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Starfield
Starfield lets you explore planets, take on quests and shape your character as a solo player. The offer costs ≈ $27.48 from 
K4G. If artifact hunting and traveling between stars appeal to you, weigh the displayed price against the scope of the adventure; co-op is not a reason to buy this single-player game. The Starfield offer costs $39.99 and activates on Microsoft Store, making it easier to compare with your plans for a solo exploration game.
K4GStarfield Standard Edition United States PC/XBOX Series X|S CD KeyAll-time low ~ $25.79across Steam & third-party stores
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $25.792026-10Current Low Across Stores~ $25.79GreenManGamingAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Starfield
Join Constellation on a search for rare artifacts in a sprawling science-fiction role-playing adventure, shaping your own character and path among the stars. Set in 2330, the game features planetary exploration, quests and encounters with characters and factions. You choose your character’s appearance, background and traits. The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support. Player rating: 58% positive from 115,434 reviews. Interface languages: Simplified Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, and Portuguese-Brazil. Released September 5, 2023.
Credits
DIRECTOR
Todd Howard
American video game designer, director, and producer (born 1970)
E
Composer
Inon Zur
Developer
Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher
Bethesda Softworks
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$25.792026-10-03 · GreenManGamingBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 6 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-14
02Before you buy
Play and control
The Steam PC version is single-player and has full controller support.
Language
Interface languages include English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Full audio is available in English, German, French, Italian, Japanese and Polish; subtitles are available in all listed languages.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the story about?
You join Constellation, a group of space explorers searching the galaxy for rare artifacts.
What can you do with ships?
You can pilot and customize ships, assign crew, and engage in space dogfights.
How do exploration and crafting work?
Planet exploration lets you gather resources, build outposts, and invest materials in research and crafting.
Latest news about Starfield
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Space is the backdrop, not the playground With a title like that, you're probably expecting me to say Starfield was disappointing. This could not be further from my true feelings about the game. To put it bluntly, Starfield's space travel is inferior to No Man's Sky or Elite:Dangerous. If you are looking for a game where you can live in your ship and chill with your crew as you drift towards your next destination, Starfield will not fulfill your dreams. Space is simply used as the backdrop for something much bigger than Bethesda has ever done before. That's not to say space travel isn't important. It is very important! But most of the time, space is used as a means of getting from one planet to another via fast travel/warping. Space is just a loading screen... or is it? You might ask "Does anything happen in space, since it's just a loading screen?" The answer is actually yes! Very often! During warps, the game will run a check of your route to see if you would run into any random events. If so, you will be sent out of the loading screen and back into space. You can interact with the random event, or simply begin fast travel again. In my opinion, this simply cuts out all the slow moments of space travel and highlights the fun parts. Although, there is a catch. To trigger the route check, you will have to already be in space. Make sure to take off in your ship whenever you want to fast travel. In the case you forget to do so, random events can still happen but only at the destination of your warp. The vastness of space and the insane number and variety of planets are the main attraction of Starfield. If you are familiar with Bethesda games, walking and talking is a large majority of your time. This is no different in Starfield, as you explore hundreds of unique locations (not even counting thousands of procedurally generated), and meet all kinds of friendly, not-so-friendly, lunatic, suspicious, and funny characters along your journeys. RPG is back, but different Starfield is a game that arguably outshines previous Bethesda titles. The scale is larger, with no sacrifices to the mechanics they've had in the past. In Fallout 4, Bethesda simplified decision-making and the RPG elements in favor of improving the gunplay which leaves the game feeling more like an adventure-shooter than an RPG. Even Skyrim could be argued, with the removal of leveling stats, reduced how much you could create your perfect character to roleplay as. In Starfield, stats/attributes do not come back. But in its place is an interesting return to the RPG roots. While you don't have stats or attributes in Starfield (such as Strength, Intelligence, Luck, etc), it presents a different way to represent and express the kind of person you want to play as. Your background, chosen traits, leveled skills, and factions you've joined properly and consistently take control of almost every situation the game puts you in. Skills are another new alternative to stats. New dialogue options will be available based on what skills you choose to level. Sometimes you need to let someone know you're sneakier than other people, or that you have experience in cyber security. People can even recognize if you're a well-trained pilot or gunman. Who you are matters In the beginning, I thought this was a mere farce- an illusion. Perhaps they simply placed many opportunities early on, to show off roleplaying elements, to trick me. There's no way I would be able to use my background as a Space Scoundrel or my allegiance with the Crimson Fleet for more than just a couple dialogue options, right? After completing three major questlines, dozens of side quests, and the main story quest, I've invested more 50 hours into Starfield over four days- an average of 12.5 hours every day. With confidence, I can report that the choices I made at character selection as well as the choices I've made during the game: who I allied with during a side quest, the factions I've decided to pledge allegiance to, the people I've killed or the people I didn't kill. All of these things felt like they mattered in countless dialogue choices. I was never worried that the character I built did not matter- the opportunities jumped at me constantly. Many times I even had to choose between the different things that defined my character in the same interaction. One moment that really impressed me was that factions are actually consistent in Starfield. In previous Bethesda games, joining a hostile faction did not always guarantee your safety against its members. Some used excuses such as "We may be the same faction, but all of us follow different rules." It was a sad attempt at passing their programming (or lack thereof) for normally hostile NPCs recognizing the player as an ally. In Starfield, this is not the case. Minor spoilers in this paragraph. On my first playthrough, I joined the Crimson Fleet, the most notorious pirate crew among the stars. In an early mission during the main story, I had to rescue a friend from the Crimson Fleet. I entered their lair where they were holding the hostage, ready to enter a shoot-out. To my extreme but pleasant surprise, none of the pirates shot at me. I could walk up and even begin conversations with some of them. They recognized me as one of their own, and did not blink an eye at either me or my companion. I was able to reach the bottom of the lair without any conflict, and the game even properly acknowledged it. Minor spoilers end here. The rest of the game? Gunplay, crafting, and more I started with the space exploration and RPG elements because I believe they are the most controversial and sought-after pieces of information. The rest of the game, though? Almost entirely improved over Fallout 4. The gunplay is chef's kiss (for a Bethesda game). Piloting a ship is reminiscent of No Man's Sky. Ship-building is extensive, but quite easy to start playing around with. The crafting is still simple and satisfying. Much of crafting is still locked behind skills, just like Fallout 4, but Starfield did not feel as difficult to reach as FO4 did. The handcrafted maps are arguably their most detailed and beautiful designs yet. The balance has been very adequate for me personally. I could feel my character getting stronger, more skilled, but also enemies always provided a decent challenge. Nothing was too easy or too difficult- I never had to change difficulty from Normal mode. I've heard complaints that later on, enemies get very bullet-spongey, but I simply have never had that issue and I mainly used handguns. While there is an enormous variety of skills to pick from, leveling is fast enough where I never felt like I needed to save my skill points (as some skills have requisites to level). If I didn't meet the requirements yet, I simply leveled a different skill and waited for next level to try and improve the other skill. It's not perfect It does miss some things their previous games did as well. But it's a Bethesda game through and through. Beautiful environments, fantastic immersion and storytelling. Fulfilling the fantasy of living in another universe, especially in space. Starfield has become a game I'd love to play again and again. Bethesda has restored my trust in them, even after the launch state of FO76 and the reduction of RPG elements in FO4. I look forward to future updates, the DLC, and TES 6. I hope you can play Starfield, come to your own conclusions, and hopefully enjoy the same things I was able to as well.Show moreShow less
55.3 hours at review7,795 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
no WAY this won most innovative gameplay 💀Show moreShow less
29.2 hours at review15,868 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠻⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢺⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠆⠜⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⠛⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡏⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⣶⣶⣶⣶⣶⣦⣤⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿ ⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⢠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢿⡧⠇⢀⣤⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣮⣭⣿⡻⣽⣒⠀⣤⣜⣭⠐⢐⣒⠢⢰ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣏⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣾⣿⠂⢈⢿⣷⣞ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣽⣿⣿⣷⣶⣾⡿⠿⣿⠗⠈⢻⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠻⠋⠉⠑⠀⠀⢘⢻ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⢹⣿⣿⡇⢀⣶⣶⠴⠶⠀⠀⢽ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⠀⠀⠣⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡟⢿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⠋⠀⠀⠀⠀⠹⣿⣧⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⣴⠁⢘⡙ ⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⢿⠗⠂⠄⠀⣴⡟⠀⠀⡃Show moreShow less
21.4 hours at review5,222 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
We've been hearing for years that Starfield is Bethesda's passion project, a game that they've been wanting to make even before Morrowind came out. If this game is Bethesda's passion project, then they've lost their passion. Plenty of reviewers are dragging Starfield for its technical issues. While it's true that Bethesda should not get a free pass on that stuff just because "lol, they're Bethesda", I was prepared to accept a certain level of jank if it meant experiencing an inspired world. What really kills this game is that the setting itself is deeply, relentlessly boring. It's a haphazard collage of space frontier tropes. And you know what? That could have been fine. Tropes can be effective when wielded in service of a strong creative vision. But here, there is no greater vision. There is nothing, and I mean *nothing*, to this setting beyond the tropes that serve as its foundation. For our major powers, we have a vaguely Western-flavored federal government, a vaguely Texan-flavored frontier alliance, a vaguely Eastern-flavored corpocracy, some scrappy pirates, and some mysterious religious zealots. There is nothing meaningful to know about any of these societies beyond whatever pictures of them you just conjured in your head. If you have an ounce of creativity, the pictures in your head are probably more detailed and compelling than the crap that made it into the game. It almost seems like these factions have been consciously sanitized, as if someone went through the first draft and removed any cultural or aesthetic identifiers beyond the baseline of "Hey, this frontier guy wears a cowboy hat, likes guns, and has a bit of a stubborn streak!". You'd think that the writers would be forced to come up with some creative quirks just to explain how these people adapted to their alien environments, but even that minimal level of flavor exceeds the bounds of Bethesda's vision. This aggressive blandness persists at every scale. We have planets that run the gamut of environmental conditions, but none of them impose meaningful gameplay changes (aside from gravity's effect on jump height, which is basically the lowest hanging fruit possible), inspire variations on the ten or so prefabricated structures that we can encounter, or even have much influence on which of the handful of flora, fauna, and feature assets can populate the game's tragically samey landscapes. One of the foundational aspects of space exploration as a genre is exploring how extreme conditions shape strategies and societies. Starfield cares so little for this relationship that it borders on immersion-breaking. I expected that Starfield would rely on repeatable assets to some extent, and that exploration would lose its shine once you've exhausted the list of things to encounter. What I didn't expect was just how short that list would be, or how sloppily curated it would be in the context of the game's environments. And then there's the writing. Oh goodness, the writing. The best thing I can say is that, on a micro scale, it consists of grammatically correct sentences which could plausibly be uttered by a sane human being. Beyond that, it's shot through with the same listlessness that permeates every other aspect of the game. I'll present two case studies. I came upon a sidequest where an unknown vessel was orbiting a resort planet. Investigation reveals it to be a generation ship sent from Old Earth, back before humanity developed FTL travel. They don't take it well when you explain that their new home has already been claimed by Space Epcot. The captain asks you, some random hobo who just happened across them, to negotiate with the corpos on their behalf. They send along no observers or advocates, and don't even think to request a direct line of communication. The corpos offer you three options: blow up the ship and kill the colonists, coerce them into indentured servitude, or pay out of your own pocket to install an FTL drive aboard their ship so they can find another planet. There are no other options to advocate for the colonists. At no point does either party express any sort of cultural interest, or even basic curiosity about the other. There are no potential interactions with other factions or alternate arrangements for compensation, despite it being well-established that everything to do with Old Earth (down to the meanest paperweight) is treated as an invaluable piece of vintage history. The situation has the setup for a potentially game-changing historical event, and the most interesting thing Bethesda can squeeze from it is "Corpos bad, are you willing to pay to feel better than them?" If a 15th century carrack made landfall on the shores of Florida carrying the long lost descendents of Ferdinand Magellan's twin brother, I don't think Disney World's first reaction would be "♥♥♥♥, they want our land, pump 'em full of lead!" Second case study. There's a plotline where you infiltrate the big pirate faction on behalf of the feds, right under the nose of their cunning leader and his paranoid, security-obsessed XO. So how do you stay in contact with your handlers during this delicate deep cover op? By PHYSICALLY FLYING FROM THE PIRATE BASE TO THE FEDERAL FLAGSHIP every time you complete a mission. Holy hell, are dead drops not a thing in this universe? Are the feds actively trying to give you away? During these OpSec-destroying excursions, you'll have the opportunity to turn in supplementary evidence on the pirates' many crimes. This evidence comes in the form of incriminating tapes that are just laying around in the general vicinity of the perpetrators. None of them, including the canny, wary pirate leaders, will raise objections to you stuffing said tapes into your knapsack in full view of everyone. While turning in these tapes, you'll speak to the federal XO, who repeatedly inquires as to your impressions of the pirate leader. You can either lie and say he's a nosepicking vagrant, in which case you'll be praised for your patriotism, or you can accurately inform her that he's an intelligent and charismatic figure who poses a real threat, in which case she'll chew you out for the betrayal of respecting the enemy. The questline sustains this level of cartoonishness right up to the end, where the defeated, betrayed pirate leader tells your narc ass that he's proud of you because deep down, you're the greatest pirate of all. A generous reading could paint this horrorshow as a satire of Hoover's CIA or something, but I'm not feeling very generous at the moment. The common thread between these two cases is apathy. These scenarios have the potential to be so interesting and memorable, and the writers probably have the chops to deliver. But instead, they just... settle for mediocrity. They're writing with the expectation that they won't be held to a high standard. Situations don't have to make sense, commentary doesn't need to be thoughtful, narrative potential doesn't yearn to be realized. Dialogue is just there to point the way towards more gameplay, so write a few words and move on to the next contrivance. More and more, I feel like Bethesda views their games as theme parks; they're not writing a story, they're building a bunch of rides and doing the minimum necessary to shuffle people from one to the other. And now, the rides aren't even fun. Starfield uses humdrum, recycled assets to simulate a humdrum, recycled setting. None of its components do anything to support each other: not the worldbuilding, not the environments, not the gameplay, not the writing. Every part of this game talks past every other part, and if you care to listen, you'll find that they're all just rambling drunkenly about the weather. The result is a joyless, colorless mess memorable only for the lengths it goes to insult its players. Bethesda can do better than this. But they probably won't, because they don't think they have to, and apparently professional shame isn't enough of a motivator for them.Show moreShow less
135.5 hours at review11,375 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Can't wait to bump into my character from Skyrim that got launched into outer space by a giant.Show moreShow less
4.8 hours at review4,629 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
Most innovative gameplay has to be ironic, right?Show moreShow less
56.9 hours at review9,828 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
If your video card is struggling with this game I found a video on the tube of you "Starfield on RTX 2060 6GB!" that gave my own GTX1080 an 8-10fps increase on the default high preset (in New Atlantis) while improving the look: Setting shadow quality to low, reflections and volumetric lighting to mid, and turning down motion blur let me turn everything else up to ultra or high, and most importantly dial up the resolution scaling from the blurry default 62% to a much crisper 80% (62% was too low res to see high quality shadows anyway). Clearer and higher fps. Actual review: Starfield is a scifi melting pot combining aspects of NMS, cyberpunk games, mass effect, skyrim and space westerns, while being none of those and staying very much as Bethesda as it gets, complete with companions, scattered books, nifty architecture and beautiful vistas that somehow occasionally look slightly last gen while requiring next gen hardware ;) Expect space mining, outpost and ship building. I've explored plenty of spaceship and space station interiors (you can board ships during space combat and fight the crew to take over the ship). There's morally ambiguous cyberpunk sidequests. I spent an evening traveling between outposts on one planet, with mountainous grasslands rising above forested valleys containing giant egg shaped trees and massive insect species fighting each other, and still found surprises here and there. There are also many empty worlds with nothing to see. There is a lot to see and do in the areas that are deliberately designed. The cities are divided into wealthy, working class and poor areas with their own lore, backstories and quests that you can dig through for many hours, though the cities simultaneously feel small. The music is good, sort of like the more ambient tracks in Skyrim. There are some very fun Skyrim-like moments--like when I was given the tour of a space colony (instead of a mage's college). (later edit) There is some lovely stuff in this game. There are also some bizarre design choices made from the bottom up. I got about 100 hours out of it and there were still more deliberately designed areas and quests I hadn't done. It doesn't pull me back like say revisiting Skyrim, but since they keep updating it, I might have to give it another try someday and reedit this review. If you like the idea of some old-school Bethesda in space and check your expectations you'll still find an enormous world here and probably have some fun.Show moreShow less
109.4 hours at review3,460 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Elder scrolls 6 is gonna suck isn’t it?Show moreShow less
9 hours at review9,596 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
77hrs in: "finished" starfield. Now, it has a NG+ mode which is intriguing, so I'm actually still playing it ... but the story actively encourages you to finish it multiple times .. and restart over and over and over, which is ... curious. So I'm onboard. I'm still on the fence about the title as a whole. Enjoying it? Yes, very much. But it's hard to compare to previous titles (such as Fallout4) because I ended up playing those in a heavily modded state, which skews my memory of the raw, unmodded game. Starfield is currently raw and unmodded. It is an RPG. It's a story. It's not about exploration, space flight, or space trucking. It's an adventure. It has a story and you are a participant. The Bethesda feel is here in spades, and that includes a clunky interface with awful/useless filters and options (gadamn Bethesda, will you grow up and modernize this already? jesus) There are some bugs. Even after a year of testing, I have encountered a couple of showstoppers. There are some annoying quirks I am surprised did not get addressed in the 1 year of polish they went through. I think Bethesda has also backed themselves into a corner with their Creation Engine 2. It's essentially the same architecture as CE #1, with all the same limitations. The concept of 'cells' for building transitions, or area transitions is ... old. So to completely rebuild their engine, but to do so in a way that has a old, outdated architecture was a weird decision that I think will box them in for the decade to come. All of their future games may be "better", but they will all "feel old". Move into a building? loading screen. move out? loading screen. board ship? loading screen. Take off form the planet? loading screen. Fly to another system? loading screen. Fly to another planet? loading screen Land? loading screen. Enter the mining facility? loading screen. Room inside the facility? loading screen. It ends up feeling very much like a series of interconnected 'cells' where you get to do things before you transition to the next cell. And in a world where games have demonstrated the ability to transition more smoothly - even invisibly - I question why Bethesda has hung their hat on such an archaic way of doing things. It makes their largest game yet feel "small". Blasting across the universe across multiple planetary systems is ... a loading screen. And I'm not talking about the ability to fast travel and skip everything, but simply going from A->B is ... a loading screen. Every time. There is no planetary exploration and anyone who says otherwise is misguided. Planets are procedurally generated. You land in a cell. That cell has boundaries. That cell will be populated with a very limited set of re-used POIs (One day I got the same POI 3 times). The novelty of the first exploration morphs into routine as you realize that basically you have landed in a medium sized procedurally generated terrain cell with half a dozen random things throw in it for you to walk to and explore. It feels like a sandbox a dev might make up as a proof of concept. Want to move a little further 'east' to explore more? take off (loading) click a new area, land (loading) and you get a new cell with a sprinkle of POIs in it. Enjoy. And far, far, far too much of the 'quest structure' are fetch quests, and I will fight anyone who disagrees with me on that. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too many fetch-style quests. Heck, the main effing story is a fetch quest. Exploring a planet is a fetch quest, where you don't know where anything is and you might spend 2 hrs trying to figure out where that last "1 fauna of 9" is located ... while effing walking everywhere. Te - di - ous. I have always felt that Bethesda creates great experiences, and even better foundations for modders to go nuts with, and it's the modded experience that really makes it for me. Here Starfield absolutely and firmly falls into that camp. It is a great foundation for what is to come. Don't get me wrong, I have been enjoying the experience and I will continue to do so, but I am looking forward to mods buffing out the Bethesda quirks and menu annoyances, and hopefully some reason to build an outpost (because right now there isn't one). Currently ... I think I will give this a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. Tops.Show moreShow less
77.7 hours at review3,448 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I rate Starfield 5.5/10 (An ok if mediocre BGS game that has its moments, but feels like a regression in quality from previous BGS titles). Starfield as an adventure/RPG is quite poor. Starfield as an FPS is fun. After I finished the bulk of quests, I'm just turning my brain off and enjoying the FPS gunplay, combat in low gravity/zero-g. That being said, so many features of Starfield leave you scratching your head thinking, "really?" No brainer QOL features from previous Bethesda titles are absent, and the gameplay features they DID use in Starfield are weak/poorly thought out/shoe-horned in/rushed for the deadline. I'm guessing it was top-down decision making mismanagement that made Starfield feel like a regression in quality instead of playing on strengths found in prior Bethesda games. There's EM weapons, ship's brig components, contraband/ smuggling system that FEELS like they should have had greater functionality and purpose, but someone met with the dev team for those systems and said "we gotta ship this game, send it as-is." And so you're left with gameplay mechanics that are TECHNICALLY there... but are functionally worthless and don't add to the game in a meaningful way. That's just one example. I really think the lead developers/project managers made having 1000 procedurally generated planets THE CORE concept of the game, Which means that the rest of the gameplay mechanics are half-baked because they spent the majority of development on having 1000 procedurally generated, uninteresting planets, rather than focusing on exploration/worldbuilding/environmental storytelling, which were the STRONGEST parts of previous BGS titles. There's little reward for players to actually explore! - Starfield is a mile wide and an inch deep. -Story, quests & lore feel half-hearted, cut short for time and bland. -Bethesda created the lore for this game, and chose the most boring time to start your adventure. Colony wars are over! No mechs or armies with weaponized aliens. The citizens, guards, etc.. from the 2 main factions complain about each other but they're at peace. You can complete all the quests for one faction, join the next and do all the quests, and join the space pirates and do all their quests and it doesn't effect the story at all! I thought BGS would have learned what game mechanics from their previous titles worked well that players enjoyed and implement them in Starfield. I had hoped we'd get something like Skyrim or F:NV where there'd be consequences to your choices (Gain positive reputation with a faction that puts you in poor standing/locks you out from faction questlines and other locations under a faction) but the game world feels Anaemic and unresponsive to Player actions and decisions. -game systems that seemed to have some purpose somewhere along development but were made completely redundant by full release (crafting, cooking/food, smuggling contraband,shipbuilding, resource collection/mining, colonies, spaceship fuel/grav jump range, stealth) - more than half the skills are unnecessary, and quite a lot of grinding is required to level up skil -Poor U.I -Powers are pointless; I only use "personal atmosphere" to give myself oxygen because I'm constantly over encumbered hauling only resources and loot to and from my ship -you'll spend an hour in real time trying to sell 40,000 credits worth of loot to 6 different merchants who only have 5000 credits on hand (and the trade authority vendors, who have 12,000 credits). Selling 3-4 guns will give you every credit the vendor has on hand. You'll Have to find a bench to sit on, wait 48hrs for them to restock. And unlike previous games, a maxxed out commerce skill does NOT give you the option to invest a sum of credits with a vendor to increase their buying capacity. -Say you want to use ammo as a second currency with vendors; you buy up all the ammo a vendor has, and sell loot to get your credits back. The U.I doesn't speed up the selection of the quantity of ammo/meds/resources you wish to sell like previous Bethesda games, so you can hold down the left thumbstick for half an hour to sell the amount that'll clear the vendor of their credits, or you can give them ALL of a stack of ammo/meds/resources saving you time, but giving the surplus value away to a vendor for free. -I'd like to use the Bridger grenade launcher, except only some gun shops carry 40mm ammo and between 3-25 at any time. So I spend a bunch of time sitting on a bench and waiting 48hrs for them to restock, buy out all the 40mm and wait another 48hrs. Bleh -It feels pointless to explore planets. No matter where you land, you're always 500m from the exact same abandoned robotics lab, mining outpost, frozen research station. Seriously, for a 2023 title, I know the layout of every dungeon because there's only like a dozen of them! Enemies spawn in the same places everytime, loot is found in the same places, the 3rd locker down on the left always has credsticks on its shelf.. it's pathetic. Skyrim had hundreds of unique dungeons within one province of Tamriel and STARFIELD with hundreds of empty planets and moons only has a dozen or so dungeons that are found on every planet and moon. You'll know every time where enemies spawn, where keycards spawn, where safes and contraband spawns... -research base -underground frozen research base -mining facility with vats of lava -the tall research base with the elevator -abandoned robotics facility (with notes on how the staff were using the robots to deliver coffee) -deeper mining facility -you'll face either spacers, crimson fleet pirates, ecliptic mercs, or var'uun heretics at any of the dozen locations. For all intents and purposes, they are completely the same (behaviour in combat) Whats the point of a big open world if there's nothing interesting inside? It feels like I bought a tall glass of juice but the waiter drank 75% of it before watering it down and giving it to me for $90 CAD ($110 after tax) In conclusion, this is a step down in quality from Bethesda compared to previous titles. Bethesda took the best gameplay mechanics from their previous games, removed the QOL mechanics and half assed shoe horned the others into Starfield. It feels like the game is underdeveloped, rushed to completion, overhyped, and absolutely disappointing for a 2023 title from a triple A game studio. I'd wait a year or two for the game to go on sale.. it wouldn't feel right to pay more than $30 for the game (don't spend $90+ like I did on Starfield!) That being said, If Bethesda listens to player feedback and provides free, meaningful updates I will update my review accordingly. For the time being, I'm not interested in paying more for additional DLC when the base game at full price feels incomplete.Show moreShow less
183.2 hours at review9,040 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.