Starfield brings nothing new to the table in terms of RPG gameplay. It copies many other games and does their implementations noticeably worse. It's an extremely blatant copy of other game mechanics bundled together in an unappealing blob.

Want the planetary exploration? Carbon copy of release No Man's Sky except NMS was better.
Want space flight and ship combat? Carbon copy of Elite: Dangerous, but worse.
Want gunplay, crafting, and bases? Go play Fallout 4. It does them all better and more consistently.
Want story? Play literally any other RPG.

(Very mild story spoiler- issue with theme, but doesn't explain what in any kind of detail)
Starfield has the same problem for me that No Man's Sky did- the main story's conclusion makes the gameplay canonically meaningless. A low-effort attempt to be lightheartedly existential and interesting, and it fails to be either, instead being directly nihilistic hidden under the guise of a power-trip/rpg-style-god-complex for the player.

This game is the ultimate example of "Wasted Potential"- there could have been interesting aliens, space flight, cities, civilization, weapons, war and combat mechanics... but there's none of those. All of the cities are the same size as the cities in Skyrim, but the set pieces are bigger and there's less to do. The gun system and crafting systems are mechanically pointless or frustrating- reverting changes uses even more parts instead of letting the player keep modified components like in FO4. Since weapons are level locked and can't be improved by crafting to the next tier, you'll constantly have to throw out your custom weapons to get a "stronger" copy of the exact same gun and redo your modifications. requiring more grinding of resources.

If it were possible to refund a game after 90 hours purely on the principle that the 90 hours were spent looking for ways to redeem it but failing... I would. Every corner of the game is met with a disappointing "This would have been far more interesting with five more minutes of thought put into it."

Visual: 6/10 - it's nothing unique and a few areas really suffer. The AA methods make the game look smudgey. The game excels in terms of textures and design, however.
Gameplay: 4/10 - barren and empty planets in 40 km^2 chunks of procedurally generated rocks and copy-pasted buildings- Explore two landing sites and you've seen all the game's procedural content. There is no space travel- it's only loading screens and cutscenes- spaceflight is literally just in an open skybox where everything is functionally just a texture at a fixed distance away. Some of the mechanics are just underdeveloped or boring. Also, leveling up is ultimately frustrating and annoying and SO MANY BASIC MECHANICS ARE JUST ARBITRARILY LOCKED BEHIND SKILLS. WHY.
Sound: 5/10 - Lots of reused sounds from previous games- leads to mental dissonance. A game like this really really needs to have excellent audio design and quality, but it's only okay. Turn the music off- like FO4, it's just horns and drums and it's just as tiring to listen to as FO4.
Story: 2/10 - Next time, Bethesda should try literally anything creative instead of copying off of recent Marvel movies (major spoiler: OooOOooOOoo a multiverse! Sure hope it makes sense and doesn't nullify meaning and player action! Literally undoes everything you do.), and make the player actions actually count for something. The game was advertised as being about exploration and space travel- but what's the point of exploring already occupied worlds and fighting the exact same monsters? Explaining like a galaxy-wide genetic origin for repeating monster phenotypes or convergent evolution is far more interesting- and this is just me making an excuse for repeated alien wildlife. The game asks and answers the question: "What if all that is out there is just humanity?" What a boring premise. I will say, however, that of all the Bethesda games out there, this one has the most interesting and human-like characters-- Bethesda's finally getting close to being like other RPGs. That's where the 2 points come from. Maybe consider that I don't want to be the Dragonborn-but-in-space.
Overall: 4/10 - This game could have been something, but instead Bethesda chose it to be nothing.

Ultimately: the game does everything in its power to turn every single action into a time-wasting/grindfest slog. You will ask "Did I do anything meaningful?" at the end of the story, and the answer is "No, you didn't, and you just wasted many hours thinking you did."

Lastly, and perhaps the most important: This game has had developers and people from PR (I assume) defending against criticism. So, two things:

1) There are people who understand development of video games. There are people like myself, who work in codebases far larger than that of game engines and games themselves combined, who know there is no excuse like the ones that have been offered up. And if Bethesda really wants this to be the way they handle criticism, then fine, Bethesda has a major skill issue, both in terms of leadership and in terms of writing software and they want to crybaby and say "It's haaaard" as an excuse for putting in no effort. Grow the hell up, Bethesda.
2) This is unacceptable behavior for any organization or business. You put out a bad product and people don't like it. You should say "Hey- we're sorry you didn't like it. Tell us where we went wrong, and we'll spend the next year fixing it with patches, or maybe doing some redesigns on the game systems with careful consideration towards ease of access and fun." It really is that simple. Build bridges, don't burn them.

Edits: fixing typos or bad formatting.

Starfield brings nothing new to the table in terms of RPG gameplay. It copies many other games and does their implementations noticeably worse. It's an extremely blatant copy of other game mechanics bundled together in an unappealing blob. Want the planetary exploration? Carbon copy of release No Man's Sky except NMS was better. Want space flight and ship combat? Carbon copy of Elite: Dangerous, but worse. Want gunplay, crafting, and bases? Go play Fallout 4. It does them all better and more consistently. Want story? Play literally any other RPG. (Very mild story spoiler- issue with theme, but doesn't explain what in any kind of detail) [spoiler]Starfield has the same problem for me that No Man's Sky did- the main story's conclusion makes the gameplay [i]canonically meaningless[/i]. A low-effort attempt to be lightheartedly existential and interesting, and it fails to be either, instead being directly nihilistic hidden under the guise of a power-trip/rpg-style-god-complex for the player.[/spoiler] This game is the ultimate example of "Wasted Potential"- there could have been interesting aliens, space flight, cities, civilization, weapons, war and combat mechanics... but there's none of those. All of the cities are the same size as the cities in Skyrim, but the set pieces are bigger and there's less to do. The gun system and crafting systems are mechanically pointless or frustrating- reverting changes uses even more parts instead of letting the player keep modified components like in FO4. Since weapons are level locked and can't be improved by crafting to the next tier, you'll constantly have to throw out your custom weapons to get a "stronger" copy of the exact same gun and redo your modifications. requiring more grinding of resources. If it were possible to refund a game after 90 hours purely on the principle that the 90 hours were spent looking for ways to redeem it but failing... I would. Every corner of the game is met with a disappointing "This would have been far more interesting with five more minutes of thought put into it." [b]Visual: 6/10[/b] - it's nothing unique and a few areas really suffer. The AA methods make the game look smudgey. The game excels in terms of textures and design, however. [b]Gameplay: 4/10[/b] - barren and empty planets in 40 km^2 chunks of procedurally generated rocks and copy-pasted buildings- Explore two landing sites and you've seen all the game's procedural content. There is no space travel- it's only loading screens and cutscenes- spaceflight is literally just in an open skybox where everything is functionally just a texture at a fixed distance away. Some of the mechanics are just underdeveloped or boring. Also, leveling up is ultimately frustrating and annoying and SO MANY BASIC MECHANICS ARE JUST ARBITRARILY LOCKED BEHIND SKILLS. WHY. [b]Sound: 5/10[/b] - Lots of reused sounds from previous games- leads to mental dissonance. A game like this really really needs to have excellent audio design and quality, but it's only okay. Turn the music off- like FO4, it's just horns and drums and it's just as tiring to listen to as FO4. [b]Story: 2/10[/b] - Next time, Bethesda should try literally anything creative instead of copying off of recent Marvel movies (major spoiler: [spoiler]OooOOooOOoo a multiverse! Sure hope it makes sense and doesn't nullify meaning and player action! Literally undoes everything you do.[/spoiler]), and make the player actions actually count for something. The game was advertised as being about exploration and space travel- but what's the point of exploring already occupied worlds and fighting the exact same monsters? Explaining like a galaxy-wide genetic origin for repeating monster phenotypes or convergent evolution is far more interesting- and this is just me making an excuse for repeated alien wildlife. The game asks and answers the question: "What if all that is out there is just humanity?" What a boring premise. I will say, however, that of all the Bethesda games out there, this one has the most interesting and human-like characters-- Bethesda's finally getting close to being like other RPGs. That's where the 2 points come from. Maybe consider that I don't want to be the Dragonborn-but-in-space. [b]Overall: 4/10[/b] - This game could have been something, but instead Bethesda chose it to be nothing. Ultimately: the game does everything in its power to turn every single action into a time-wasting/grindfest slog. You will ask "Did I do anything meaningful?" at the end of the story, and the answer is "No, you didn't, and you just wasted many hours thinking you did." Lastly, and perhaps the most important: This game has had developers and people from PR (I assume) defending against criticism. So, two things: 1) There are people who understand development of video games. There are people like myself, who work in codebases far larger than that of game engines and games themselves combined, who know there is no excuse like the ones that have been offered up. And if Bethesda really wants this to be the way they handle criticism, then fine, Bethesda has a major skill issue, both in terms of leadership and in terms of writing software and they want to crybaby and say "It's haaaard" as an excuse for putting in no effort. Grow the hell up, Bethesda. 2) This is unacceptable behavior for any organization or business. You put out a bad product and people don't like it. You should say "Hey- we're sorry you didn't like it. Tell us where we went wrong, and we'll spend the next year fixing it with patches, or maybe doing some redesigns on the game systems with careful consideration towards ease of access and fun." It really is that simple. Build bridges, don't burn them. Edits: fixing typos or bad formatting.