Last Game You Played

RDR is one of my favorite games of all time but I never beat #2.  I probably put 20-30 hours into it but then life got in the way and when I tried to go back I was just standing in a field by my horse with no clue what to do... I hate that about big games, if I take a break it's really hard for me to go back.

I'm on a "small" game kick.  I was playing the new Zelda for a couple months but gaming time is tight so I wasn't getting far (though I was enjoying it quite a bit).  So I put it down in favor of Moonlighter, which I loved.  I beat it within about a week, so then I tried Cave Story+.  Beat that quickly as well, so now I'm working on Death's Door.  These 10-20 hour games are much more my speed right now and I'm really digging it.  It's honestly pretty rare that I beat a game so to beat two within 3 weeks (and getting close on the third) is extremely refreshing.

Death's Door rocks. The fact of the matter is indies have been kicking AAA games' ass for several years. Before Baldur's Gate III, I would say 8 of the last 10 AAA games I played let me down in one facet or another. The two exceptions are Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok (though I liked GoW 2018 a lot more than GoWR).

Over the last few years, I've played Hades, Dead Cells, Sifu, PlateUp!, Vampire Survivors, Risk of Rain 2, and Inscryption. All fantastic indies that I'd highly recommend.

On the Zelda front, I don't know what it is about BotW/TotK, but I can't get into them. I was stuck on tutorial island in BotW for a literal year. I had to basically force myself to power through and beat the game. Because of that, I planned to skip TotK. FOMO and a good sale got the better of me, though, and once again, I'm stuck on tutorial island. Those games just don't engage me like they do everyone else, and I love a well-made sandbox game.

Yeah man, I'm loving all the good indies.  I've got Tunic waiting for me once I finish Death's Door (or maybe SteamWorld Dig 2, can't decide).  I need to go back to Hades, I really loved what I played of it.  I bought it pretty much at release and put about 6 hours into it over a weekend but then had to stop for... some reason, I can't remember.  I'll need to start it over but that's no big deal since it's so good.

While I'm here, one thing that's really bugging me about Death's Door is how useless the upgrades feel.  I've got my combat maxed and it still takes two hits from the "best" sword to kill the dudes in the opening area.  That's one fewer hit after getting the end-game weapon and upgrading five times.  What the heck? 

As for Zelda, I kind of consider them flawed masterpieces.  I actually bought a Switch to play BotW and ended up putting it down after 10 hours.  It didn't grab me in the slightest and I found it very bland and empty compared to other open world games.  However, I went back to it in 2020 once COVID hit and it got its claws in me and didn't let go until I finished it probably 80 hours later.  Mind you, that whole time I was still frustrated with a lot of the game's shortcomings but I still loved the adventure nonetheless.  Tears of the Kingdom has been an improvement in almost every regard so far, I just can't dedicate the time to it that I need to right now.

I was at Starfield this evening for a couple of hours. I haven't hit some of the major new game elements yet, like ship-building or exploration of star systems. So take this with a grain of salt but...

It's just a fucking Bethesda game, guys. Do not get too wrapped up in the hype. It's still a little janky and weird, it's still a world absolutely fucking CLUTTERED with shit you can take but do not need, making it a mind-numbing, boring chore to sift through every room trying to figure out what's worth taking and what's just like. . a spoon, or a jockstrap, or something.

I'm not saying it's -bad-. People, who are not me, love Fallout and Skyrim with some serious intensity. And I'm enjoying what I've played so far. But it's just a Bethesda game. Even if ship-building is really fun, and I think it will be, there's nothing revolutionary or even 'next generation' about this game. It looks prettier than Fallout and Skyrim but, of fucking course it does, it's been YEARS since those games came out. Does it look like it's straining the new gen console? Nah. Just looks.. nice.

I played about five hours of Starfield yesterday. After playing Baldur's Gate 3, I was worried Starfield would feel clunky and dated. It does.

What shocks me is how bad the quality of life issues are. The local map is, no exaggeration, the worst I've ever seen in a AAA game. The fast travel system is poorly designed, making you sit through two to five loading screens when one would do for any other developer. The encumbrance system is horrendous. I'm level 5 and already picking and choosing which items I loot. Video games, as it turns out, are supposed to be fun. Leave unclimbable rocks, encumbrance, and weapon durability in the trash, where they belong. Zelda is catching strays here, but that shit drives me mad.

If you're coming off BG3 like I am, the writing and performances are not great. Sometimes they're passable, but they're usually bad. The menus are a mess. They're convoluted and difficult to navigate.

They took the leveling system--the most basic "press button, receive pellet" function in gaming--and fucked it up. When you level, you get a skill point. I believe all skills have four levels. You can get the first level of any skill without meeting any prerequisites, but after that, you need to accomplish something first. For instance, lockpicking requires you to pick so many lockpicks before getting lockpicking 2, lockpicking 3, and lockpicking 4. The same goes for the jetpack. You'd think maybe, "Use the Jetpack 10 times" or "Jetpack 100 feet." Nope, use the jetpack in combat 10 times. Starfield isn't a difficult game, but taking yourself above cover to get shot at is a terrible strategy. What I did instead was hide in a secluded room while in combat and spam the jetpack. That's not a huge deal, but it's totally emblematic of the whole package. Hiding in a separate room to spam a button and meet some arbitrary challenge is some 2005 shit.

A lot of the skill points unlock cool abilities, but unfortunately, you will be punished for taking them. You need to take your medicine before you can have fun. Get the weight lifting perk, close to a fucking requirement because of how light your carry capacity is, before you take any damage-based abilities. Get increased stamina because you will be running out of oxygen early and often. Finish leveling the jetpack--literally the only way to increase your traversal speed--because there are no ground vehicles or mountable animals for exploration.

Starfield is a jack of all trades, but it scores like a 2/5 in each one. Star Citizen, Prey, No Man's Sky, and Mass Effect have each done parts of Starfield about a thousand times better. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a Bethesda fan. Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 are all among my favorite games. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this one, but I'm extremely disappointed with what we've got here. That's not to say I won't have fun with it; I wouldn't continue playing if I thought otherwise. I'm playing for the odd sidequests, whatever this game's Dark Brotherhood turns out to be, and the fact that I can play a space pirate.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's me or Bethesda. To me, this feels less polished than their previous games. I've experienced fewer bugs, but stuff like the local map is inexcusable. Then again, maybe it's me? God of War, Hades, Elden Ring, and Baldur's Gate 3 have all raised my expectations in ways that Bethesda is not interested in meeting.

In a review of this game, I heard someone say they thought it was a 3/5 game with 4/5 fun. I think that's probably where I'll land. This thing belongs nowhere near the Game of the Year conversation. It doesn't innovate. Graphics aside, you could tell me Starfield came out in 2009 and I'd believe you.

First of all, I'm not going anywhere near BGIII until after I'm done with games that I know aren't going to match up to it.

I don't think anything you're saying about Starfield is inaccurate. Even graphically, it feels way behind where it should be for a game of this generation. I really don't understand the people praising how nice it looks. It doesn't even look better than some of the graphics mods I've seen for Skyrim. You shouldn't be able, on a fairly normal gaming computer or even XBox, to make Skyrim look better than Starfield.

The faces are still very plastic. And yeah, basically all interactions with NPCs are jank as fuck. I'm about 6 or 7 hours in now and I can honestly say that maybe a quarter of the time I talk to NPCs they aren't even facing me. And seriously, after THIS long with their Creation Engine, or whatever it's called, they still haven't figured out how to make NPCs shut the fuck up when you're talking to someone else, so sometimes important dialogue has to be sifted through the three different lines of conversation being shouted at you from different directions.

With the skills.. I mean, look.. I do see what they were going for. It's just a bad solution to a non-existent problem. People complained, because they're whiny fuckfaces, that you could basically max a skill in Skyrim within five levels because there's nothing stopping you from dumping all your points into one thing.
Okay.. but you suck at everything else.
And also it's a single player game so WHO FUCKING CARES?
So I get that this was intended to force you into spreading out your skill points. But here's the thing -- I think most people already would have done that because there's legitimately a lot of good skills in this game that you -need- if you want to enjoy all the different elements of the game. It's not like Skyrim where there's quite a few builds that would allow you to basically ignore half of the skills in the entire game and not even notice.

The menus and general UI suck. I don't see how this made it past the smell test at Bethesda. Like, they had to know it was bad, right? The people at least making the actual game are, themselves, gamers. I don't get it. But also the lack of a map is beyond stupid. I think I get it because developers have a bad tendency to think in terms of what they need while playing a game - forgetting that they've spent more time with it than most customers ever will. Yes, Bethesda employee, YOU have memorized every inch of every town and could navigate to the gun store with your eyes closed. -IIIIII- however, just turned this game on 3 hours ago and I'm fucking frustrated because I'm bored out of my mind running (and then walking, and then running, and then walking....) in goddamn circles because I don't know where anything is yet.
And won't for a long time because I have a terrible sense of direction in video games for some reason.

I find the ship combat, so far, pretty egregious for a game that made that one of the selling features. It's just.. kind of confusing (visually, not in terms of how it works) and clunky. Especially with your starting ship. I'd argue that it actually feels a little tacked on rather than something the game was built around. Like they did all the hauling and travel and customizing stuff and then realized that people were going to expect -combat- if they get to fly around in a spaceship all the time.

I strongly agree that the only thing this game really has going for it is that it combines a ton of stuff that were done way better elsewhere, but haven't really been done -together- yet. This is the kind of game I really want to play. It doesn't do combat as smoothly or enjoyable as Mass Effect. It doesn't do transitions and exploration as well as No Man's Sky, etc etc. But I can't think of any other game, and certainly not one in this level of game design/polish (such as it is), that does all of these things together. Like you said.. I want to be a space pirate with my own ship and crew, and I want to disembark to go murder other pirates and take their stuff with at least mildly satisfying combat. This is the only game that's going to give me that. Possibly for many years to come. So...

But I mean.. yeah. Like I said; it's a Bethesda game. It does what Bethesda games do. Basically everything you'd ever expect from a Bethesda game release is here, for good and ill. But I -would- recommend it even to people that aren't Bethesda fans for the reasons above; if this is the kind of game you want to play, this is your only port of harbor. And it's still fun, it's just not what it could have been by a longshot, and probably not what a lot of people would have liked it to be.

I put another couple hours in today. I've heard things open up after the first five story missions, so I'm trying to power through those without getting distracted. A few people have told me that this game takes longer to get going than the last two Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 4/New Vegas. That's been my experience as well.

Once I finish those first five missions, I'm going to rush to the

I'm playing on a PC with a controller, and I couldn't agree more about the menus. They're not intuitive at all. Worse, you need to navigate at least two menus to get to the quest log, map, or fast travel menu.

Now that I've ingratiated myself into the mechanics a bit more, I can see how this game will eventually get its hooks into me. Some genuinely funny and surprising things can happen when you grav jump into a new system. That's the Bethesda charm we all look for in these games. It's a shame the rest of the product is so sloppy.

My wife is super into Baldur's Gate 3 right now. She's probably put about 25 hours in so far. I started a character as well, and I've played about 3 hours. It's a lot to take in. It's been fun, and I can definitely see how it could suck you in. It remains to be seen whether or not I'll get invested, though. 

I made my character in Starfield and played the first hour or so. It is also fun, and seems more accessible than BG3. 

I guess it really just depends on whether or not I want to sink any time into massive RPGs before Spider-Man 2 next month. Newest gameplay for that looks awesome. 

I wonder if online games and video are the same, right?

tiny fishing

MK1 right now!

@tsi 

I'm like 40 hours in or something now, so obviously I'm fully hooked on Starfield. But I don't think that's speaking to the strength of Starfield as a game, but rather how hungry I am for a new RPG and to be a space pirate. This is scratching a certain itch even if at least a few times per session I'm going 'wtf, Bethesda?!'

Here's something different that's really, really bugging me even if maybe this is a petty complaint; With all the systems this game has set up, how in the fuck am I seriously not able to assign any of my MANY extra crew members to other ships and create an active fleet?

Even if it's just something like Dragon Age: Inquisition's war table missions where you can assign ships in your fleet to perform basic tasks that give you a little XP or bring you an item, or whatever. It seems like such a basic and OBVIOUS thing to set up. I mean.. you let me own 8 or 10 ships? But I can only use one of them at a time.

Do you know how badly I want to give The Frontier back to Barrett, load him up with some of the nameless crew members you can recruit, and tell him something like 'go find me five possible planets that would make good outpost locations' or something? Why can't I do that? That can't be difficult to code into the game, right? Why let me have a FLEET of starships when that 'fleet' is the equivalent of John Cena keeping 55 sports cars in a big garage just so he can jerk off over how many cars he has?

Also, at something like level 18, I've definitely come to the FIRM opinion that some of the skills in this game should have just been baseline abilities, and them NOT being baseline abilities was just a way to pad out the skill system and force you to grind more to get to anything good. Like Rank 1 or Piloting, Surveying, Stealth, and at least one or two others I'm not thinking of, should have just been the base version of how that ability works. OH! Like the fucking jump packs. You give people jump packs but they have to use a skill point to make the jump pack.. function? Wtf?

It's just like.. very typical Bethesda gameplay padding that actively makes the games LESS fun to play. Just in general it feels like a lot of the stuff that makes the game fun is locked behind mid-game/late-game checkpoints because you need so many skill points or whatever to get to any of it. A good example being that anything involving starship stuff is actively not fun with The Frontier. They COULD have made the Frontier a better ship that's more enjoyable to use and still have it be inferior to other ships to encourage you to modify, build, steal, or buy a little bit later on when you can afford to do so. But instead, using the Frontier almost actively discourages you from even doing the ship stuff at all. I basically didn't even do any ship combat for a range of around 10-12 hours. Basically only the stuff I -had- to do until I did the Mantis mission. And even the Mantis can get its ass handed to it if overwhelmed because it's still a smaller ship, and doesn't get the benefits of having crew. So it's not like even that ship is BEST EVER, and it's WILDLY better than the Frontier.
And it's not even hard to get. So like.. why do we start with such a terrible ship when, if you really want to, you can probably get the Mantis so early in the game that you'll barely even use the Frontier -ever-? Why not just like.. make the Frontier a more attractive early game option?

Also, why can't I change the color of anything in this game besides the ship? Can't modify gun colors, melee weapon colors, backpack colors, suit colors, clothing colors, hat colors, or helmet colors. Why? Tell me the fuck why.
I was so excited by the glitch that let you grab that black set of armor from The Lodge basement. But when you equip it, it turns white. So it literally changes color when you get it in your inventory. So clearly there's a BLACK version of that armor IN THE GAME ALREADY, but I can't make it look like that.

It's just so dumb. I want to call it lazy, but it honestly feels like intentional trolling. There is zero chance a group of game designers/developers did not think that RPG players would want to customize the appearance of their gear. ZERO chance. So they actively said 'fuck you' to those people is what they did.

So far I haven't actually had any major glitches. Just the Ultimate Bethesda Experience of NPCs basically clipping through you and your companions during conversations. And for all my bitching I am mostly having -fun- playing the game. But goddamn I'm a little tired of the few people out there acting like this is GotY quality and a transcendent gaming experience. It's just a game. And, realistically, a mediocre one at that. Fun, but only because there's no other games to play that do these things together.
And my god the dialogue is terrible. Bethesda needs to hire a real writer desperately. Not a world builder writer, but like.. someone that can write dialogue and conversations. Because whoever is doing it now is not good at it. Voice acting is great, though. I think the actors are doing the best they can with the dialogue and direction they've been given.

Posted by: @theknightdamien

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@tsi 

I'm like 40 hours in or something now, so obviously I'm fully hooked on Starfield. But I don't think that's speaking to the strength of Starfield as a game, but rather how hungry I am for a new RPG and to be a space pirate. This is scratching a certain itch even if at least a few times per session I'm going 'wtf, Bethesda?!'

Here's something different that's really, really bugging me even if maybe this is a petty complaint; With all the systems this game has set up, how in the fuck am I seriously not able to assign any of my MANY extra crew members to other ships and create an active fleet?

Even if it's just something like Dragon Age: Inquisition's war table missions where you can assign ships in your fleet to perform basic tasks that give you a little XP or bring you an item, or whatever. It seems like such a basic and OBVIOUS thing to set up. I mean.. you let me own 8 or 10 ships? But I can only use one of them at a time.

Do you know how badly I want to give The Frontier back to Barrett, load him up with some of the nameless crew members you can recruit, and tell him something like 'go find me five possible planets that would make good outpost locations' or something? Why can't I do that? That can't be difficult to code into the game, right? Why let me have a FLEET of starships when that 'fleet' is the equivalent of John Cena keeping 55 sports cars in a big garage just so he can jerk off over how many cars he has?

Also, at something like level 18, I've definitely come to the FIRM opinion that some of the skills in this game should have just been baseline abilities, and them NOT being baseline abilities was just a way to pad out the skill system and force you to grind more to get to anything good. Like Rank 1 or Piloting, Surveying, Stealth, and at least one or two others I'm not thinking of, should have just been the base version of how that ability works. OH! Like the fucking jump packs. You give people jump packs but they have to use a skill point to make the jump pack.. function? Wtf?

It's just like.. very typical Bethesda gameplay padding that actively makes the games LESS fun to play. Just in general it feels like a lot of the stuff that makes the game fun is locked behind mid-game/late-game checkpoints because you need so many skill points or whatever to get to any of it. A good example being that anything involving starship stuff is actively not fun with The Frontier. They COULD have made the Frontier a better ship that's more enjoyable to use and still have it be inferior to other ships to encourage you to modify, build, steal, or buy a little bit later on when you can afford to do so. But instead, using the Frontier almost actively discourages you from even doing the ship stuff at all. I basically didn't even do any ship combat for a range of around 10-12 hours. Basically only the stuff I -had- to do until I did the Mantis mission. And even the Mantis can get its ass handed to it if overwhelmed because it's still a smaller ship, and doesn't get the benefits of having crew. So it's not like even that ship is BEST EVER, and it's WILDLY better than the Frontier.
And it's not even hard to get. So like.. why do we start with such a terrible ship when, if you really want to, you can probably get the Mantis so early in the game that you'll barely even use the Frontier -ever-? Why not just like.. make the Frontier a more attractive early game option?

Also, why can't I change the color of anything in this game besides the ship? Can't modify gun colors, melee weapon colors, backpack colors, suit colors, clothing colors, hat colors, or helmet colors. Why? Tell me the fuck why.
I was so excited by the glitch that let you grab that black set of armor from The Lodge basement. But when you equip it, it turns white. So it literally changes color when you get it in your inventory. So clearly there's a BLACK version of that armor IN THE GAME ALREADY, but I can't make it look like that.

It's just so dumb. I want to call it lazy, but it honestly feels like intentional trolling. There is zero chance a group of game designers/developers did not think that RPG players would want to customize the appearance of their gear. ZERO chance. So they actively said 'fuck you' to those people is what they did.

So far I haven't actually had any major glitches. Just the Ultimate Bethesda Experience of NPCs basically clipping through you and your companions during conversations. And for all my bitching I am mostly having -fun- playing the game. But goddamn I'm a little tired of the few people out there acting like this is GotY quality and a transcendent gaming experience. It's just a game. And, realistically, a mediocre one at that. Fun, but only because there's no other games to play that do these things together.
And my god the dialogue is terrible. Bethesda needs to hire a real writer desperately. Not a world builder writer, but like.. someone that can write dialogue and conversations. Because whoever is doing it now is not good at it. Voice acting is great, though. I think the actors are doing the best they can with the dialogue and direction they've been given.

The way I've heard it described is Starfield has tens (or maybe even hundreds) of in-game systems, but they're all surface-level. Exploration, piloting, and resource-gathering are all there, but they're all rudimentary. Mass Effect Andromeda did the settling systems thing better. No Man's Sky did exploration better. Outer Wilds did piloting better. So on and so forth.

To your point, games as far back as Assassin's Creed Brotherhood let you send your minions on missions to collect resources and XP. Regarding customization, Mass Effect 2 let you change your suit and ship color back in 2010. Unfortunately, I think this is the new normal for AAA gaming. The rigors of producing a Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption 2 are such that these games will now take multiple console generations to make, and even when they release, they may be skimping on obvious/basic features. That's the reality of producing something huge, pretty, and long in 2023. Not to mention dealing with the various shareholders that almost always come with AAA games these days. Did the developers want to add in a suit customization option? Probably. Did Microsoft say "fuck you, get the game out in 2023"? Probably. The game launched without a local map and we're all just... dealing with it.

I'm about 35 hours in. I beat the main story, and now I'm just wrapping up the faction side quests. As I mentioned in an earlier post, NG+ and NG++ add some surprising twists. I'd recommend rushing the main story so you can decide whether to continue your playthrough on NG+. Note that you'll lose everything but your level, though. They give you a new starship and spacesuit, but you're starting from scratch otherwise. No weapons, companions, or quest progress goes with you. The main story itself is meh, but NG+ enriches it greatly. Once you've beaten the game, I strongly recommend this podcast to give you an idea of how crazy things get in NG+++.

The game actually emotionally moved me--though I don't think it was at all intentional--when I started NG+.

I'm at level 35, but so much of that level progress came through the main story. In fact, in doing faction side quests, I'm startled by how little XP you receive from each quest. It makes the skills that should've been baseline abilities even more noticeable. Especially when specific faction side quests require high levels of persuasion or stealth. Reaching level 100 would take ages.

I completed the Vanguard side quest (pretty good overall) and I'm about halfway through the Freestar Rangers and Ryujin quest lines. I haven't started the Crimson Fleet yet. Out of respect for my feelings toward Fallout and Elder Scrolls, I feel owe it to Bethesda (and my love for the Dark Brotherhood) to see those through, but that will probably do it for me until the DLC comes out. Hopefully by then, the general consensus will have settled on the best quests in the game. For me, the two best have been the Mantis and Operation Starseed.

Overall, Starfield has been a little disappointing. It was easily my most-anticipated game of the year, and it was mowed over by Baldur's Gate III. Even Tears of the Kingdom, decidedly not my cup of tea, is leagues better than Starfield. There's a good chance I like Remnant II, Resident Evil IV, and Armored Core VI more when I finally get to them, not to mention Spider-Man 2, Cities: Skylines II, and Alan Wake 2. Honestly, I'm speeding through these faction quests so I can get back to Baldur's Gate III.

@tsi I unintentionally spoiled some basic stuff about the ending of Starfield for myself pretty shortly after it came out and I've gotta be honest - I just don't care. Like.. first of all I absolutely hate locking full compliments of gear behind 'you just gotta play the game twice.'  Even with what happens at the end, there's just NO WAY there's enough meat on this bone to make me want to play it again, I expect. I guess, yeah, unless I just rush through the main campaign first. But I actually really don't want to do that because it's not how I play/enjoy games.

And realistically.. I hate the look of the ship you get, and I don't care for any of the armor variants you get. And it's triple fucking obnoxious, bordering on criminal, that you get a randomly generated NG+ armor, so you have to save-scum and risking glitching out your game if you want the chance to get the version you actually want. Unless the version you actually want is ACTUALLY the NG++ version. Like.. fuck off, Bethesda. Who thought this was a good idea?

So the reality is that I need this game to stand up to a full and near-complete playthrough the first go 'round. Even if the NG+ stuff was really cool, that would actually just make everything so much worse because it shows they really knew what people would want and locked it behind a 30+ hour wall that simultaneously robs you of experiencing the game for the first time with the gear you want. I'm not saying only Bethesda does this. But it's bullshit every time anyone does it, so 'it's not just them' is a garbage excuse anyway.

ALSO... from the looks of it the NG+ gear is significantly better than anything else in the game. So if you do just rush through and start NG+ as soon as possible.. this might as well be more of an action game than an RPG because you're locking yourself in to a single suit, like three weapons, and one ship, for the other 100 hours you're going to play. I mean.. why bother ever changing any of that stuff when it's so much better? It robs you of the most basic RPG experience of collecting cool new gear and figuring out what looks and works best for you.

I don't know. This just feels like one of the most backwards games I've ever played, that intentionally and seriously does not actually want you to have fun, but to play it a very specific, and very unfun, way. So having fun with it feels more like you're fighting the systems than engaging with them.

Don't get me wrong - I think the NG+ idea they're doing here is interesting and in a better game could be really cool and fun. I just think the way they're implementing it absolutely sucks and actively makes the game worse.

I got the Star Eagle over the weekend and it definitely feels superior to the Razorleaf in every way. One thing they definitely did right here; technically some of the best Class A ships in the entire game can be gotten fairly early, and for free. If I had started my playthrough by hammering out the Freestar Rangers quests, I imagine I would have had the Star Eagle at around level 10 or 11? But I don't feel like 'okay, well it's early game and I have the best stuff already' because it's only the best Class A, not the best in the game. So there's still tiers to work through and bits to collect/modify.

Despite all the negative things ya'll are saying I'm still quite excited to play Starfield some day.  I just have no idea when that will be.  I'm not a PC gamer and I've skipped everything Microsoft since the 360.

Meanwhile I finished Death's Door.  100%-ed it in fact, it was that good.  There were a few little gameplay frustrations throughout but overall I thought the game was a masterpiece. 

I moved straight from that into Journey to the Savage Land, a poor man's Starfield (no not really, that'd be The Outer Worlds).  It was a lot of fun but the controls weren't the best and I felt fairly led-by-the-nose throughout a lot of it.  The story was pretty worthless but the drive to find all the things and learn new abilities kept me hooked.  The game wasn't nearly good enough to bother sticking around past the credits to 100% though, and looking online it sounds like there isn't even a special ending if you grind out all of the hidden stuff.  Glad I didn't bother.

I started Steamworld Dig the same day and am really enjoying it so far.  I hear the sequel is much more fleshed out and I'm looking forward to trying it soon because this first game definitely feels a bit like a mobile game.  The gameplay loop of "get new materials to upgrade yourself to get new materials" is really working for me though.  This is where I'm at right now, keeping it simple and short.  I'll tackle the biggies like Starfield and Tears of the Kingdom some other time.

Hey man, don't let us yuck your yum. I'm a hyper-critical person, and I'd imagine KD would say he's picky (or worse).

It's all about what you're looking for. You mentioned Outer Worlds, and that's actually a game I prefer to Starfield. I'd rather have three or four fleshed-out worlds than thousands of relatively barren ones. In my friend group, only about 50% agree with me on that. If you're a Starfield guy, enjoy it.