Pros
* Retro sci-fi design looks good
* Some quests and writing is good, but they are rare, mostly in faction side quest lines
* NG+ adds unique twist
* Lots of funny things to find in the game
* Mods
* Ship building

Cons
* Exploration is the most boring part
* 1000 empty planets
* Slow start. 8-10 hours before game gets going properly
* Outdated tech and gameplay. Game is stuck in 2002
* NPCs are horrendous. Enemies are braindead,long waiting until NPC animations stop playing or trigger.
* Lots of game breaking bugs with quest tracking, non-responsive or flying NPCs, inactive doors
* Constant loading screens and fast travel destroys immersion completely
* Going in buildings still require loading screens
* Only supports FSB2
* Settings don't change anything. Not even FOV slider
* UI is terrible
* Creepy NPC faces, awkward, nonsensical conversations

Starfield feels old. There's no inspiration taken from any modern RPG. Like it was built in complete vacuum as if no other RPG has been released since Fallout 4, that Bethesda could learn from, evolve and improve. Is it arrogance, complacency or just Incompetence? Huge strides has been made by other developers with less resources. RPGs are better than ever. Just not this one. It's hard to tell if the project has been held back by the game engine or management that thinks it can keep remaking the same game for 20 years by only adding new coat of paint on it.

The game plays exactly like Oblivion and Fallout 3. You start in a small cave, emerge from it to open world that is supposed to inspire you with all the things you can see on the horizon to go and explore. There's even the same music playing at that moment. But you come out to one of the thousand completely empty, boring pieces of rock with nothing but more rocks on the horizon. Then the rest of the game consists of the same things you have been doing in Bethesda games for last 20+ years in the same exact broken beyond belief way.

90% of the quests are - go kill bandits. 5% are gonna be the same repeating main story mission. Then the remaining 5% are actually more interesting. Most of those are gonna be in faction story lines. Main quest picks up speed only after 8 hours. There are some interesting elements in New Game+ which does a little bit more than just new game with old stats.

NPCs are nightmare and is one of the most obvious things that show Creation engine's age. It still insists that NPC stops playing one animation, then waits before start to play the next animation. Standard interaction with NPCs in Starfield consists of waiting on NPC to turn, move, wait by a console to open doors and very long pauses between each animation. Often you cannot tell, if NPC has bugged out again or this is the Bethesda's "design". They are wasting your time, while other developers have figured out different ways how to morph animations, so they interact with chaning environment, don't get stuck on everything and do multiple things at once. Also NPCs walking speed is faster than yours, but slower than your running. Enemies often run away to the other side of the map and get stuck there. Other times they just run in straight line towards you. In Starfield they all behave like Bethesda NPCs, which has become a meme of it's own. And absolutely nothing has improved here since Morrowind. NPCs ruin the immersion, possibly even more than traversing the map.

Entire game world is split into many small zones. Tiny building with nothing but 2 NPCs, 1 room and few boxes needs it's own loading screen. WHY? Every interior is still a new level, each district in town is a new level. Hey, once you land on one of those 1000 planets, those also are split in many small maps with invisible walls, even though there is nothing there. When you land on a planet, game generates you a small region for you. No vehicles of any kind, just run, and keep an eye on that very short stamina bar.

Each generated zone usually have 3 - 5 points of interest. They are always the same. Every enemy spawn position and even every item is exactly in the same place each time the POI preset is used. In human settlements there's gonna be same NPC that gives you the same "Rats in the basement" quest. For a game that encourages exploration even in it's main quest, exploration is by far the saddest and most boring thing to do here. The veriaty in generated content is smaller than No Man's Sky had on it's launch and that was made by 15 people. Only content actually worth seeing is in 3 main cities and couple other icons. There was no point to generate all those 1000 planets. It is such a colossal waste of time and resources.

Base Building is excatly the same it was in Fallout 4/76. Bring wast amounts of resources to the base using stupid small inventory space. Ship building is way better, since you only need money for that. It adds decent ship building/flying minigame.

Gunplay is ok, but weapon feedback is very long way from proper shooters. Again, it's very similar to Fallout 4. The same way, you will have to carry 10+ guns in your inventory, because they each will have different type of ammo and all of it will run out all the time. Enemies are bullet sponges. You are gonna need lots of ammo. Weapon reloading have bugs, they will sometimes reload twice without firing.

Skill system is melted from Skyrim and Morrowind. Skill trees + using the skills to unlock next levels of them.

Audio mix is a mess. Often you will hear sounds from sources far away louder then sounds that are made right next to you. Do not rely on sound to tell where thing are. Speaking almost always will be quiet than any random environmental sound. Sometimes there will be completely random unrelated sounds out of nowhere that are gonna be louder than anything else with nothing in sight that could have made them. And the worst audio sin of all - NPCs very often talk over each other at the same volume.

Framerate is rollercoaster. Settings dont do much, they basically just switch game between two modes: Xbox Series S mode (everything on low) and Xbox series X mode (everything on medium - ultimate). There is no difference in visuals or performance between medium, high and ultra. There's only FSB2 support for upscaling. PC version is an afterthought. It was clearly made for Xbox first and even that does not go past 30FPS... in 2023. This is where we are at.

You can approach this only as a video game because outdated gameplay, lazy AI generated exploration, idiotic NPCs and constant loading screens destroy all immersion. You can never get lost in it, because you are constantly reminded, that you need to do things "the video game way". While it was still semi-charming during Skyrim era, to much has changed in the industry since and silly, broken Bethesda approach has lost it's charm. It's mostly loading from one small level to run few meters to the door that loads next small area and repeat. You know something is not right, when exploration in game like this is the most boring, obnoxious and empty part.

Bethesda was not able to hide all the cogs of a video game behind the curtain this time. Many RPGs since Oblivion have evolved the genre and shown how much better everything can be with good writing, creative quest design, world building and modern technology to make truly immersive games. Starfield is like an ancient half rusted, broken, oil leaking, steaming industrial era robot making weird clunking sounds and asking players to believe it's a real person.

Don't buy it now. Wait for a decent sale, proper mod support and game fixes. Starfield has a potential to be good couple years down the line, but right now it's a mess. Gotta wait until modders fix what game devs cannot, again.

Creation engine has to go! This is not acceptable anymore Bethesda.

Pros
* Visually looks good
* Has decent framerate even on 3060Ti
* Car selection

Cons
* pretty much everything else
* Technically very buggy, often has lighting bugs, micro stutters, crashes, problems with login and connection to servers etc.
* Massive understeer for all cars. Tires don't seem to bite into tarmac no matter the temp.
* AI is stupid, drives dirty, chaotic and scripted (fast on 1st lap, then slow afterwards)
* Bad with wheel (made for gamepad)
* Not build from ground up. It's upgraded FM7 with RT
* Sounds are bad
* Career mode almost non-existant. Short, lazy, without pro race cars. Content dripping to the extreme level.
* Penalty system is completely broken
* leaderboards are full of cheaters as always
* As with every Forza - wall of DLCs. Half of the cars are behind paywall again.
* Clearly made as live service trash to force players to return every week for the new content drip.

Easily the worst Forza game ever made. I regret getting it. It's empty. There's barely any game in this game. There's no more any passion, creativity, excitement. This is grey soulless office cubicle of a game.

Career mode is very short and does not even feature any race car class. You can only drive road cars in career. It was built around you endlessly grinding out and upgrading one car. That at least got fixed, but lack of content is still there. It has very few events, and devs are adding (and removing!!!!!!!) one additional featured event group of only 5 championships about every month. They should have left all the past featured events on the list, considering how little there is to do in this game already. But Turn10 has very clearly been tasked with building next live service trash that will force people to return every week for another drip fed event, so they have nice statistics with player retention to show their bosses. Here's crazy idea - make a good game with lot's of stuff to do in it, and players will stick around.

Everything in FM can be completed in one weekend. Then stick around and keep coming back each week for another featured event to get your money's worth out of this mess. Remember when Forza 3 and 4 had hundreads of events to complete? I mean how hard can it possibly be to create a damn event poster using your own photo mode, add a playlist of few already existing tracks, set car class, rules and repeat this bunch of times, so there's something to actually do in your game?

Rivals mode is where you fight for fastest lap times on all tracks and car classes. It`a worthless, because leaderboards are full of cheaters. So your fast time don't really matter.

The only thing left is multiplayer, which also is unplayable because even cleanest driver rating matchmaking is full of rammers who abuse the very much broken penalty system. Quite often you will get penalized for something other drivers did to you. Also, if you cut track in just the right way in right places, you can get away with it. Other times you will get penalties for putting only one wheel outside white lines or using entire track when cornering like you would in real world racing, by only keeping one wheel inside white lines for faster exits.

Technically it's full of bugs and broken promises. "Built from ground up" my arse. The only cars that are made from scratch and not imported old Forza 3 models, are the cars new to the series. So majority are low quality, wrong proportions, etc. Remember how Forza fans laughed about Gran Turismo 5 importing GT4 cars? I guess it's Forza`s turn now.

Physics model, might have faster calculations now, but the handling model is still the exact same from FM7. It's bad. It just understeers or snaps. Tires don't have any grip, no matter what compound or temperature. Controls were made with gamepads in mind, and you cannot feel the car much with wheel. Which is fine for an arcade racer, but Turn10 is always trying to sell FM as e-sports sim, which it is not. You can see that in how much they are trying to push it's broken multiplayer. At least now cockpit view steering wheel turns more than just 90 degrees. But FM still cannot get anywhere near to the driving feel that Gran Turismo have.

There is absolutely nothing to do in this game. It's empty, broken skeleton of a racing game, that has hundreads of nice cars and absolutely nothing to do with them. Do not waste your money.