The three words that best describe this title are as follows... Sanitized, soulless & boring. BGS described this game as having "unparalleled freedom of exploration". Nothing could be further from the truth. But I'll get straight to the point and first, let me tell you, this game doesn't even have the classic Bethesda jank to save it this time.

There Is No Space Exploration
None. Every cluster is scarily close to mass effect which was released back in 2007. You will go to a cluster, select a specific planet, fast travel there, and then you are confined into a small box around the planets atmosphere. That's it. So whatever this "unparalleled exploration" is, it's certainly not referring to anything space related... In a space game.

Ship Combat Is As Basic As It Gets
Some people might enjoy this aspect of the game, but it gets old fast. You fast travel to a planet, get attacked by some pirates, blow up their ships and that's it. It isn't any different than a dog fight you might have in a war game. It will get old quick and those that think its innovative should play indie games like Empyrion. That game has a steep learning curve and a terrible quest system but the game play, limited as it can be at times, is miles ahead of this.

As for boarding ships, this has nothing to it either and you'll quickly stop doing it. You go in, take loot and leave. Or steal the ship, which will never be better than anything you can buy, and leave... You'll be lucky if doing any of this will take you longer than four minutes because there isn't any substance or process to it at all. It's all loading screens with brain dead AI.

Planets Are Barren Wastelands
This one is huge. Because without handcrafted POIS, Bethesda has stripped one of the fundamental aspects that has kept their games afloat. Yes, the modding community has been breaking their back carrying this company to success for years, but lets not pretend vanilla Skyrim didn't have its fair share of unique POIS that were always fun to replay. This game? None of it.

The planets are either completely barren with nothing but rocks and repeating "anomalies" to scan, or they have cookie cutter inconsequential aliens plopped about with such carelessness that they'll frequently clip through the terrain. The POIS themselves are so few and so copy and paste that you'll eventually memorize where every bit of static loot is before long. I know which lockers have digipicks and money chits and then some.

Even the notes and keys are in the same place, with the same notes on the same computers popping up multiple times at different places in my case and worse still, you will spend, frequently, and upwards of ten to fifteen minutes WALKING from place to place. There are no vehicles in this game and wait til we get to the weight system because oh boy.

Look, there's nothing wrong with procedural generation, but you need have more than twelve handcrafted POIS for the system to choose from before it starts looping, and more over, you can't use procedural generation as the core of your game design. That's like a writer using ChatGPT to write a book he wants to publish. A smaller amount of planets, maybe twenty or thirty, that are hand crafted with well done quest, will keep players occupied for tens of hours in a single system if not on a single planet... That will go much further to simulating the vastness of space than ten thousand boring and lifeless planets will.

The General Game play Loop Is Lifeless & Gore Has Been Removed
Like I said at the offset, this game is sanitized. It is safe, boring and doesn't opt to do anything controversial or bring up any hard moral, political or "real" topics whatsoever. Nothing. A game that plays it this safe is a game that doesn't make a lasting impression because it doesn't dare to try to say anything or get you to think about anything.

Even the best quest in this game all amount to little more than basic fetch quest. But this time there's no environmental story telling to make those interesting because the game is all procedurally generated. There's no miscellaneous quest to find and get lost in and distracted by for the same reason. There's no unique things to explore and see because it's all been there done that. So what's left? Nothing. That's what.

Why did they remove the gore? It's been a staple of BGS from day one. Why do they now treat players like children? There is one quest where you need to follow tracks... But instead of letting you figure things out for yourself, they plop giant quest markers over the foot prints and make you walk up, look down and click on them just to make sure baby doesn't get lost. Not even when I was playing games at eight years old did I need that level of hand holding whatsoever. Not even the blotchy nudity exist in the game because the loot has been dumbed down to the point that NPCS don't actually carry what they wear.

It's all pacified garbage with NPCS that have less personality and expression than in play station games like Kings field, which is a game where the NPCS didn't even have facial features! Maybe BGS should do that next time to save themselves from the embarrassment of their buggy and outdated engine.

The Weight & Skill System Is Miserable
You know, I don't often complain about something like a weight system or skills, but it is so obvious that they were padding this game out and went for quantity over quality for the later. Basic things like a jet pack, ship targeting and otherwise are locked behind skills and given the aforementioned soulless planets and awful quest, the grind to get said skills, which is exponentially greater than any BGS I've ever played, will quickly drive you to youtube looking for ways to speed it up or bypass it altogether. I know that's what I did and I got the screenshots to prove it.

Todd Howard in particular can't seem to get his story straight.

On the one hand he says it's a game about exploration, on the other, he tells you to upgrade your PC and stop looting. So what does he want us to do exactly? Stare at his google images space backdrop and walk around admiring the nothing on all the planets? Neil Armstrong was excited about being on the moon because he was actually THERE. But guess what? Empty sandboxes in video games are not only not fun, they're called alphas.

To that end, there are dozens and dozens of resources in this game that you need if you want to do anything, but you can't pick any of them up. The resources typically weigh near close to half a pound each and unless you get lucky and find a space suit that reduces resource carry weight or decide to invest heavily into weight related perks, which you should, you will quickly find yourself ignoring the vast majority of this games loot system. All you will pick up is the more unique parts in the boring procedurally generated POIS while ignoring the gathering all together.

But why not take it a step further and just ignore all the loot save the guns anyway? The NPCS are so brain dead that you don't need any of the damage perks whatsoever much less a kitted out weapon or space suit. Their idea of strong AI is exactly what you'd expect. Time consuming bullet sponges that still can't navigate worth a damn even with their Jet packs. Meanwhile, the traders don't have enough money to buy more than a handful of guns unless you want to sit around for in-game days waiting for them to restock. No way to invest in them either so don't get excited. But, since you can so easily empty their credits, this also means you can buy all of the resources you'll ever need just in case you still wanna craft for some reason anyway!

So great, what we're left with is a game that is nothing short of a regression in every conceivable way. That's the problem. I could go on but steam said no. Get it on a sale if you must, and modders? You guys deserve better.