Recent reviews by Keyndin

breathtaking

Don't buy.


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Edit:

Thanks for Bethesda to take the time out of their day and reply to my very wordy review.
Let me return the favour by explaining why I believe that any future update to this game (even tho updates & fixes are generally good) will not change my mind on my review:

I have not yet in my almost 100h of game play at the time of writing experienced any game breaking bugs and can run the game with a pretty consistent 60 FPS in 2k with an ultra wide resolution. I have a pretty beefy setup. This game - to me - isn't bad because of any missing optimization for my system.

And although I did encounter some minor bugs and issues with the game like loosing all unique weapons I acquired from all the side missions I had completed. I displayed them in a player home which was reset after continuing on with the main quest. This is a known issue Bethesda is working on. I probably will not get my stuff back but since I only kept them for vanity reasons and can always reacquire them in a subsequent play through.
These "small bugs and issues" do not (at least exclusively) warrant a "Do not buy".

I also did not consume *any* news pretaining to this title prior to its release. I went into this game expecting nothing more than a Bethesda game which for me is: A large open world to explore and engage with. Since I gathered from the title that this game would take place in space my expectations could be described as: Game where you are in space and can explore (be that different planets via space travel or just a single planet that isn't earth... or even a space station?).
I wasn't hyped for this game prior to its release, and I don't think I had unrealistic expectations of this game.

Buuuuut... That's where my problems come from: this game does not have a large open world to explore.
There are numerous small patches of land you can explore individually which are loosely connected to each other. Most of them have only a handful of points of interest that are procedurally generated and feel very same-y very fast.
Those small patches you can explore are then connected via loading screens. You will see multiple loading screens to travel between between "connected" patches of land. Entering your ship: loading screen. Get into space: loading screen. Picking your next location: open your map. Landing at that location: loading screen. Exit your ship: another loading screen.
And your reward are the same buildings with no loot to speak of and maybe - if you're lucky - a very boring side quest that all feel the same as well. Exploration in this game just isn't fun and worse, it's constantly interrupted by loading screens.

While I'm sure that the aforementioned bugs and issues can be patched (either by Bethesda themselves or the modding community), the exploration aspect of this game cannot be fixed as easily.
Unfortunately, this also applies to some other aspects of the game, which are just either very boring and uninspired in design or simply no fun to actually interact with.

For example, while I'm sure some aspects of "missing lore" will be released later into the lifetime of this franchise, there are some things like a very "boring main quest" (this is subjective, I know) and boring companion interactions. Or NPCs all talk at the same time because there is no queuing mechanism for dialog in this game. This means you might not be able to hear what the main quest NPC is trying to explain to you, because five other NPCs just must tell you right now that you can join this faction, that you can buy things at a kiosk, someone needs a word with you, other factions exist and someone wants to explore space just like you. All equally important as your main quest. Those issues are a lot harder to fix (at least for Bethesda, the modding community of other Bethesda titles have certainly given it their all).

A lot of systems in this game just feel incredibly clunky and dated compared to what other companies can create. And that's just not something you can patch and update. A lot of these systems come from older releases of Bethesda and have been adapted to work in this game. It would probably take a complete rewrite of the game to rework those systems. So those will not be addressed until Bethesda's next big release. If we're lucky. Or they may just stick to their dated game engine and design philosophy for another title.

There are many other reasons not to buy this game, all of them have been addressed by people who are much more eloquent than me.
So I'll leave it at that and get back to playing the game. I paid 70 bucks for it so I'll keep playing until i get a decent amount of enjoyment out of it.

Overall this is just a mess of a game and frankly overpriced at 70 bucks right now. Better games exist and are cheaper which scratch the same urges this game is trying (and failing) to satisfy.

Do not buy.

Fun - tho grindy at times