Just starting his vid, the fact he spent several weeks doing this I'll respect that, it's all I played since the early access release for it and I only deleted it the other day to keep myself from playing more, 1000/1000 it on Series X|S, so, he put time and I'll respect that. Most reviewers rushed their reviews anyways and this game takes time.
I'll say I agree this game has flaws that need fixing. Just on the Xbox consoles the game needs major stability and performance improvements.
Nonetheless, I still had lots of fun with what is there, this game can be a lot better but it's improvable. I have to assume too he had lot of fun playing it or he'd of not taken several weeks to finish his review, and that should say a lot by itself.
Perhaps some of the issues he points out with PC behavior in dialog is PC specific, I didn't have these on consoles except something like it when my companion chimes in between speaking with an NPC, then it might be 50/50
I'm actually surprised after weeks he'd complain about encumbered. Don't get me wrong, in any TES or Fallout game I've always hit these while getting adjusted while learning to focus on what I should or shouldn't bother to pick up, because that's always just been an aspect in their games, and definitely less burdensome because you can actually move, and it isn't even really a big burden on health and stamina unless you're carrying my entire 5000+ unit cargo of resources back to the Lodge to stash where it instantly depletes stamina and drops but even then not worried it's a safe place and I have health regen armor upgrade so no consumables needed... surprised me someone playing several weeks gripes about it, encumbered isn't a burden as people make it out to be and highly manageable, and more an early learning issue and remedied with looting discipline, keeping a lean profile with one set of effective upgraded armor and one or two well rounded weapons. He doesn't even realize you can fast travel while encumbered, just not from outside the ship, get in the ship, issue eliminated.
NPC money complaints, again, feel like he's stretching this. Yes, they are limited yet I found money was never an issue for me this while game. I keep my cargo on ship for stuff to sell which makes selling easy because you can just sell straight from ship inventory. If I came across vendor I'd just sell from ship and if I came across another same thing. I don't have to weigh myself down or worry about carrying. I'm starting to see his whining as he just sucks at playing the game but that's me. He even complains about doing the wait thing to refresh vendor cash but again, I was aware you can do this but thought it too burdensome to even care to do because it's simply not needed, I don't know why people are so strapped for cash in this game, again, I think he sucks at playing it. Most times I sell it's not even for money just to get rid of stuff, so rather than worry about getting cash for everything, I buy all their ammo and crafting resources to get rid of the weapons stash I have on ship then for dump crafting resources off at my lodge locker for later to wither upgrade weapons and gear or do research or for later outpost development. Again, his complaining is indicative of a fundamental problem with him adapting to the game design. If he wants to sell, go to a major city like Neon there's numerous shops in strip with around 5000 vendor credits and every city has trade authority with 11000 credits. So many stretches of missions I just stopped looting guns and only picked up weightless stuff like credits and ammo digipicks and that's enough when I'm carrying over 3 million credits and got nothing I wanna spend it on because my Class A is top notch and figured out best armor and weapon combos I need not bother with anything else and borderline OP anyways focus on story development you 40+ year old noob acting like you never played a Bethesda game he's starting to piss me off now.
Now he's screaming about traveling system. I mean, the game pretty much gated between planetside travel, planet/moon orbits, and in system fast travel between bodies, and inter-system grav drive jumps, and that's clear early on. But, screaming about it like he's fighting the game is grasping at straws ridiculous at this point, he's just putting on a show at this point. I'd agree though the menu UI could be more intuitive in this respect, but screaming, grow up Joe, you're just being a whiney lil bitch now.
He then complains about the non-immersive aspect of fast travel which okay you will get a load screen there if you go the load screen fast travel route, because it's just faster than taking an immersive route. But if you wanna experience the transition aspect of travel, get in your ship, lift off planetside rather than fast travel to see it lift off transition and launch into space, if your destination is selected again, don't fast travel, select the way point while in space to set a target initiate grav drives, power grav drives, wait for the charge up, warp screen kicks in, now while in destination orbit, select landing zone and watch it land. And if you wanna select a planet moon while in orbit in visual range, you can do that without menus by bringing up the scan overlay. I swear he either sucks at this game or fabricating excuses to complain. You don't even have to go through multiple map menus when in orbit just point ship at planet and hit X (or whatever PC input) you're already selecting landing zones. I swear he's gotta just be real bad at this. I will say, this game doesn't explain a lot or if it does not in ways to remember, but there's a well indexed HELP to archive the how to parts, very helpful. But this is all stuff he should have worked out by now through sheer intuition, several weeks in.
There's so many videos out there by people who love this game and they do acknowledge those hard to understand subtleties in the game but try to explain stuff to save people the headache so they can just enjoy it. I didn't learn a whole lot mainly just found people saying stuff I figured out myself but one useful tip saved me a headache was how within a certain 250meters of your ship you can go to menu-ship his X for cargo and move inemventoey between ship and cargo and vice versa saved me loads of time and made looting way easier. Little things add up. And sometimes games need a social dynamic for users to get most out of it, been that way ever since playing games on NES you fo to friends homes after school they show you cool tricks and you show them cool tricks you learn in games you share that knowledge. And when I first got into Morrowind on OG Xbox same deal, my friends and I would share that in game knowledge to help each other out to enjoy the game more. Perhaps Joe needs to watch some YT videos or maybe make his own around idea of helping people out and not scaring them to death. This guy is turning into genuine whiney grown ass baby man-Karen someone should get him a headbob wig he can wear when he makes his videos.
25/64 minutes in his fit of Tourette's seemed to subside, he's complaining about loading screens, he's already acknowledged this is dated Bethesda engine so I mean bearing a dead horse but at least he's doing so in a relatively more mature and objective fashion by comparison. Perhaps he isn't utterly helpless after all. And indeed on planetside boundaries, hit those, wasn't angry because yeah this is dated engine, the game obviously struggles just to do what it does. It was only ever an obstacle exploring before I figured out exploring which isn't exploring to explore, mainly you're either exploring to survey planets, find resource deposits to check those boxes, find planetary features (like meteor impact sites, signs of old ocean life, maybe a notable thermo-vent microbial colony, etc etc, and of course surveying any life forms or plants and such until you complete the survey. This doesn't require exceeding boundaries of observable area. Most times your survey completion percentage indicates your progress in the biome so if say you are In a volcanic region it's 100% but total survey is 80%, find the biomes from planetary map that shows the incomplete biomes. And perhaps a good part of exploration is partially survey, there's no real point except to sell more. Valuable survey data or for later outpost development for setting up animal facilities for animal resource harvesting or botany but I mean, more a novelty than practical, means wasting valuable skill points IMO. Probably more pragmatic exploration is finding an outpost sweet spot if you wanna find a spot to get several resources from but even that can suck up time. It's easier just to target a specific outpost for a specific resource, save yourself all that extra hassle. But, I know the game, Joe clearly doesn't. He's demonstrated I high degree of ineptitude at this point but I'll go on wirh video... oh wait.
Earlier point he touched on back when wailing about waiting in the chair to progress time to sell his bloated inventory to a single vendor with limited cash... he called that rhe game design to suck up time. That was entirely his doing and anybody not wanting to waste their time wouldn't do it. I was going to actually say game wasting time it'd be the board missions and not that they aren't rewarding, many are fun, money and loot to be made, combat opportunities to kill something to mix it up, either planetside, at a space station, or even taking out pirates or spacers, or perhaps rescuing hostages. Some are easy XP and money like delivering supplies or transporting workers to another planet. Sometimes I don't have to but the planetside landscape is a nice I get out and walk with them the 400-500M just to soak up the sites and create my own immersion. But, easy money for a guy who gripes about waiting around for small cash, he needs to weigh the pros and cons of how he invests his time. They can be fun to mix it up, get money and XP but they suck up time and after a while it is like I realize I haven't made a dent in main story or my faction quests or any other quests, I should get on that. But Joe sitting in a chair to progress in game time give vendor more cash to sell items to them for, the dude is an utter tool.
30/64 into video he's still on exploration, but tame. I still don't think he understands exploring is more limited to somewhere just to stick an outpost, or survey, but not much more. You're going to be disappointed if you expect more from that. And I'm fine with the simplicity, one less thing to suck up more time with tedious tasks. For a guy I remember griped about No Man's Sky constant resource harvesting Starfield is streamlined. Planets have locations for set missions, and from random mission boards, or just stumble across pirate or mercenary controlled abandoned facilities. Here I feel exploration is really finding abandoned facilities because there's always a couple skill magazines in them with permanent perk increases so it's still a loot reward endeavor. But oh my gosh, he said he wished for some No Man's Sky, a game by far one of the worse designs for tedious burdening design in every way. I'm glad planets aren't all covered with life, some are, they are a pain to survey. The simpler ones are just simple and I prefer it that way myself. But you're not going to aww at what you find like a national geographic channel, it's more like you are in a level 75 system and you find an animal that makes you awestruck because you realize they're a source of XP farming and you go to town making them extinct for a quick level up a few times quick and your happy because you just unlocked much needed skill perks you been itching to unlock, that's rewarding exploration in this game, Joe wouldn't know because I think he's drawn to play game in ways that make him angry.
It was painful watching him gripe about map because I had no idea what he was complaining about. Major cities are intimidating at first, but learning layout wasn't a monumental task, and there's not many big cities. Map system shows landmarks, you can fast travel to them. Easy to understand. Orbit maps market landing zones or can just pick one not already charted. Surface maps indicate landmarks. Your watch has a compass. Your scanner displays landmarks and you can even fast travel from it. More I feel Joe in several weeks with the game if he's screaming about it then he failed to grasp some basic fundamentals of this game.
42/64, Joe is actually spot on with Main quest and faction and side quests. Main quests were dull and repetitive though there were some memorable sections. I found the return to NASA mission was cool plot-wise and the moon base mission where there was seemingly two bad outcomes but if you figure it out actually there's a happy ending that felt rewarding. I actually didn't mind mind simplicity of main quests in end though because I had sucked dry all the meaningful side content before I got to that part in the end and honestly I welcomed the expediency for much of that and concluding the main stuff actually excited me to get to the games NG+... where I stopped right there. Perfect point to hang my hat with game and wait for updates, either fixes or more content. But yeah, I actually enjoyed side and faction quests, he not so much. But there were some memorable random encounter quests. He mentioned some random quests I too really liked.
He's spot on about becoming too OP and here I agree too. The game's missions and planetary zones have fixed enemy levels and really the game needs to scale enemy levels to the player. This isn't just to keep game interesting it needs to be done to scale XP and money rewards so the game doesn't become a grind in effort to max out character without having to cleverly find XP exploits and waste time doing some outpost XP grind at the workbench or resorting to grinding alien life on planets for XP. Mission board and pirate battle XP is often next to nothing at higher levels unless you find high level enemies then XP rewards increase. Keep the player on task just playing the game and allow it to feel balanced for challenge. This is fortunately something I hope they can fix. Perhaps next time I'll fo melee build for challenge until they do that.
He seems to love the gameplay aspect, boarding and stealing ships, fun, funplay is fun, weapon variety food, at least he enjoys all that or there wouldn't be much else to enjoy honestly.
His enemy AI issues, again here that's an issue I wonder if more prevalent on PC, or maybe an effect of certain starborn powers, or certain effects of panic with ammo types and certain weapon perks (i think this could be case and he doesn't realize it), I didn't have issues myself, except annoying friendly NPC AI blocking the hallways of my ship, but not the won't fight enemies he seems to have to contend with. But back to earlier criticism about becoming too OP, if AI weren't an issue, the OP part will still make AI feel broken and they have to fix it and again that means scaling enemies to player.
He claims you can sleep in combat under fire, again, perhaps a PC quirk, they wouldn't let me do this on consoles if enemy aware or in combat or even too close, but I could be halfway into clearing a hostile facility but with enough distance and lack of enemy awareness it was doable, not sure under fire though but again maybe a PC quirk.
He enjoyed ship combat which is serviceable and honestly I was just glad I noticed warnings not to ignore it early because challenge does go up and it would have sucked to be unprepared. Took a while to get a handle on it and where I could find certain parts from certain manufacturers from certain cities and such, but once I understood I made a ship that suited my need and I was happy. His idea of sharing build designs, couldn't hurt, there are videos of people explaining that stuff.
He liked what outposts offered but didn't think it was as robust as Fallout 4. I am actually relieved because what I remember of Fallout 4 was no matter what my outposts got raided all the time and it was pain in the ass. These get raided too here and there but mostly just hinder resource extraction or power but few and far between overall, so I am glad not as bad.
Suits criticism... well, could use more variety, choice is balance of style, overall protection, weigh considerations, hazard protection. You gotta find a compromise there but once you go OP you can settle on style. But what bugs me more is you keep your space suit on all the time unless on foot in major breathable city areas. It doesn't auto take it off simply in breathable environment but hopefully they fix it. Clothes could use more variety, NPCs wear clothes that are never an acquirable item so sure there's lots there they can update because the assets are already there.
He mentioned traveling companions, I rarely switched these up because I just never wanted to adjust their gear constantly, and had a primary with spexial crafter armor and weapons and they never let me down, and though I didn't hate them I didn't care enough to know more and do companion quests. If they had benefit to add to my crew for bonuses they came on ship but that's it. However, I noticed each has certain unique perspectives based on their backstories so perhaps, this has yet to be explored by me, perhaps I am interested on future playthroughs having certain ones tag along for certain missions just to see if any special context they add to the mission and my dialog with NPCs on them where certain character chime in on things or give special dialog options. For instance, would Amelia Earhart clone offer any interesting insights on the visit NASA base mission, any interesting side commentaryas we explore. Or what if I rescue Genghis Khan clone and have him pal around with me (if that's an option) when I do the Crimson Fleet Missions, and perhaps if I choose to side with Crimson Fleet instead of SysDef. I might not really care to get to know crews deeply and fulfill companion quests but these special insights might be worth taking better interest in them on future playthroughs.
Romantic partners, or for me the Sarah Morgan who I let die by accident, well, funny once the marriage happens goes total whore on me, every time I sleep she says something like "Perhaps next time we try that without the jetpacks", and you get these flirt opportunities wirh the most cheesy lines but it melts her heart and it almost feels too easy. Or I'll talk to her to swap inventory and and rhen back out and in a horney vkice she says "I love rhese chats, you know how to make a woman feel special." Sleeping is always amusing because partner will wake up next to you but they're not always in bed right away, they're in process of phasing into the bed but then they hang-up when the game autosaves and it looks weird for few seconds because they're not where rhey are supposed to be, every time. He's right though they will complain a lot, they complain about you carrying too much loot (not that I care I tune it out). They complain about you stealing. I avoided killing innocents so wasn't an issue and made moral choices, sometimes they get pissy by your dialog options but I never suffered an adverse relationship moment. But one thing that never happened, to their sketch, I never had one get pissy for trying to squeeze extra cash from an NPC for doing a favor. There were plenty of moral vs money options I always went moral, perhaps those are those issues there, but those "I could use a favor missions" they never gave a crap if I bilked the people in need. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be literally interpreted that way, but he's right, in end it's constant nagging.
Thank God, I'm done. Conclusions: Angry Joe's score is fair. I largely agree, game is lot of fun, but lots of things need fixing, or if not then at least pointing out. I found a good bit of his complaining though is stuff I expect people should intuitively figure out and he appeared to have never figured it out. And yeah, that could make it less fun not to understand those little things that help. Then again perhaps a symptom of a game that need to be able to explains things better, have better menu UI, and introduce gamers to those features in ways to better remember.
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