Starfield Reviews
Bethesda's long-awaited space epic is a vast interstellar canvas full of glorious sights to see and intriguing threads to pull – if you can keep patience with its fussy systems
Starfield is the ultimate Bethesda game. It takes what people loved about Fallout and Skyrim, and casts it across an enormous galaxy filled with captivating characters.
Starfield plays as you would expect an RPG to play in the sense that the inputs do what you want them to do. Performance also works well enough, particularly for a Bethesda game. Odds are, however, that you won't want to play for very long anyway. In this game, you get nothing but residual information about the world around you and humdrum experiences for you to play. Even in Dark Souls, you receive a challenge that faces you head on and you get rewards for surmounting that challenge. Whether it's the plot or the gameplay, Starfield puts any interest you may have on the back burner for something much more mundane to take its place.
Starfield is bigger and better than ever on PS5, but it still crashes against the roadblocks of old. A complete lack of exploration leaves the RPG in an awkward place where it can feel like an objective ticking exercise with little to distract you. Its faction questlines are the highlight, and the improved combat systems and new gameplay capabilities make the experience worthwhile. However, two and a half years later, there is considerably more Starfield. Only some of it makes it better.
Where it succeeds in wrangling all of its moving parts and ideas into something that just about works, it's also afraid to let the player take big swings. In the end, I always felt more like a tourist looking through a highlight reel of expedition notes and photos than actually exploring myself.
Some would say that the modding scene will solve the game's most glaring problems, and that may be true. But it's still worth noting how many problems there are, and how lots of them managed to escape Bethesda's attention. We'll hope that game will have extensive content support in the future, as was promised by the dev team.
Review in Russian |
Starfield is truly impressive, and when it allows you to breathe and live out your fate in the stars, it’s a consistently compelling journey. However, the main story and the central mystery act as a black hole, threatening, but never quite succeeding to drag it down into complete oblivion.
Starfield is for cautious and patient explorers, not for those who want everything right away. The beginning of the story is rather bland, the sense of estrangement at the highest levels. But as the fog clears, you can sense and appreciate all its potential and the free will left to the player, who really has a thousand things to do as he wants and when he prefers, perhaps leaving the continuation of a mission to better times (and statistics). On the other hand, the slowness of movements on the ground and small design defects have their weight and, albeit reluctantly, this must be taken into account in the global assessment, which remains high in anticipation of future developments. Maybe a few more weeks of playtest would have benefited him.
Review in Italian | Read full review
After almost two weeks with Starfield, the feeling is that there is still plenty to see and do. An epic space adventure in every way that will suck you into a black hole of entertainment. The game has its problems – especially in the weak main campaign – but you're sure to have other things to do.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
Starfield is a great game, but it is not the second coming of Bethesda. This is exactly what I thought it was going to be and if you love their games, you will love Starfield. There is so much to see and do. So many great characters, excellent writing, and plenty of side quests and choices to make. I hate the cliché “if you’re a fan of the genre” but if a game ever matched that quote, it is this one. This is a Bethesda space opera and one of their best games to date. I enjoyed my time and was always excited to dive back in. I don’t see myself going back often now that the main quest is complete, but I had a great time on my journey. Even if it is a bit cliché
Even though Starfield is slightly rough around the edges, it never detracts from all the fun and adventure. With engaging storytelling, charismatic characters, and an enthralling world, Starfield is an instant classic and a triumphant homecoming to blockbuster gaming for Bethesda Game Studios.
With an engaging story, well-developed characters and lore, and a huge amount of meaningful content, Starfield is one of Bethesda's finest games and one of the best role-playing games released in the past few years.
Starfield is Bethesda’s most polished game yet. It has a ton to do but falls flat on the exploration aspect. Without vehicles, walking around planets is not an efficient way to travel. The story is fantastic however and the game is visually stunning. It’s a unique experience you shouldn’t miss out on.
When they are firing on all cylinders, Bethesda games deliver pure video game magic, and Starfield is no exception. Offering an enormous galaxy to explore, a ludicrous wealth of interesting content, well-written characters, and innovative mechanics that push the genre in new directions, Starfield is a (mostly) clean experience at launch that should be experienced by all action/RPG fans. This is a new classic.
Starfield is one of the best space-based RPGs ever made, one where hours fly by in minutes, and one where the only hard limit is your imagination.
Starfield is a mammoth and enveloping title, which in some ways represents the absolute pinnacle of Bethesda's production. For quality and size, in fact, the ludonarrative baggage of the work stands a span above the previous role-playing adventures of the American team, from which, however, the title also inherits some of its less convincing traits.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Starfield is a massive space-based RPG with a galaxy of content to explore, but it has a surprising lack of ambition.
In conclusion, Starfield is a video game that shows the love on the part of Bethesda, it has enough attention to detail in both its main and secondary missions. Not to mention the open-world sections with an entire galaxy to see, offering hours and hours of content to completist players.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
In its second act, Starfield shows its cards as you finally realize what it’s all about, and that revelation is tremendous. You won’t be fighting dragons in this one, but Starfield doesn’t need any of that pizazz or showmanship to excel. The beauty of Starfield lies in its humanity, and how deeply it cares about the Earth we live on and what we’ll do to survive as a race. It’s a game about breaking through the final frontier, about appreciating what we have, about the lengths we’ll go to advance, and while it has its flaws and missteps, Starfield explores these themes with a sense of earnestness and authenticity that’s hard to find in most other titles. And maybe that’s all that matters.
Starfield is not a new The Elder Scrolls, but it will keep fans of Bethesda RPGs happy for dozens of hours.
Review in German | Read full review