Summary
- Recent reviews for Starfield on Steam are Mixed and its rating score continues to drop. Community feedback focuses on improving the game through Bethesda content packs or modding.
- Fans are divided on Starfield's scope and vision, with some praising its vast content while others feel it stretches the quality seen in previous Bethesda titles like Skyrim. Underdeveloped features like space exploration add to the perception of unmet expectations.
- While Starfield launched with few bugs and has a strong foundation, it receives a lower score than Fallout 76. Players criticize repetitive procedural content and the lack of a handcrafted experience. However, the game is expected to improve with the upcoming release of modding tools and DLC.
Recent reviews on Steam for Starfield are Mixed, as the rating score continues to drop for the latest Bethesda sandbox following a successful launch. While Starfield broke several player milestones on Steam, the honeymoon phase for the game has passed. Its community has begun to examine Starfield's systems more closely, providing healthy and constructive feedback on how the title could further be improved, whether through official Bethesda content packs or through its burgeoning modding scene.
Since its launch, Starfield fans have been split on the game's scope (and by extent, its vision). Some considered the sheer quantity of its content to be Bethesda at its finest, while others argued that the vastness of the Settled Systems stretched the quality that past Bethesda titles such as Skyrim excelled at. The unmet expectations with underdeveloped features such as space exploration in Starfield further added to the perception that the game bit off more than it could chew.
Starfield Players Think Bethesda Cut an Entire Ship Brand Out of the Game
Starfield players believe that they have found evidence that Bethesda may have cut one ship brand out of the game before the launch.
However, Starfield also launched with the fewest bugs of any Bethesda release, and while its players believe that the game could be improved in countless ways, the consensus in the community is that it's unabashedly a Bethesda sandbox with a strong foundation. That being said, recent Steam reviews left behind by users who purchased Starfield have given it a 64% score, which is significantly lower than Fallout 76, and defined as a Mixed rating on Steam. A player named SailingDevi shared the news on the official Starfield subreddit, as the thread became a beacon for fans to discuss what they perceived to be the biggest issues facing Starfield at present.
While a harsh score, even the biggest fans of the game struggled to argue against it. Comments in the thread described Starfield as full of great ideas that just haven't been fleshed out, with many of the approaches to development feeling outdated by modern standards. Repetitive procedural content disconnected through menus and loading screens summed up why players felt Starfield lacked the staying power of an Elder Scrolls game. Compared to the handcrafted experience of discovering a word wall in Skyrim, the temple grind in Starfield feels hollow to a majority of players by comparison.
That being said, official modding tools for Starfield are slated to come out in early 2024, with the Shattered Space DLC hot on their heels, and given how vastly improved Skyrim became after years of modding, the positive thing to keep in mind with Starfield is that players are currently experiencing the game at its worst. By virtue of having a passionate mod community, Starfield is bound to improve dramatically in the years to come and may end up aging a lot better than its current growing pains would imply.
Starfield is available on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Steam