The first game plays so much better than the 2nd! Never finished the 2nd game, now that I think about it.
Another thing that I have a (possibly fake) memory from the 1st game is, near the start, with those carnivorous egg-looking-plants and farting peaches, I remember once managing to get one of those plants to go up right as the peach farted, which triggered a small event and turned the plant into a mini thing-item to collect. Maybe it was only in the demo and scrapped for the full game?
Right now, it’s sitting at #153 on steam charts. It’s still averaging some 6-7k players with peaks of 10k, so yes, people are playing. Less than half of what Skyrim is pulling and roughly half of what FO4 was pulling before the show premiered.
Not to mention that like 99% of Starfield depends on any sort of instant communication not existing. I don’t even mean interplanetary, FTL communication, even cell phones and walkie talkies are completely missing from the game. I think the only time a character speaks to you via radio while you’re on foot, is during that “mandatory stealth mission” in Neon with billionaire idiot.
Oh, a significant portion of the stories also rely on portable cameras not being a thing. You know, the thing that every cell phone has had for well over 10 years now? That went completely missing 200 years in the future. Photographs? Video recordings? You speak funny, spaceman.
My biggest gripe with the quests within Starfield is that everything feels absolutely pointless, every story, every quest, is completely isolated from everything else. I’ve never played a game that gave me such a strong feeling of “you’re achieving absolutely nothing”
Seriously, what is there to explore at all, in the first place? It’s always an uneventful time-wasting jog to whatever point of interest you want to go. When said PoI is a dungeon (building with enemies to kill and loot), you can tell from the outside how the inside will be, 100% of the time. No unique loot, no unique quests, no unique anything
Scanning flora and fauna? What for? The slimmest exp gain, a “completed” thingy item that you can sell, it’s one of the saddest attempts at padding. Besides, whatever drops you could get from them, you can buy straight from vendors.
Earth Defense Force. You can probably get 4.1 on a sale really cheap and that could be a decent introduction to the series as a whole, it also has the best overall story tone in my opinion, made of 110% grade B cheese
If you two enjoy it and don’t feel burnt out, you can later get EDF 5, which has several QoL updates compared to 4.1, but tends to have a higher price.