ground vehicles would be a no-brainer, that could certainly lead to more gameplay opportunities.
@dan1101 agree totally, I didn't see how good the dogfighting was until I had an actually difficult fight (for the Key ifykyk) where I was completely out of ship parts and direct confrontation would lead to instant destruction. Before I would just fly at the enemies, face tank and repair, killing them pretty quick. That shit didn't fly for this fight. I had to get super creative in using objects (and even other hostile ships) as cover while my shields came back up, using hit and run tactics.
I cannot possibly disagree more with your assessment that the interstellar setting is necessarily boring and that’s something we should accept.
But, if so, then why would we need to “just get used to it”? I’ve certainly never felt compelled to force myself to play a boring game
I don't think OP made the point clear, but I agree with the spirit.
Fundamentally it is this:
Sense of scale
Meaningful content at every turn
CHOOSE ONEExamples
Daggerfall - infinite scale, but quests, dungeons, meaningful content have to be specifically targeted or else be lost in the gigantic procedurally generated world.
Elite Dangerous - spending 20 minutes supercrusing across a binary star system really makes you feel the size, but also that's 20 minutes of not doing anything.
No Man's Sky - The universe is effectively infinite, and there is something useful almost everywhere! But (almost) none of it is handcrafted, so the random content gets stale in the scale.
Star Citizen - Basically no content, but absolutely unmatched as an immersive space experience, as it doesn't compromise on scale for QoL or filler content in the slightest. Worth noting that most people hate this.Meanwhile Skyrim is impressive because the world is pretty big, but there's also something interesting to do every 5 steps. Starfield tries to maintain this while also tossing in some NMS-style randomized infinite content, but ends up suffering the same feeling of staleness once you spend any time exploring it.
This is the best, most succinct, and fair assessment I’ve seen of Starfield since launch.
Starfield has the advantage of 100+ hours of hand-crafted, voice-acted quest content, of course. What they need to do about the procedural content is the same thing Hello Games did, just add more procedural pieces that can get put together in novel ways, so the planets and outposts aren't so obviously exactly the same. I'm hoping the system that inserts buildings on planets will just take new content, because modders could really blow that wide open.
I've honestly never seen this much of an unapologetic shameless dogshit take. To actually think, "no, it's the players who are wrong" in this situation takes some real delusion.
Like this is the most "mask off" fanboy post.
Empyrion is such a different game, but so many times on that my buddies and I would just land somewhere to get fuel and spend hours exploring and building on some random planet with plenty to find, explore, and fight. And that is entirely procedurally generated with randomly placed points of interest.
Starfield is the classic Bethesda experience but the hype around it implied it wouldn't be. The classic Bethesda experience is fine, it's a good base of a nice, free-form game that lacks polish. They are also games that need at least a few mods to actually be good. Vanilla Skyrim, etc sucks after you start modding it. Even if all you download is an end, a weather, the unofficial patch, and the better dialog and message box controls mods. Playing starfield I was immediately like "where is better dialog and message box controls?"
The game has potential but a thing that bothers me is landing on a planet and it says I explored 90% of it before I even exited the ship. I went to earth and there was no evidence of there ever being life and major cities. No ruined homes, no cities, no like... Mt Rushmore head that broke off and found where it isn't supposed to be, no statue of liberty torch. Nothing. They could have crafted a really cool ruined earth and instead it was just... sand and rocks. What do you think is behind that rock? Another rock. And when it comes to Earth, you don't need to have everything be where it needs to. The tip of a pyramid in Egypt makes sense but I see nothing wrong with finding the broken Washington monument in the middle of what was the Atlantic ocean. Or the broken big Ben in the middle of what was Japan. If any planet should have gotten randomly generated assets of ruins or even just manually crafted, it should have been Earth.
Most planets are empty and give you almost no reason to explore them. The game is about exploring planets, but playing this game makes me want to play Starbound instead.
I also don't know why everyone compares it to Skyrim when I feel like I'm playing Fallout 4 instead of Skyrim. Skyrim would have been an improvement, I wasn't a fan of FO4.
classic Bethesda experience
I messaged my friend a couple hours into the game and said “…I dunno dude. This feels like Fallout 4 but in space.” I’ve never finished an FO game, despite trying many times, because they just feel boring and overwhelming at the same time (for me anyway). I was late to the Skyrim party, first played it on Switch and loved it - loosely because the story drove me forward and kept me engaged.
Witcher 3 and CP2077 had me hooked the entire time. Even though they’re entirely different games, I also miss the little nuances in NMS - like actually flying into a planets atmosphere and landing, being able to zoom around the planet in my ship, engaging “warp.” All without a whole lot fewer loading screens or opening menus. To be fair, I got tired of NMS super quickly because resource mining and grinding aren’t my thing.
All that to say that I’m enjoying it though I’m not sure how long it’ll stick with me. It’ll hold me over until Phantom Liberty comes out.
I played a few hours but after a quest frustrated me I haven't picked it up since.
I did go through an abandoned science facility but it was just like going through a facility in fallout for me.
I tried playing fo4 many times but could never really get far into it. The west time i tried a completely different playthrough where you are just cranked up on drugs and go in running with melee weapons, but that build takes a while to get going. I also tried actually building a settlement with that build and I couldn't even make a square room and gave up lol. (There was always a gap no matter how I placed the walls...)
I see you can build crazy ships and maybe that might be fun.
But I don't know, the game doesn't quite do it for me.
that lacks polish
I’d say creation engine is showing its age more than it lacks polish. The game looks pretty good and I’ve encountered virtually no bugs so far. People’s faces are a bit off though, as many have pointed out.
Creation engine is a double edge sword, on one had, it is super moddable. The mods you can put in for skyrim are insane. You can turn it into a completely different game.
I would say that the game isn't unpolished because of the engine though. Not in the ways I'm talking about anyway. The quests, dialog, locations, animations are all just a bit off, unpolished, and stiff. None of these really have anything to do with the engine aside maybe animations and locations. And given the eldersouls mods that give very animated combat animations, the combat mods that add wound systems and combos, etc, I don't think that's what's holding them back.
Yes creation engine is old, but I dont think it's what makes the game feel unpolished for me.
I'd agree with you, but like I've stated over here
So much of the lack of polish is just potential left on the vine to wither and die cause they refused to take the last tiny steps to make so many of the mechanics into something easy to use and enjoyable.
I know, gameplay is more important than tech, but for an AAA game it's kinda disappointing techwise. No 32:9 support, HDR is mediocre, no FOV settings, language cannot be properly changed,...
That's what happens when you've been using the same engine since 1997, and just slap a fresh coat of paint on it every few years instead of actually improving it like Unreal.
Hey look, elden ring doesn't have even 21:9 support, hdr was broken for a while at launch, and no fov setting
Is there HDR? Because I'm certain there's no option for it on PC.
There are no ingame settings, which is bad. But when you activate HDR in your Windows settings the game seems to use HDR. It just looks rather bad imho (black levels too high).
It's just a number. Play the games you like and don't care what others think.
Exactly review scores are meaningless, early reviews even less so.
Harsh. I avoided most marketing for this game and honestly it's a great game. Alternating between PC and Steamdeck works great. I haven't had any tech issues or crashes.
The largest single issue with the game is the atrocious menus. I get that the radial design benefits controllers, but even with gamepad layouts it's ass. Editing ships is ass, selecting destinations is ass, God forbid you try to find out which mission is closest to you without memorizing which systems are connected to where.
The user interface at nearly every turn is bafflingly obtuse. On top of cool features like the option to go to your cockpit or board a ship, you get insanely weird decisions like no waypoint system? There is technically a waypoint option but it's definitely not a usable system.
Also what's with the galaxy map? Fuckin mass effect had this shit figured out 15 years ago. With a banging soundtrack for the menu lol
Also why the hell is there no tutorials for these crazy indepth systems and menus... like if they need to suck tell me how to bear it
They should have just pulled an outter worlds and made several hand crafted planets.
I'm viewing this game as more of a modder's platform. It's really the whole reason I play BGS games. As such, it works perfectly the way it is. It's decent out of the box, but once the CK comes out and the mods start rolling in, it's going to be perfect.
It's crazy how much better the plot and setting are in that game despite the fact it has maybe a 1/10 of the content Starfield does.
Man Outer Worlds was so cringe to me. I tried really hard to get into it but it felt like it just kept rehashing the same jokes over and over. “Haha I’m owned by a company and they’re cheap and I’m silly!” Just over and over and over. After 10-15hrs I put it down for good.
It’s like someone delivering a punch line and waiting awkwardly for the chuckles packaged into a game.
I played Outer Worlds and, I think I completed it. The setting got old and the plot.. what was the plot again..? I'm like 90% sure I finished it but I couldn't tell you what happened.
Contrast that to Starfield, I've completed two faction quest lines and they were both superb. They took unexpected twists and turns and were full of lore and interesting characters. The Crimsom Fleet quest line was epic, and payed off in just the right way for me (seriously the discovery at the end is 🤌). The Rjujin quest line was also great, and took such an unexpected turn from the initial thing of applying for an office job. Also the toy you get from the questine is really fun to play with, crazy that someone might play the whole game and miss it because they thought applying for a corp job would be boring.
At the moment I'm taking a break from story missions, and I've been taking pirate hunting bounties, and just exploring. I've found loads of random encounters and followed threads to some epic stuff. And I've still only just started the main quest line.
The game is so much deeper than Outer Worlds, while also being far broader. Also, Bethesda make open world games, if they had released something as stripped back and linear as OW, they pull have been torn apart for it, even more than they are now.
"Not recommended. This game is so boring. 150 hours played"
You can't fault them for not giving it a fair chance.
I played for about 25 hours before I gave up.
Those 25 hours were mostly me waiting for the moment when it would finally get better. The moment never arrived.
There is a big issue with tedious repeating animations. Like standing up from the cockpit. Or docking a station. The hand made content is still there it's just placed into the world procedurealy.
I just don't understand why some key binds are random. Why am I using b to add favorites? Why not f. Or x to exit the ship. Why not q? It just seems like the binds are just chosen at random when there are available keys where my hands are already resting.
I love that 0 is to heal but O is to repair my ship. I'm constantly just mashing both because I can't remember which is which when my shields are down and I'm trying to dodge a missile.
Until this very second I thought my game was bugged because 0 (zero) wasn't repairing my ship. I was literally going into the menus to repair my ship mid battle.
My biggest complaint is still an RPG being consolified, meaning its menu's are all shit because of controllers.
Interactions in this game would me so much better if it were designed from the ground up for mouse, point and click, drag, etc.My only other complaint is I wish I could fly and land the craft myself similar to No Man's Sky. You can land on planet, shit is still random gen, but there's some hardpoint spots where your ship can land in a city or outpost.
The positive sides that surprised me is the ship building is great. Always wanted a game that allowed this kind of ship building.
Space Engineers or similar are great, but can be too much detail. This snap together modular blocks is nice middle ground.I'm also impressed the engine is able to handle so many micro collisions of items on the ground.
My biggest complaint is still an RPG being consolified, meaning its menu’s are all shit because of controllers.
That's weird because I'm playing on console and the menus and UI are shit with a controller too.
I don't think the engine allows for such an open world. The engine is built around cells, and BGS shot itself in the foot by making a game in a setting that requires open-ness using an engine that only works with enclosed spaces.
Implementing dynamic asset streaming would've been a massive hurdle that would've likely broken so many other things and delayed the entire release by a year or two. I can understand why they didn't go that route, especially during the pandemic. For what its worth, the terrain gen and all is still pretty impressive, even if you cannot seamlessly travel around.
I agree that they could've hidden some parts better though, like why can't I select an existing landing spot from within the ships cockpit instead of having to use the map? They already show you the markers when you're in the scanning mode anyway so that could've been a pretty quick thing to do. After all it works with other targets already too.
A lot of the negativity seems to stem more from the fake outrage though.
Ship building is fun, but man they are lacking in detail.
What is the difference between these two cockpits? Idk, build it twice and find out. Oh, they're identical, then why even have a second one?
Oh, this giant 3x3 module must have a ton of stuff in it! Nope, the 2x1 is actually better. But which one? Dunno, try them all and reload.
You're ship is too big in either length, width, or height. Which one is it? Dunno, I just figured I'd throw all the errors together into one warning and let you figure it out.
Modders sure have their work cut out for them...
I haven't played a new Bethesda game since Skyrim came out in 2011. So I went into starfield expecting Skyrim in space. I knew it would rely on more radiant randomly generated systems. I knew it wasn't going to have entire planets. Based off my expectations, I believe they have all been met. I'll probably log a ton of hours into the game. Was it overpriced? Maybe. But I don't really buy new games all that often, so it's hard for me to say.
When you do the math on pennies per hour, it's hard to argue that it's overpriced.
Most common bug for me so far is the invis cloak glitching and becoming visually permanent (but not the effect on stealth. Boo)
Honestly not even a tiny problem for a Bethesda vet.
7/10 basically space skyrim
Ratings are so hard to trust these days. Some people never play the game they are reviewing, others use it as an opportunity to enact some vendetta based on prior games, and some are worth reading. 77 is fair enough at this stage, but the only way to know for real is how the game feels for you.
Honestly I haven't been looking at the public reception at all because I've been playing it since it released. I didn't even know people weren't loving it, it's exactly what I want from a Bethesda game and more (136 hours so far)
Honestly I assumed that the critical reception would be middling, the zeitgeist is done with this studio and it’s games. Which is completely fair they are janky and weird and frankly often break in un-fun ways.
It’s a BGS game warts and all and I had a great time with it. I love these big, ambitious, broken games and this is a better than average one of them.
My complaints personally are just about bad dialogue and quest design. The world is hardly my biggest issue.
I just finished another play through of Cyberpunk before jumping into Starfield and the dialogue seems SO generic in comparison. Not to mention the whole "Oh hi, here's my space ship and robot. Bye!" was really offputting.
That entire beginning is definitely the worst part of it imo. No idea why they thought this was a good idea. It's not even just bland and weird in regards to the story but it is also a terrible tutorial experience. I only learned that you can mine super fast by holding right click after like a week form reading online comments of others. I can definitely see how some more casual people will be severely put off by such an experience.
Starfield reletive to other bethesda titles has the most tame start. Its part of the reason why people dont like the intro hours into the game.
I'm enjoying the game, but an annoying number of quests involve a pointless "go talk to this person to find out what to do", you get there and it's always some mundane instruction "go collect this thing from there". and you waste a few minutes for that
I’ve put 40hrs in and almost none of the quests have been interesting, they go nowhere, characters have little personality, the buildup never has a payoff, the “choices” are shallow and have no effect on anything. It feels like the quality of a community mod.
yeah, That's fair criticism. This dialogue and quests are pretty flat.
I can get on board with some of this. I like many quests personally but I really wish Bethesda would write more interesting material than some of the dialogue randomly spouted off by NPCs. I know it's a game and that action cliches happen in many games but it gets old after seeing overacted pirates or marines talk about their hardships. It just isn't believable.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Create a handful of small, dense "gamefied" worldspaces and people will complain that the world is not big and open enough and that it's not realistic or immersive to have such small and dense "planets". Create thousands or trillions (in case of Elite:Dangerous) of procedurally generated planets with realistical amounts of POI-s, and people will complain about boring, sparse worlds with little to do on and where it takes too much time to go anywhere. Try to hit a middle ground, and people will still complain.
Same thing with spaceflight. In Elite you can fly seamlessly everywhere in a system. Only real loading screens are jumps from one system to another. People complain regularly about long travel times (average being only a few minutes), how travel is not gameplay and how "boring" it is and that instantly warping from planet to planet would be so much better. And then people complain about warping mechanics in Starfield.
The developers can never win with the internet-dwelling "gamers" with these sorts of games. There will always be a very loud minority who complains that the game is not what they imagined would be their perfect game. Bear in mind that most people who like the game are busy playing the damn game and not leaving reviews.
As for overhype, oh, there was so much of it in space sim circles. People seriously believed that Starfield will be killing Elite and Star Citizen in one fell swoop. Of course, most of these people were already discontent with Elite and Star Citizen and when Starfield obviously didn't fulfill their wishful thinking, they're now even more discontent and loud.
Me personally? I'm waiting til I can get a new GPU so I can start tinkering with spaceship builds (really love the NASA-punk aesthetic, especially the interiors), guns and suits. And Starfield seems to have perfected jetpack combat, one aspect I really like about Elite, but which is kind of limited there (can't swap jetpacks, and the combat suit has a crap jetpack even after upgrading it while the suit with the good one is not that suitable for combat). Can't wait to make my Mobile Infantry build operating from a Firefly-class ship🙃
I feel like you're straw manning the issues with the game. Sure some people are disappointed by the lack of depth in the setting. But there are PLENTY of other things to be not like: primarily in my book, the game should be called "Loading Screenfield" since you spend more time in loading screens than anywhere else.
There is a pretty big thread from a few days ago where people discuss the things that are underwhelming about the game. Overall, it's not a bad game, but not great either. Considering the number of actually great games it's competing with right now (looking at you BG3 and soon Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty), I think it looks even more meh in comparison.
I think the Steam rating seem pretty spot on.
the game should be called “Loading Screenfield” since you spend more time in loading screens than anywhere else
Not going to argue whether there are too many load screens before I can upgrade my PC and play it. What I will say, though: Starfield is not exactly unique in having lots of load screens, and I think that limitations of Creation Engine play the main part. Travel in Elite is also a load screen after every minute or two if you need to travel to any star system more than a few jumps away. Same goes for X3, which consists of roughly 50x50 km sectors connected by warp gates (loading screens) and in early game you'll need to always go through many sectors to reach anywhere.
Considering the number of actually great games it’s competing with right now (looking at you BG3 and soon Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty), I think it looks even more meh in comparison.
Depends on whether one considers these (unarguably good, especially BG3) games as competition for Starfield. I think competitors to anything should be considered in the genre of that something--eg Infant Annihilator is not competing with Purple Disco Machine, they're just so wildly different things. I'm a big space ship nerd and for me neither BG3 nor Cyberpunk is not even remotely competing for attention. The competition to Starfield could be Elite, Star Citizen, No Mans Sky, X4. Either Star Citizen or No Mans Sky are maybe the closest competitors thematically.
Elite is the main competitor for me, and has excellent space flight mechanics, plus is the only game in existence to have a 1:1 scale simulation of the Milky Way galaxy. Starfield has arcade-y space flight (more of a space shooter than space sim), but seems to have done the on-foot gameplay better than Elite--especially when it comes to on-foot exploration and the life on planets. Starfield also has ship interiors and the ability build ships from ground-up. All of of this fills the niches Elite lacks, so in a sense they're more complementary than competitive.
Not sure why you got down voted. You hit the nail on the head. I like elite but stopped playing after "mile wide and inch thick" syndrome became clear. I never got into star citizen because even though I got a ship it always gave me problems to run.
Slightly off topic rant: people talk about "space sims" like its an actual thing you can simulate (uhhhh we haven't invented that stuff yet sir) and it drives me crazy. I like flight sims but even when I know the real thing is more difficult and complex I know the dynamics have some relation to reality unlike a super magical warp drive thing.
Turns out that people really like to complain.
I'm still sad that stellar overload failed. I easily put more hours in that and it never made it out of early access.
They don't have to make a game based in reality. They could have made their own system where the planets are small and filled that handful with lots of stuff. They chose to make real systems and have huge planets, it doesn't matter if there's 10, 100, 1000 planets if they are all barren and empty. The approach they took wasn't good for a bethesda rpg, they need the hand crafted world where they can keep things popping up. That's just the start of the problem with the game though, it is far too similar to their existing RPGs, I get playing it safe with a formula (I mean Larian do too), but you have to have great lore and story to back it up if that's what you want to do. Bethesda made no attempt to disguise it, it is as shameless as Ubisoft's rehashed games. They need a new engine if that is what's limiting them.
There's the problem. You bought a BSG rpg wanting it to not be a BSG rpg. They will always make this style of game. If you want a different style of game, they will disappoint you.
Ive been playing BSG rpgs since Morrowind, and so I got exactly what I was expecting, with some cool extra bits on top. And as such, I absolutely love it!
They chose to make real systems and have huge planets, it doesn't matter if there's 10, 100, 1000 planets if they are all barren and empty.
Barren and empty worlds have their place in such game. If nothing more, you need contrast between lush worlds and empty rocks/iceballs to make the former stand out. I think I can call myself an Elite vet at this point with 3000 hours in, and all the landable worlds, of which there are literally more than a trillion, are barren. They still offer gorgeous views and are essential for creating the appropriate artificial lonelyness of virtual space exploration. Also, geology spotting, jetpack mountaineering and base jumping can be a fun activity during long expeditions.
Also, barren worlds will be the playgrounds for modders. Skyrim had a problem that squeezing in modded larger playerhomes and settlements was often really hard task and created tons of incompatibilites. Basically no such concerns in Starfield.
Even the less barren ones you walk 900m to a cave, just to find like 2 corpses in there. Barren worlds are useful for the reason you mentioned, but they didn't need 1000 planets that they clearly struggled to do anything with.
Why would it matter if they have huge vast empty spaces vs. still huge but comically looking empty spaces? That argument just doesn't make sense and I heard it so much from the whole Elite vs Star Citizen debate already. No, those smaller planets aren't filled with more interesting things because they're smaller, the gaps between points of interests are still procedurally generated and just as empty as the other game. But after seeing realistically scaled planets it makes even SC planets look like cartoon planets, sort of like the ones from NMS. It just doesn't look right. There's just no gameplay benefit to it.
it is as shameless as Ubisoft's rehashed games.
People keep saying this but I’d say at worst Ubisoft does games in pairs, occasionally trios. If you play AC: Odyssey and AC: Black Flag, I assure you they will be VERY different experiences. Mechanics/combat alone are a huge distinguishing factor.
I must say it is not the best RPG out there, but I feel like it would have earned more. I personally have a lot of fun playing.
If you care so much about what others think you probably aren't enjoying it as much as you think.
I keep seeing this "Skyrim in space" moniker from the people who are lukewarm yet still positive about the game. I'd argue you can't even say that. From what I've seen, the game is a regression in a lot of ways. Skyrim and other earlier BGS titles are superior products.
It literally has the same mechanics and systems simply shuffled around, rebalanced and presented differently.
So much of the game is simply infuriating, and I'm not all that far in yet.
The menus are attrocious. It feels like wading through mud every time you try to get to menu. Half of them are locked to what feels like 10fps. You go into the map and it's 37 presses of the tab key to get out, or else use the awkward as fuck hold tab to exit. The inventory menus are a fucking joke. It took two weeks for modders to fix all of Bethesda's UI garbage that they have to fix every time a new game comes out. How is there not an option to sort by value/weight yet?
There's a lot of time wasting crap too. If you want to go to a different planet you have to walk to your ship, go up the ladder and go to the cockpit, watch an animation to sit down in the cockpit, watch a cutscene to take off, open the map, find your planet, set course, watch a cutscene as you jump to the planet, open the map again, find where you want to land, watch a cutscene as you land, get out of your ship. That's a lot of steps. Unskippable cutscenes every time you go somewhere sucks.