Starfield

Starfield

• General 
• It's a Bethesda game so if you enjoy their games then you will probably like this one, but it depends on your expectations.  
• It's more like Mass Effect than No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous.  It's an RPG in space and not a space exploration game.  You won't be flying your ship around the galaxy and see a cool planet in the distance, fly to it, then land to explore. 
• Space exploration is menu based where you have a star map and you select the galaxy then the planet you want to explore.  You will be placed outside the planet in your ship and you can fly around that immediate area, but that's about it.  The game will sometimes spawn enemy ships that you can shoot or other spacecraft you can interact with, but actually flying around in your ship is very limited.  Landing or taking off from a planet is shown in a cutscene.    
• The character creator is pretty good and there are a lot of settings to tweak.  When selecting traits you are able to remove them later in the game, but not add them so make sure you like your choices. I restarted after 10 hours because I didn't like my original traits.  
  
• The game starts a bit slow and there are a lot of systems to learn, but like other Bethesda games you can just take off in a direction and go find your own fun and the main story will be there when you want to start it.  
• There are a lot of loading screens, luckily on PC the loading times are fast, but it does take you a bit out of the experience since there are so many.

• Graphics/Performance
• Some of the landscapes are stunning. Watching the sunrise over a mountain can be awesome.  
• The game can also look awful, especially random AI characters. Never stare one in the eyes. 
• If you take photos using the photo mode then those pics will show in the loading screens which is a nice touch. 
• Performance has been great, but I do have a beefy computer.  The game does like newer faster CPUs with all the simulation that's going on so be aware if you have an older CPU as you may have to lower the settings quite a bit.
• The game's lighting is a little on the bright side with no brightness or gamma settings and no HDR on PC.   
• I have had some small bugs, but no crashes or mission breaking ones yet.   
• Ground Combat
• The gunplay feels great and using your boost pack with low gravity to fly around the battlefield could make for some exciting battles.  
• Unfortunately the enemy AI I've encountered is awful.  This happened in my first real fight in the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hphl7V4BZs&ab_channel=AshCountach
• I was able to try a couple of Combat AI mods and they've worked pretty well.  Last night I stormed a base and had an epic battle so modders should be able to create better mods when the full creation kit is released.  
• There are a lot of weapons in the game and all of them can be modded.  The only gripe I have is that there are about 8 different ammo types to keep track of so you will run out of ammo and have to switch guns which was probably their intention.  
  
• If you want to try a stealthy approach for a mission I would suggest not using a companion or speaking to them and have them wait outside as almost anytime I've tried sneaking my companion has alerted the enemies before I was ready.  Also if you want to sneak or use your boost pack you have to put a skill point into them first.  
• Ship Combat
• I've only done minimal ship combat, but the AI seems fine.  You have to manage power to all of your ships systems which adds some strategy other than just holding fire.
• I would suggest doing the UAC intro mission early in your playthrough as that lets you access a ship battle simulator.  You can use that anytime to level up your piloting skills instead of in real combat.  
• Ship building requires a ton of resources so I haven't touched that yet.  You can upgrade ships though which is not that expensive.  
  
• Planet Exploration
• There are 1000 planets to explore but most of them are barren.  They procedurally generate content on the planets  so you will have something to do like exploring caves or attacking pirate hideouts, but with so many planets they reuse assets so doing those will eventually get boring.  
• You can scan resources, animals, and plants.  If you can scan everything on a planet you get money and experience. I spent an hour last night scanning one planet.  
• There is encumbrance so if you try and pick up everything you will be overweight quickly and that prevents you from fast travelling.  Also you lose oxygen while running while encumbered so try not to be a packrat. 
• If you find a resource you need you can set up an outpost to extract that resource.  It takes a lot of material to build an outpost so I haven't done much with this yet.  
• Mods
  
• I can't play a Bethesda game without mods so here are a couple of QOL mods that really improve the game
• Quicker Menu Loads
• You are in menus a lot and for some reason there is a slight delay when you open each menu.  
• This removes the delay so opening menus is instant.  Also if you want to fully exit out of a menu you have to hold the B button and this reduces that time as well.  
• Star UI
• The UI is pretty terrible and basically shows you one inventory item at a time.  
• This mod changes that to show multiple items like in a spreadsheet so you can see more stats.