Recent reviews by The_Box

I've been thoroughly enjoying it so far. I'm something like 60180 hours in (completionist, just can't help myself) and all in all, it scratches that retro-styled JRPG itch very nicely. It feels like a pretty decent successor to the PS1-era Suikoden games as well.

The localization does suffer mildly here and there. There's the occasional joke that doesn't land well, and a bit of less-than-stellar voice acting, but I can easily forgive those things given the budget dedicated to a game with so many individual characters that need unique voice acting.

EDIT: I wanted to come back and touch on this review again now that I've finished the game. With over 100 hours on it, given I'm working on getting the 'all achievements' achievement, I feel I have a far better feel for the game now than when I originally reviewed.

The game's script picks up a fair bit around the start of the second act, and a lot of my favorite moments are from that point onwards. The story itself seems to lose a bit of steam right at the end, it almost feels like they realized how long the game was and figured they needed to wrap it up, but they hadn't sorted out a particularly graceful way of doing so.

The minigames are also, by and far, the weakest part of the game. Even the best of the bunch, the card game, makes you play way, WAY too much of it for the trophy given how shallow it is. Even if you manage to make every round of it take only three minutes, it's going to amount to 6 full hours of a game that has very, very little real strategy and no need to change strategy between rounds, since what your opponent does has little to no bearing on what you do.

It's pretty clear the game suffered from some pretty serious bloat thanks to obligations from the Kickstarter they decided to put as stretch goals. I was telling somebody that, were I to rate the game on a 1-10 scale, I'd probably put it at 7/10. But if they actually stripped out all the minigames and the poorly implemented war mode, I'd actually kick it up to an 8/10.

Up front, my TL;DR opinion. Starfield's great, and I've had a blast with it.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Like any game, it has a few rough spots here and there. I did install a handful of mods to improve things Bethesda didn't think to tackle, such as ultrawide FoV support, and adding DLSS. But none of these things were needed, and I got plenty of enjoyment before I discovered the mods I run now.

Honestly, the worst part about Starfield right now isn't even the game itself. It's the Steam forums, which are an absolute dumpster fire. If you're accustomed to using the Steam forums to ask questions about the game and get help, be prepared for disappointment. Currently, the forums are populated almost entirely by small minded trolls who've lost their mind because the game offered an inconsequential option that effects nothing and lets you use singular they for your character.

The vast majority of threads there right now are just these circular, nonsensical arguments with people who are either so tied up in their bigotry that they can't even bare the option of a pronoun that they can just ignore, and therefore will not alter their beliefs in any way, or trolls who're just there to stir the pot.

The forum mods are doing their damndest, but they really need to bring on a handful of additional mods to get things in order, in my opinion. Even if just temporarily. Currently it isn't enough and there's still a plethroa of active posters who're just going straight into the realm of hate speech.

Fortunately, I'm not reviewing the forums, I'm reviewing the game, which I'm enjoying quite a lot now and which I am sure will only get better as patches and community mods roll out.

This game was a nostalgic and fantastic trip for me. I loved every moment of it. Couldn't put it down till I got it to 100% and got all the achievements. Highly recommended.