Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?

Manor Lords sets an extremely high bar for how game about building settlements can look like. It will be hard for any developer to match this in the years to come. Sound work also simply beautiful.

It is, however, very, VERY, early access. Plenty of things absent or not working. How the game will look like in the future? Who knows. As is, it is a very low complexity experience, with many QoL features absent.

STARFIELD is a hard game to recommend... so I won’t. It is mediocre to decent but very expensive game – 6/10. Unfortunately looks bad when you chalk it up against its competitors. Gone are days when Bethesda was industry’s leader.

Don’t read things below!

GOOD
- If you have that "being captain of a starship in a RPG" fantasy... Starfield definitely delivers. You can be Malcom Reynolds and your ship can be Firefly.
- Main story is decent.. ish. It definitely has its moments. That said it gets weird, religious and esoteric which most often than not tries to imply depth when there is none. I prefer my stories more down to Earth… The Expanse style. That said, it’s ok and there is some really good stuff there. Faction missions are where it’s at though. By far the most developed quests and this game is at its best when you play them. Especially UC’s Vanguard storyline. My mistake was to do it first and thus the rest looked worse by comparison but they are all pretty good.
- Space stuff is decently done, especially that it is not a main focus. I am not even having that much on an issue with loading screens (and they are better than that docking animation you have to watch) although some are weirdly spaced and some could be removed. People compare this to No Man Sky... is that fair? No. If I wanted to play space sim I would go for a space sim. I wanted RPG in space.
- It is quite pretty. Space vistas can be breathtaking. Planets and moons as well.
- Aesthetics are absolutely stellar. It is, I think, the first Bethesda game aiming at somewhat realistic style and imho it nails it. Level of detail can be pretty amazing.
- I like that planets are on an empty side.
- Good vibes. Can do space wonder and space horror equally well. More, please. Especially of the latter.
- Combat is quite fun. And punchy. AI could be better. And there is boarding action where you disable hostile ship’s engines and go deck by deck clearing its crew to steal it and all the riches onboard. And then there is 0G combat where there is no up or down, every shot you make propels you backwards, every explosion pushes every loose bit in every direction… just beautiful chaos.
- I like starship creator for some reason. People with skill can do wonders and even I after few tries managed to put together something pleasing.
BAD
- Side missions are usually fetch quests of the worst kind. This time interplanetary fetch quest. Generated quests are the same. I know I can’t expect too much but has Todd nothing to offer us but doing the same thing over and over with no variation? If they were at least bit demanding but hostiles are spawned in accordance to the level of the planetary systems so by the late game they are all pretty easy.
- RPG element is weak. Choices you make are rare and even more rare is that you can observe results in game. There are no quests that have mutually exclusive storylines.
- As far as I am concerned, that atrocious UI is enough reason to not recommend this game to anyone. I refuse to acknowledge that something this bad is created by incompetence, there had to be a malicious mind behind it. It doesn't surprise me that UI is also one of the things that gets modded to wonderful results even though modding isn't officially supported.
- Loot is bad. It is not very exciting and that weird double leveling system just makes you drop cool legendary stuff for regular one, but with better stats. Especially mission rewards are given with much pump but are usually sold or dropped into storage as they are almost always much worse than stuff you find. And you cannot upgrade you weapons like you can in Skyrim for reasons unknown.
- They should focus hard on starship builder... or ships at all. It is de facto your home. You cannot change how it looks like inside, you cannot get boarded and do defense close quoters battle onboard your own ship. People could share them online, have other people’s creations show randomly in game. Wasted potential. And ship's habs do almost nothing - example. you have brig, but no option to take prisoners is given.
- Perks – some are almost mandatory, some are next to useless and/or boring.
- Bugs galore: missing bodies in quest locations, people with no space suit where spacesuit is definitely needed, UC guards in UC facilities go around their business with Maelstrom rifles in hand, spawning below the ship while exiting, all spacesuits placed on mannequins all over the galaxy are always… ALWAYS… mining suits etc.
- Mission bugs – namely closed door bug. It happened in pirate faction mission after you try to return from the prison facility in Suvorov, Crucible mission and gang mission on Neon. Certain doors just won’t open. No biggie. Two out of three missions I mentioned are part of the biggest quests in the game. Anyway I used console and noclipped through everything in my path.
- Updates or lack thereof. Sweet time is taken and number of fixes is small. Mission bugs are still not fixed AFAIK.
- Presentation is definitely dated. In typical Bethesda fashion NPCs stand before you at attention and spout out one line of dialog after another. You know, the cheap way of doing it. Few times actual scene happens it definitely pops out at you.
- Maps for cities anyone? Like seriously.
- Companions. I don’t like them. They tried to make them endearing but I don’t like them. And they talk too much. And the variety of what they talk about is way too low. I wish AI could finally generate those conversations. Some would be wonky, but at least it would be interesting. Also no, I do not think I carry too much. And why all of them need me to fix their lives?
- Different lines of dialog do not have priority. You can have important conversation with one NPC while another is spouting out some generic stuff.
- Background crowds and even some NPCs look like science experiments gone wrong. And having them mixed together with normal NPCs makes them look even worse by comparison. Pretty jarring.
- Skyrim was/is renown by its almost seamless exploration. And although I do not have issue with loading screens (hello? It is a computer game!) SF fails to install the same feeling in you. But there is much, much worse problem. At some point you are going to visit a POI, randomly spawned on planet/moon – let’s say it is abandoned cryolab. First time you visit it is magical. You go room by room, you read notes, you search through… possession of former employees. You finish a Starfield dungeon. Then you go to do other adventures and after some time you are going to find yet another abandoned cryolab. You go in and after a few minutes the horror strikes. It is identical to the previous one… TO A LETTER. Everything, position of enemies, numbers, notes, former employees, every single thing. The most damning thing about Skyrim’s dungeons was that they felt similar and thus were boring. In Starfield the decided to make them identical. All POIs are handcrafted, and they are identical. Any excitement goes out of the window. There is number of things they could do to differentiate them, but they decided not to.
UGLY
- Low diversity of weapons. Like majority is of ballistic type.
- There are robots in game. Shame we cannot design our companion.
- Base building - imho it is in because it was in older Bethesda games. It does not fit at all. You build them for the sake of building them. I quickly gave up.
- New Atlantis as the center of human civilization? I am not buying it. They could make it into ecumenopolis. You do not have to have the option to land everywhere on every planet.
- I appreciate the thought they’ve put into New game + because it is the whole story about it. But I am in RPGs for the experience of the story. I had it and that’s it. It is boring to repeat it immediately, just to change few minor and inconsequential things to see what’s changed.

What a crazy story! We sail through the stars, from sector to sector, with the last of humanity onboard a failing space station... we uncover history, though not all is available to be learned. And that is fine, as what we are able to find out is bonkers. And it makes the world mysterious.

I know people have favorite ending. But given what happened to Earth, turning what's left of humanity into sentient plants was probably a very sound idea. You care that much more about environment if you need clean water and clean sky for photosynthesis.

The game proved hard for some, yet the key was to suck every available resource from every sector you were in. And while waiting for harvesters allows appreciating the beauty of the game, the real star here is the music by Guillaume David. This guy is a genius.

Sound 9/10 given the price.

Interesting mix of Viscera Cleanup Detail and FTL. Fun at the beginning but getting old after you clean your ship from infestation for the hundredth time. A bit of automation and modding wouldn't go amiss. 6/10 when on a sale because, although I enjoyed it, it is just a hair's width from being very good.