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Reviews Starfield Review Thread | 87 OpenCritic, 87 Metacritic

Hero of Hyrule

Hero of Hyrule

Frieren the Slayer
Pronouns
He/Him
starfield-afbeelding-groot-gcd.png


METACRITIC: 87
OPENCRITIC: 87

Go in with the expectation that it will take some time to find your footing in such a vast gameplay space, and there’s a universe well worth discovering here.
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Game informer: 8.5/10

I wasn't sure if it could be done, but Bethesda has managed to raise the bar for sandbox games even higher. In the end, Starfield is a genre-defining epic open-world RPG with a beautifully immersive universe, a captivating story, and fun and addicting gameplay the whole way. I'm so happy to have experienced Starfield organically without any spoilers, and I really hope you get to as well.
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Destruction: 10/10

Starfield is the enchantment and wonder of space bottled and fleshed out into something grand and ambitious, thoughtful and attentive, janky at times, often funny, but always charming.
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VideoGamer: 9/10

With this kind of freedom 'avoiding the main mission' is the main mission.
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GamesRadar: 5/5

Starfield shares plenty of DNA with Skyrim and Fallout 4, but ultimately falls short of both.
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PC Gamer: 75/100

As unfathomably vast and boundless as the subject matter it covers, Starfield raises the bar for its genre and for the medium as a whole in countless ways - much like the best of its Bethesda-developed forebears did in their time.
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GamingBolt: 10/10

For the sheer size of it, the beauty of the hundreds of different landscapes you can explore and the always engaging missions, Starfield is a massive technical achievement.
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Stevivor: 8/10

Starfield is wider, wilder, and more ambitious than I expected - but also shows surprising restraint in many areas. More than the sum of its parts, it's the best game of this type Bethesda has delivered.
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RPGSite: 9/10

Playing Starfield makes me want to play games that explore space and games that were made by Bethesda, but it doesn’t make me want to play Starfield. It tries to give us the universe, but it’s so weighed down by its own ambitions and a fundamental lack of inspiration that it can’t even get into orbit.
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Paste: 5/10

Starfield is a true behemoth of an RPG, and in many ways it's the logical endpoint of Bethesda Game Studios' well-worn formula. However, its massive scope pushes this formula to the absolute limit and the cracks begin to show, from feature creep to the stop-start nature of its exploration. Dedicated Bethesda fans are sure to get their fill, but this interstellar adventure never leaves the atmosphere.
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PCGamesN: 7/10

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.
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WCCFTech: 9/10

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.
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VGC: 5/5

Starfield is a genre-defining space exploration RPG. With a vast galaxy of characters and stories to uncover, this is Bethesda's best work in years.
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Siliconera: 9/10

Starfield is a true space adventure that only Bethesda can deliver. It's an experience catered to the fans of large expansive RPG narratives, but this one takes it a step further to stretch across an entire universe. There are minor systems and menus that cause confusion, and the lack of real tutorials paired with a flimsy opening holds back the opening hours. Still, the experience is undeniably memorable, and the writing for NPCs makes up the best moments. Although the many systems can be overwhelming, this is a game full of discovery for all who play.
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Noisy Pixel: 8/10

Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.
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IGN: 7/10

Bethesda's spacefaring adventure has its moments with impressive scale, satisfying combat, and some worthwhile side quests, but its shallow RPG systems and uninspired vision of the cosmos make for a journey that's a mile wide, but an inch deep.
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GameSpot: 7/10

Starfield delivers on everything it promised and then some.
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Game Rant: 5/5
 
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Feels like one of those things where they shot for the stars but the stars were a bit too far away. It's still getting good enough reviews that I'll give it a shot next week.
 
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Uh oh. Some of the reviews aren't great. Discussion is going to be insufferable for the next couple of months.
 
I’m looking at a thread on purple and uhhhhhh I can already see where this is going. Still good scores but yeah
 
Read a few reviews, it looks like on par with what I expected: a Bethesda game with a sanitized universe and a focus on combat. I tend to enjoy their games, even though I'm rarely over the moon for them, so I'll definitely play this when I have some time to kill. It'll probably be a huge hit, that's good for Xbox, they needed that.
 
So it's a very good, possibly great game but isn't disrupting the GOTY race whatsoever based on the 86 OC from 61 reviews. I'm still psyched to play it on gamepass, but Pikmin 4 scoring higher wasn't on my bingo card at the top of this year!
 
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I'm still gonna play because it's on gamepass. And I also think a review score shouldn't fully dictate if a game is good or not
 
Wow, this is pretty blegh. Was expecting better reception. Thought Bethesda had a 90+ on their hands.

If this game scores low enough, I hope it doesn't get a GOTY nom just on "ambition" alone, which is really just a fancy way of saying they had the budget to outspend people.
 
Reviews are exactly what I expected. A great game but not the second coming like many pushed it to be.

Fanboys having been tearing each other up over this game for years now so it’s no surprise the discourse is as toxic and embarrassing as it is. “87 is a complete failure“ is a real comment I’ve read today.
 
Overall solid scores but not the knockout Xbox and Bethesda would have been wanting. A shame. Still looking forward to eventually playing it, though
 
My brain was right

Hopefully my heart is wrong
 
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I predicted 84. Seems like there's a chance it might level out around there.
 
Yeah, that’s a lot lower than I was anticipating. Lots of people seem to love it, but a subset of reviewers pretty clearly don’t.
 
Man it's so frustrating to be either in the Xbox ecosystem, or the playstation ecosystem.

With Xbox, you have to deal with great services, at more or less a fair price. Hardware is good. But their software is either a soft disappointment, or a huge failure. They really can't have a big game without any stipulations.

With Playstation, they have been bringing the games to a point. But have been constantly raising their prices, been completely anticonsumer. But they also get all of the third party games too, and things like Final Fantasy, and Japanese games.

It's sad that Xbox cannot achieve an unequivocal win in the software department, and can't get that "Must Play" status.

I am of course going to play this on my Xbox Series S and make my own opinion. That's the strength of something like Gamepass. But this game was marketed as a total slam dunk, and it's a shame that it doesn't seem to live up to that potential.
 
Wow i really thought this was an easy 90, even if as a longtime Bethesda player i know that Todd is one of the biggest bulls****ers haha.

I will of course play it.
 
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These scores make no difference whatsoever to my hype or excitement for this game, but the discourse will be insufferable lol
 
It sounds like the game is too big for it's own good, and that's what I was worried about. You don't stumble across stuff constantly like you do in Skyrim/Fallout. Kinda a bummer.
 
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85-ish with 6's and 7's from major outlets is a huge disappointment for this game no matter how it's spun. This isn't some surprise indie game, Microsoft needed this to be a smash hit.
 
Irene said:
brb eating crow.
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Same here, 90 was my predicted floor to be honest.
hologram said:
Overall solid scores but not the knockout Xbox and Bethesda would have been wanting. A shame. Still looking forward to eventually playing it, though
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There’s gonna be a lot of “87 is a great score” which is true, but the context around it makes it hard to not see this as a disappointment. A not insignificant amount of people expected 95+. I’d put money on MS/Bethesda expecting 90+.
 
Man, that's not what I was hoping for at all.

MS will be massively disappointed too. Your biggest game in a decade just can't be getting 7's from major sites like IGN and Gamespot that have historically been pretty kind to big event games.

Oh well, I have one last month of my 3-year game pass deal, so it's not like I have a decision to make. Let's hope it's good.
 
What I'm reading about the exploration is both entirely expected but still pretty disappointing. Besides that it seems like a solid game.
 
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Phendrift said:
There’s gonna be a lot of “87 is a great score” which is true, but the context around it makes it hard to not see this as a disappointment. A not insignificant amount of people expected 95+. I’d put money on MS/Bethesda expecting 90+.
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For sure, I also expected 90+. Not a bad score by any means but this definitely isn't the critical reception they were hoping for
 
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Thought it'd for sure get at least 90, but FO4 did get an 87-88 or whatever and I loved that one. I'm extremely confident I'll love this one too.
 
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Xaltmas said:
Fallout New Vegas has an 84 and is considered one of the best RPGs ever made. People are ridiculous.
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This feels a little cherry-picked. Yes, sometimes Metacritic (or in this case Opencritic) scores are at odds with what public perception settles on, but given the development time, delays, and just general hype, it's not unreasonable to suggest Microsoft and Bethesda would have wanted and expected better reviews

I don't think anyone is acting like these scores means the game is hot trash but I would definitely call it a slight underperformance
 
The Bethesda gameplay was always going to be the one thing that held this game back. I always say that Bethesda games aren't exactly the best playing games, even at times of release. Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Skyrim all had basic traversal and mediocre combat. But it was the feeling of being in those worlds that made them great. But since 2011, the rest of the industry caught up and they do specific things really well. There's the story and the quests of the Witcher 3. The exploration mechanics and creative problem solving of Zelda. Bethesda games have always been good at going many things decent enough but not specific aspects very well. If the big open world, the thing that made your games special, is no longer special, then you need to excel at other aspects of the game.
 
Phendrift said:
Same here, 90 was my predicted floor to be honest.

There’s gonna be a lot of “87 is a great score” which is true, but the context around it makes it hard to not see this as a disappointment. A not insignificant amount of people expected 95+. I’d put money on MS/Bethesda expecting 90+.
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I’m not sure how anyone could in any serious way expect 95+
 
It’s the expectations game always. If totk had this score well, let’s just say a few locked threads and bans would have happened
 
hologram said:
This feels a little cherry-picked. Yes, sometimes Metacritic (or in this case Opencritic) scores are at odds with what public perception settles on, but given the development time, delays, and just general hype, it's not unreasonable to suggest Microsoft and Bethesda would have wanted and expected better reviews

I don't think anyone is acting like these scores means the game is hot trash but I would definitely call it a slight underperformance
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Oh they definitely are, just not here.
 
To think they didn't make a new Elder's Scroll for this. Even though I'm zero interested in sci-fi games I thought they would have a game changing concept.
At least they can improve their mistakes for next ES.
 
balgajo said:
To think they didn't make a new Elder's Scroll for this. Even though I'm zero interested in sci-fi games I thought they would have a game changing concept.
At least they can improve their mistakes for next ES.
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They are making a new Elder Scrolls, though.
 
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