Liked the main story well enough. Not as good as Morrowind but on par with FO3/4 and Skyrim which I grade as mediocre. Starfield does have some of my most enjoyed faction quests though.

Biggest failings to me were the repetitive POIs and half finished sub systems that while functional could have been so much better. I’m still happy with my purchase and see myself playing again over the coming years but it’s understandable why so many people walked away from it.

My best friend of 15 years told me, when I had a rough patch, that he’s there for me just reach out but unless I initiate he would treat any interaction as just a normal day.

Throughout the rough patch I choose not to speak of it and just treated our hang outs as a chance to get away. He choose to support me in the only way he knew how and the only way he was comfortable with. I was not comfortable and didn’t know how to ask for more support. It’s about 7 years from then and my parents still don’t know, I just don’t know how to ask for and engage with emotional support. I am completely weirded out by the concept of talking about my emotions and somebody else caring, it gives me a high level of anxiety.

TLDR: small male friend groups with limited experience providing or receiving emotional support are unlikely to provide explicit emotional support and there’s a good chance if you’re a man who needs it you don’t know how to ask

I’m 60 hours in and haven’t touched the outpost, ship building, or equipment modding. Main quest and 2 faction side quests completed. I’ve enjoyed my time and bought the game with the expectation that it would be FO4 with some things improved some things worse and a new setting.

There are definitely failings and it’s not a 10/10 game but for a lot of people it’s a great game. The proc gen system needs more variety but that can be improved through updates and mods. If you prefer handcrafted content follow the quests and you’ll see minimal repeats of the POIs. I don’t regret my purchase one bit and would be fine if no DLC, mods, or updates happen even though I prefer they do. End of the day make your own decision based on what you like just realize it’s not a dumpster fire and not the perfect game that everyone should run out and play.

You have to be a bit of a masochist to love Paradox which might be why I love Dwarf Fortress too.

I ran medium to high with 2080 super, 32 gigs of ram, and a ryzen 3600. Frames stayed above 60 in most cases drops in the 40s happened in populated areas.

It took me about 40 hours of jumping between playing, videos, and guides before I was functional at CK2 but I loved that game. I’ve got over 1000 hours in CK2/3 and Stellaris. As much as I love them I can easily see why a lot of people hate Paradox grand strategy games.