I'm about 8 hours into Starfield and I can understand why the reviews are so mixed. The game has been compared to Cyberpunk 2077, and I completely understand why:
- It's buggy. Not game breaking buggy, but expect to see characters bugging out and weird stuff going on constantly. I also had 3 missions bug out in the 8 hours of play, forcing me to load an old save. Got stuck many times too due to buggy clipping, but fortunately fast travel saved me
- The randomly generated people are about as fake as they are in Cyberpunk. Randomly generated people walk around and they don't look real at all. It makes the game feel fake at times
Other than that, there's also many other issues:
- The game often feels like a game made 15 years ago. The character animations aren't motion captured, so they have the weird doll effect pretty much identical to the characters in Fallout 4
- The game also feels very much like Fallout 4 to the point that it could be a mod for Fallout 4 when on planets
- There is no real exploration. I spent time travelling to random planets, and it's about as pointless as it is in Mass Effect games. You can land on planets and most of the time you just mine resources. Occasionally you will run into pirates, kill them and then leave. Very, very rarely you will encounter an actual interesting side mission. It's mainly just empty planets. After playing the recent Zelda games (Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom) and Elden Ring, those games you can adventure around an open world and stumble on interesting stories. Starfield doesn't have that
On the plus side though:
- There's an interesting mystery going on that drives the story forward
- Some of the characters are excellent. While the mocap is crap, the voice acting is excellent and many of the characters are very interesting
- The gunplay is great. It's not exactly Call of Duty level, but it's a massive leap forward from Fallout 4
- While there isn't much interest in exporing space, like Cyberpunk the game has a deep level of customisation that can completely change your play style
But as I said, I'm only about 8 hours in. For the first 2 hours I found in interesting, and for the last 6 hours I have found it boring and I want to stop playing. But I'm pushing through. Everything I have read says that it doesn't really get good until late game, and then it gets really good. So I will stick it out.
But as of right now, IGN and Gamespot got grilled for giving it a 7/10. Based on my current experience I would say 7/10 is accurate. Worth playing, but don't expect much. But my thoughts may change after I spend more time with it.