Starfield Review + Recommended Mods

[Zapix]

F U L L _ R E V I E W
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This review comes after investing nearly 180 hours into Starfield since early access, completing the main story, completing all factions, and obtaining all achievements. I started using the DLSS and a Reshade mod on the second day of playing. I used various settings and I'll go over those in my review.

This experience was mostly played on a desktop with an Intel i9 7900X overclocked at 4.4GHz with 64GB of 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and an RTX 3080 Ti video card on an Asus 4K HDR monitor. A few times I played on my laptop which has an Intel i7 9750H (runs around 3.2GHz despite being able to hit 4GHz) that has 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM and an RTX 2080 (150w version that pulls a 2000MHz clock) on a 1080 display. For giggles, I'll also add I tried the game on my Intel 5960X which has a 4.2GHz OC with 32GB of DDR4 RAM and an RTX 3080 Ti, also on an Asus 4K/HDR display.

For in game settings, after watching Hardware Unboxed test everything, I went mostly with their original recommended quality settings, only turning down anything they set to ULTRA down to HIGH. Because of the difference in hardware and monitors, I used different scaling settings as the game doesn't allow you to set a full screen resolution and you are locked into whatever your monitor is set to.

SHADOWS: High
INDIRECT LIGHTING: High (HWUB suggested ULTRA)
REFLECTIONS: High
PARTICLE QUALITY: Medium
VOLUMETRIC LIGHTING: Medium (this has the most performance impact)
CROWD DENSITY: High
MOTION BLUR: Off
GTAO QUALITY: High
GRASS QUALITY: High (HWUB suggested ULTRA)
CONTACT SHADOWS: Medium
ENABLE VRS: Off (HWUB suggested ON)

I also disable Fim Grain and Depth of Field, but those are personal preferences and I don't think impact performance.

I used the DLSS 3.5 bridge mod (LukeFZ) in all instances. This gives a better picture than FRS which causes textures to blink/flash and a number of other issues. FRS just looks bad. The DLSS mod does create a soft, almost blurred image, but can be fixed by using Reshade and enabling CAS (contrast adaptive sharpening) and you end up with good image, which imo, looks sharper than native.

Allow me to start with performance as this is the biggest topic of Starfield. On my laptop, which is within Bethesda's recommended requirements, Running the game with 75% scaling, I hit around 40fps average, with highs around 45 to 50 and lows around 27fps. Nothing I did would break what feels like an FPS cap. Not low settings with 50 scaling, nothing.

On my i9 7900X desktop, I experienced a mostly 50~55fps experience with highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s. Scaling was set to about 67% for 1440, though for several days I played at 50% (1080) only to see very little performance gain. I chose the slightly higher scaling for a few fps. I mentioned I also tested my 5960X desktop, and despite having a CPU below minimum spec (5th gen, not 6th gen) it ran just about as smooth as my 7900X. This leads me to believe, based on my laptop, that CPU clock speed has a serious impact on what feels to be an fps cap.

Now, let me poke the color and shading of Starfield. IT ****ING SUCKS. It's an ugly looking game that feels like a radioactive wasteland area of Fallout. Clearly Todd Howard moonlights as The Joker, because this green gas shaded, toxic environment is a slimy, mud hole in space. Not even Yoda can argue this. I've never bothered to use Reshade for any game until now, because THIS game needs it. Needs it badly. The sky is green, the air is green, people are green, everything is ****ING GREEN. Be sure to use a Reshade like Quantum Reshade (and Natural LUTs) or the reshade by ScottyUS. Both make the game look absolutely amazing in terms of color. There's little performance loss with Quantum, and if you use Scotty's, be sure to disable the clarity.fx and FineSharp.fx which can have as much as a 12fps performance hit.

Graphically, the game looks like Fallout 4. Character's mouths move like a creepy sex doll, textures are nothing to be proud of in 2023. So, considering how poorly this game runs, I'm baffled as to what the actual **** is going. Todd Howard says we all need a better PC... I say Todd Howard needs to get ****ed and Bethesda needs to stop relying on the community to fix their ****.

But hey, let's dig into the game!

Starfield starts of quite slowly for the first couple of hours and trying to learn some new mechanics is a bit of a pain as nothing is explains and Bethesda's mechanics are kind of trash... Decorating homes in Skyrim is perhaps the worst, and that awful design hasn't changed in Starfield. The lock picking (DigiPicks) seems to have caught a lot of people off guard. My biggest issue with it, is that's painfully and needlessly time consuming. For streamers, this could easily bore your audience. Learning how to build ships (well, you actually have to modify a ship, you can't simply start from scratch) is something you'll end up doing completely on your own without an ounce of instruction. There's also Outpost building which has little instruction and no quest on making them, but quests that expect you to know how to do it.

Once you arrive in main city of New Atlantis, your freedom begins. You can continue to main quest, start faction story lines, or just run around and explore. Personally I rode the main story up until I felt it starting to come to a close. After which I dove into the factions.

The main story is decent, though I couldn't help comparing it to Mass Effect's beacons and kept making jokes that Reapers were going to come and that New Atlantis was the Citadel. It feels decently paced and as you go through it, you'll meet most of the main characters within the game and most of them are companions or romance options. They're also, hands down, the best ship/outpost crew mates within the game. More on the main quest later.

There are few faction options with Starfield... Ryujin which is basically a corporate espionage, manipulation, and sabotage story line and might conflict with those looking to play a good character. There is the Freestar Rangers faction which feels like the Browncoats of Firefly were ripped right out and placed into Starfield as wild west sheriffs. Then there's the UC Vanguard faction you'll be offered to join even as you play the early main story missions. The UC Vanguard breaks up into two separate parts, one in which you hunt Starfield's xenomorphs, and another where you infiltrate the Crimson Fleet, a gang of pirates in which you'll be doing pirate stuff. None of the factions felt satisfying in any way, but all of them offer some kind of extras.

About half way into Ryujin missions, you'll get a tier 4 perk and a stealth outfit that is supposed to reduce enemy detection. If you try to play any stealth in this game, good luck. An enemy can spot you slowly moving while crouching from across the galaxy and no amount of reduction helps. There's obviously credits to be earned and you'll get bonuses based on your mission performance. You also get access to the Ryujin quest board for optional side quests.

Freestar Rangers rewards you with a ship at the end. You'll get an outfit at the beginning and another at the end. You don't get the brown trench coat though and never finding one, I simply added one with the console command. Starting this faction, you also get access to the Freestar Rangers quest board.

The UC Vanguard offers, what I think is the best shield option for ships and you can purchase it in the ship building options for joining them. You'll collect some outfits along these missions. On the Terrormorph/Xenomorph line, you'll get to dig into some UC history and lore. On the pirate side, you'll gain access to smuggling quests and their own base of operations for buying and selling gear, ship parts, etc. I should add that WHILE this is active, ANY killing of Crimson Fleet NPCs, even if it's a random side quest, counts as crime and you'll earn murder and bounty stats against your character. They will not engage you though, so during this time, Crimson Fleet and Pirates will not be hostile unless attacked.

On the exploration side, there's a lot to get into... Lots of planets seem dull and lifeless. In a sense, this is quite realistic. There are certainly some that are outright filled with plants and animals, but it's uncommon. Most of the planets are there for resource farming anyways, so if you want to do science stuff and mod space suits, weapons, make food and meds, that's what this is all about. Places to farm resources.

Like any Bethesda game, it's heavy on inventory management and poorly executed. While there are a couple of places at The Lodge in New Atlantis where you can safely store all of your gear, NONE of it links to where you build and modify items. Thus you might need to lug around 100 times your carry weight from A to B, just to do a few things. It's absurdly stupid that there's no link between building spots and storage. The only storage that does link is your ship storage and that's limited. Once again, Bethesda is dumb.

Space combat is about as fun as I'd expect. As somebody who loved Wing Commander Prophecy back in the day, having this little extra thrown in welcome. It's a reminder I should go back and actually play Star Wars Squadrons. Dog fights in space! Ah, if only I could have Kara Thrace as a wing mate.

Speaking of ships, ship building is a bit confusing to learn, but once you figure it out, you can do all kinds of stuff. The biggest issue I ran into is where doors/pathways link while building bigger ships. You end up with a bizarre maze and no control over where things are. So you might build a big, beautiful ship, the best ship, but when you enter it, you'll find reality is about as ****ed up as Todd Howard's logic. Turn left, go up this ladder, take 2 rights, go down this ladder, make a U turn at the armory, go down the hall, up another ladder, take a left at the glitched NPC standing on the table, and FINALLY you found the cockpit. Why the **** was it not a straight line from where I entered?!? Todd Howard: "You need a better PC."

The immersion between traveling from system to system is flat. Can't even fly from Earth to the moon without having to access fast travel. There's no actual city map to see where you are in a place like New Atlantis, though it seems Bethesda is going to address this. The new O2/CO2 meter stuff makes crafting a slow moving pain the rear as you run out of oxygen and then start to actually die as you continue to move, and thus making the storage/building stuff worse. The in game menus kind of suck in my opinion, such as the buy/sell menus. Getting from one menu to another in general is tedious and some stuff makes no sense. Hold X when you want to dock with a ship or station, but when leaving if you hold X you board the ship/station, while HOLD Y is undock. Why the **** is it not hold X to dock or undock? What ever happened to things being linear and making sense?

After 176 hours (many hours also invested in performance testing) and streaming maybe 1/3 of that time on Twitch, I'm happy to be done with the game. I enjoyed the game, but it's not amazing or great. Back on the topic of the main story.... Small spoiler bit, you get special new armor with New Game+... And you get a new variant of that armor each NG+ up to 10 upgrades... So, Bethesda expects you to play the main story, at least 11 times. The entire time, I only ran into 3 bugs, but at least dozen crashes to the desktop. Also ran into some issues where the left analog stick would stop working for no particular reason. In my final hours, I had issues where the camera wouldn't move while zoomed with a weapon. Not even exiting the game resolved it, but it was resolved by increasing the player movement speed with the console command. WTF.

The first bug, I got glitched on a chair trying to pickup credits off a table. I couldn't move and was completely stuck. Fortunately... CONSOLE COMMANDS! I was with an NPC following me, and just used the console command to move myself to my follower. The second bug, an outpost quest got stuck and I was unable to link resources to it (YES, I had the intersteller landing pad) after some issue with linked resources caused the landing pad to stop working. Once again, console commands. The other was at the end of the game, after the credits, it kicked me to the main menu instead of New Game+... LOL WTF, I guess my PC isn't enough for for NG+. lolol. No, seriously, **** you, Todd Howard!

Is it game of the year? Not really, but I fully expect a GOTY Edition, Switch Edition, VR Edition, Enhanced Edition, Anniversary Edition, Skyrim DLC for Starfield, Starfield DLC for Skyrim, and people to name their children Starfield or (insert spoiler here).

Final thoughts... Like every Bethesda game before it, the mod community will fix it, patch it, make it better. Bethesda has a history of not caring about their games after release and this is something I've been aware of since Oblivion on PS3. To this day, they never fixed the Vampire cure bug on PS3, and it's the reason I don't trust Bethesda or their games on consoles.


R E C O M M E N D E D _ M O D S
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Starfield FSR2 Bridge - Replacing FSR2 with DLSS or XeSS
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/196

Notes: I didn't see any performance gains from DLSS. Went with this version as you can use Reshade without Steam Overlay issues that seem to impact the version from PureDark. The point isn't performance gains so much as it is image quality. FSR suffers a number of problems include flickering. This mod doesnt include a sharpening pass so you might want to also use Reshade for CAS sharpening.


** ALTERNATIVE **
Starfield Frame Generation - Replacing FSR2 with DLSS-G
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/761

Notes: Same modder as FSR Bridge, but now has a version that uses 3.0 and frame generation for 40 series cards and is free! No need to pay PureDark.


** OPTIONAL **

DLSS Indicator
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-dlss-indicator/

Notes: Windows registry tweak that shows you DLSS information on the bottom left of the screen. DLSS version, preset, and the resolution scaling in use. Useful to confirm the mod is installed correctly and the scaling being used.


** OPTIONAL **

CAS (Contrast Adaptive Sharpening) for DLSS Mod
https://reshade.me/

Notes: Download and install Reshade. Run the exe and select the Starfield.exe wherever you installed it. If you're not including the reshade listed below (or any) you can skip the preset and just install as default. Once installed and you run the game as normal you'll see an overlay about Reshade. You can skip the tutorial if you want. Press HOME to enter Reshade and find the [AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening] option. Tick the box to enable and in the window below you can select the level of sharpening. Default is 1.0.

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Starfield Performance Optimizations
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/104

Notes: Should help give you extra performance, but YYMV. Options for ultra, high, medium, and low. Basically tweaks some of the settings in the ini files to be a bit less demanding. Changes things such as shadow resolution, grass distance so don't expect miracles. Likely more helpful on weaker hardware while newer hardware simply won't care.

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Achievement Enabler
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/252

Notes: I haven't touched the console command, but this is a Bethesda game. Almost certainly at some point it will be necessary because something at some point will break. Using the console command either to un**** yourself or cheat or whatever you do in this single player game, have fun without getting **** blocked!

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Quantum Reshade
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/166

Notes: Started using this reshade in the final few days of playing. I found it to be as good as the now alternative I was recommending. Can be used with NaturaLUTs. Sky is blue, clouds are white, colors everywhere look great. Didn't see any performance impact.


** ALTERNATIVES **

OPTION 1:
Real Life STARFIELD Experience Reshade by Scottyus1
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/216

Notes: There are other Reshade options, this one just happened to stand out to me. Sky was blue, colors popped. Creates a superior looking experience. Modder included many pictures to compare the difference. Disable clarity.fx and finesharp.fx so there's no serious performance loss.


OPTION 2:
Neutral LUTs - No Color Filters
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323

Notes: Changes file stuff and and as a result from what I understand, shouldn't incur any performance loss. Not reshade, but should improve the look of the game based on the pictures the modder included. Can be used along with a reshade. I added this to my mods this morning. Not sure I notice a difference.

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Starfield FOV
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/99

Notes: Not important to me at all, but I've noted that many in the tech industry have mentioned the lack of an FOV option. So I'll add this here. I imagine this will make quite a number of people happy.


** ALTERNATIVE **

In-Game FOV Changer
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/302

Notes: Uses the in game console command to change the FOV. Unsure if this disables achievements by default, but the Achiviement Enabler would resolve this if it did.

[Nyxtus]

Throwing this one in here.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323

[SHADOWTHX]

i dont expect to pay £85 for a game then have to mod it before it works properly or looks good .

[Nyxtus]

Messaggio originale di SHADOWTHX:

i dont expect to pay £85 for a game then have to mod it before it works properly or looks good .

It's Bethesda. Not only is it Bethesda, this game needs mods more than any other game they've released - and it's not even close.

If this does well expect it to continue to TES6.

[Zapix]

Messaggio originale di SHADOWTHX:

i dont expect to pay £85 for a game then have to mod it before it works properly or looks good .

Sadly, this is how Bethesda games go. Unofficial Community patches that end up patching hundreds of issues Bethesda is too lazy to fix. Mods for realistic textures, mods for better color and lighting, mods making the UI more tolerable, mods for just about anything and everything. It's why I'll never buy a Bethesda game on a console. Between the lack of mods that fix stuff and the lack of console commands... I learned my lesson playing Oblivion on the PS3. Stupid never fixed cure for vampirism.

Thought there's truth in that the game releasing in this state is lame, but that's Bethesda. Their stuff is just broken and you either put up with it for the content the game is or go find something else to do. Fallout 3, Oblivion, Skyrim... Games I've easily dumped 200 to 400 hours into.

Also the modding community behind Bethesda games is... Legendary.

Also yeah...
I expect Starfield GOTY, Starfield VR, Starfield for Switch, Starfield Enhanced Edition, Starfield Anniversary, Starfield DLC for Skyrim, Skyrim DLC for Starfield....

Starfield the t-shirt, Starfield the coloring book, Starfield the lunchbox, Starfield the breakfast cereal....

[kdodds]

Messaggio originale di SHADOWTHX:

i dont expect to pay £85 for a game then have to mod it before it works properly or looks good .

Good, you don't have to.

[GrandTickler]

none of them improved my performance at all btw

[Blackwolfe]

Compact inventory UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/185

Smooth UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/350

Iconsortingtags: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/312

Cleanfield: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/88

(also using the mod Nyxtus posted)

[Zapix]

Messaggio originale di GrandTickler:

none of them improved my performance at all btw

The DLSS won't improve the performance unless you have a 40 series card and use frame generation, but DLSS is better than FSR in terms of picture quality. Note that it was also just updated to change the DLSS presets. Quality, Balanced, Performance, Ultra Performance.

You can use a small regedit tweak to even see that DLSS is active and working in games. https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-dlss-indicator/

The DLSS mod I listed doesn't do sharpening (the image will look a little soft) so users can install and use Reshade (without overlay conflicts causing crashing) and use the CAS function in that for sharpening. I found a setting of 2.0 looked reasonable, but that's a personal preference.

The ini file didn't seem to do anything on my 3080 Ti with a 4K monitor, but I did go from 45fps to 50fps on my laptop that has a 2080 with 1080 display. Helpful considering the reshade does have a 1 to 10fps hit depending on the scene you're looking at. From the replies on Nexus, seems to do more for lower end hardware. The changes made are things like shadow resolution and grass distance. So it's also dependent on the scene, so this makes sense that my 2080 was aided while my 3080 Ti couldn't give a ****.

Depending on your hardware, scaling may or may not help. It makes a difference with my desktop, but my laptop is heavily CPU bound so breaking 45fps in New Atlantis is basically impossible and running the game without scaling runs just as good as it does with. Also while reshade has a 10fps hit on my desktop, it has no impact on my laptop running. Makes no sense!

JayzTwoCents was streaming the other night on his computer at home has a 4090, but also a 4K monitor. It dropped to the high 60s and low 70s in New Atlantis. That is how poorly this game is running. Skip to 1 hour and 5 minutes into the video to see him in New Atlantis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCYusSyIFMU&t

You can watch this video from Hardware Unboxed that goes through each setting to show you their own optimal settings if you want. Not very much impact with the RTX 2080 or my 3080 Ti. The second video shows how the game is very CPU bound. I agree. I had turned my OC on my i9 7900X to play CyberPunk, but turned it back on while testing Starfield. It made difference. Can't OC my laptop though, so I'm fairly limited. Still better than the console experience though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40iwgUjBmoA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqFs1Auxo8Y

If you've got a 4090, my guess is you've got a 4K monitor and so you'll see a 60fps experience unless you lower your monitor to 1440 or 1080. If you have a 3080/3090 you'll see that 60fps experience at 1440 or 1080. All of this pretty much lines up with what I had already learned between my 3080 Ti desktop and my 2080 laptop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JDbrWmlqMw

[Zapix]

Updated the original post with a full review (too long for Steam's review system) and updated the mod recommendations. Note, that I'm not recommending anything that CHANGES gameplay, menus, etc. DLSS, reshade so the game doesn't look like radioactive slime, and an FOV slider.

Also noting that Bethesda has said they'll be adding DLSS and an FOV slider, so in time, only the reshade will matter.

[Rich]

Quite the garbage review. Missed out on many key points. I rate your review 1/10