Starfield: Shattered Space Reviews
While its new environments are a decent aside, Shattered Space seems largely content to tread water, leaving Starfield the same mixed bag it always was.
Starfield's Shattered Space expansion ably fills in the Va'ruun-shaped hole in the main campaign, but doesn't shatter conventions with new abilities that would make a replay more exciting.
The exact opposite of what Starfield needed, with a DLC expansion that magnifies the parent game's failings and sidelines its more positive elements.
Starfield: Shattered Space returns to Bethesda's design roots, giving a singular location to explore in a DLC that's tinged with terror. Despite not exploring this science-fiction horror tone as much as I'd have liked, it's still a fun experience worth checking out, with art direction that's genuinely stunning.
The Starfield Shattered Space expansion leaves a lot to be desired. While it introduces a more focused and engaging story compared to the base game, the average map and quest design, along with the lack of new features, turn the adventure in Va'Ruun'kai into a bit of a slog rather quickly. Although the tighter focus is welcome, the Starfield experience as a whole needs something more substantial to reach its full potential.
Starfield: Shattered Space is a boring and disappointing add-on that can be put on par with Operation: Anchorage for Fallout 3.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Despite a prologue that puts us on the edge of our seats thanks to an oppressive atmosphere imbued with mysticism, Shattered Space leaves the feeling of a "lazy" DLC that doesn't go to the end of its ideas.
Review in French | Read full review
Shattered Space is unfortunately a pretty big failure for Bethesda Game Studios. “Expansion” unfortunately introduces an uninteresting story, which with its length does not justify such a high price. In addition, the lack of any significant gameplay innovations also does not help the reception of the production.
Review in Polish | Read full review
While Shattered Space is expensive and underwhelming DLC, it's also a great reason to return to Starfield, explore House Va'ruun and spend tens of hours exploring new story. I'm disappointed. I had great time playing it.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Jumping back into Starfield was a welcome experience, but Shattered Space feels like a glorified side quest in the grander universe. I loved the main game — I gave it a perfect score! It pains me that the first DLC doesn’t hit as hard as I’d hoped for.
Overall, the expansion doesn't bring many new features, on the contrary. Instead, it gives us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a mysterious world and its lore. We finally have a cohesive, hand-crafted game world again, rather than procedurally. Shattered Space certainly deserves an opportunity, but we remain very doubtful about the price asked by Bethesda for additional content that lasts no more than 15 hours.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Overall, the expansion doesn't do much new, on the contrary. Instead, it gives me the opportunity to immerse myself in the good old days of Bethesda. I finally get a hand-crafted and cohesive game world again, full of activities to lose myself in. If you've missed that Bethesda feeling too, you should definitely give “Shattered Space” a chance - despite annoying performance problems and few exciting new features overall.
Review in German | Read full review
Starfield's Shattered Space expansion is weighed down by bugs and is ultimately a disappointment compared to the base game.
Yes, this is “more Starfield,” a game I liked, but I am very disappointed in the way it has barely evolved a year later, and the best thing about is Bethesda going back to a Bethesda-like zone structure. That’s good, but also feels very inauthentic to what the game was supposed to be. This is not going to convert anyone, nor may it satisfy many veterans. I did get some pretty screenshots, though.
Although it has good intentions and is visually striking, it contributes very little (and sometimes it makes a bit of a ball) in the gameplay. It could have given more of itself.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Bethesda's gigantic space RPG's first major expansion only highlights the game's fundamental limitations
Starfield: Shattered Space is a big disappointment in almost every way. We loved the base game, for all its flaws, and we were willing this to be the big, exciting DLC drop that'd make us love it all over again. However, what we've got here is a very average narrative expansion that fails to add any big choices, upgrades, new enemies, biomes, loot or anything that could potentially excite or draw in new players. It's buggy, janky, badly acted in places, and there are a myriad of bugs and performance issues to be ironed out. What a missed opportunity.
Shattered Space was a fun experience for me. I enjoyed exploring Va’ruun’kai as well as seeing how the reclusive House of Va’ruun operates. I had fun going through the different quests as well and it was refreshing to not have to jump from planet to planet all the time. Unfortunately however, there’s still a lot of the more annoying aspects of Starfield present and it feels like they missed a few opportunities. While not too short, the overall content just doesn’t feel as beefy as Bethesda’s excellent expansions from other games in terms of payoffs.
Starfield’s first expansion is an excellent dive into one of the game’s key pieces of lore. There are answers to be had and mysteries to be born anew. It is all wrapped up in one of the best looks I’ve seen in a video game to date. For any fan of the base game, this is a solid 10+ hour adventure you do not want to miss.