Starfield’s Steam reviews stand at “Mostly Negative” as of today, December 26, 2023. On this date, only 34% of the 7,454 reviews in the last 30 days are positive. This marks a significant drop from the game’s prior “Mixed” review status after the Bethesda space RPG launched earlier this year with a seemingly successful reception.
As I skimmed through the bulk of recent reviews appearing on the game’s Steam page, the following factors stand out to me as the biggest contributors to Starfield’s negative reviews:
- Procedural generation: While procedural generation can create vast and diverse worlds, many players feel it comes at the expense of hand-crafted content and memorable locations. More often than not, Starfield’s planets feel empty and repetitive, lacking the unique charm of exploration attributed to Bethesda’s previous titles like Skyrim and Fallout.
- Shallow quests: Truth be told, almost all Starfield quests lack meaningful choices and consequences. Add on top of that the repetitiveness of fetch quests and radiant missions which further detracts from the overall experience.
- Technical issues: Bugs, glitches, and performance problems have plagued players since launch. While Bethesda has released patches to address some of these issues, it’s too little too late.
- Missing features: Owing to the marketing leading up to the launch, players expected deep space exploration, meaningful crew interactions, and impactful base building. But as someone who has played the game since launch, I’m disappointed at several of the game’s half-baked, disjointed features.
Not all reviews are critical. Some players praise the game’s sense of scale and freedom, the variety of customization options, and the potential for modding to improve the experience. But I feel this is too little for a 2023 space RPG coming from a studio with as much budget as Bethesda.
It remains to be seen whether Bethesda can address the issues raised by players and turn things around for Starfield in the coming year. The current state of Steam reviews, however, is a stark reminder that even the most hyped games can fall short of expectations.
