I actually thought the game was too short, only being drawn out by the side quests. Anyway, I really loved the Idris Elba DLC. Lots of action, lots of intrigue. Also, the graphics are amazing, especially from the penthouse of the Black Sapphire.
That is how I felt about Starfield - because I skipped so many side quests that were, frankly, akin to grinding to level up in other RPGs to me.
With Night City, though, for some odd reason - the whole mix of Cyberpunk, post-modern and post-apocalyptic feel to the game and the city itself kept me wide eyed, and in fact, still grabs my attention.
I will say, though, that a huge part of my continued playthroughs is also due to the fact that my RTX 3080 Ti, which I got in Feb 2022, helped immensely, as I could turn on a lot of the features that my 970 was too limited to make use of, and it made the game that much more ... beautiful.
I've got well over that having played the series at least 4 times to include Mass Effect Legendary which contains all 3 games + all the DLC. Mass Effect is my favorite RPG game as I just love its story. Also played Mass Effect Andromeda, which takes place during the Reaper attack. Here the game is about a mass exodus to find a new solar system free of the Reapers and the preservation of organic life. Completely new characters not related to those in M.E.
No. I meant ME3 alone. I have all three, and Andromeda, *and* MELE, *and* all the DLCs also. Literally, though, if I fire up the original ME3, that game by itself (including the DLCs and multiplayer) I have logged in 1100 hours into. If I include all the chapters, I'll have probably well over double that (another reason for me to go looking in my EA app to see if the hours logged are still there, carried over from the Origin app).
Andromeda is the one I've played the least, IIRC, with good reason, especially with folks cheating too easily it its multiplayer implementation. But I played ME and ME 2 with full plays throughs at least 2 or 3 times each, and ME3 full play through at least 5 times (One for each build type - I was trying to get through the 6th build, the hybrid bio and tech (I think?) specialist, I forgot what it was called now - was the one that gave me the most fits, as it really felt like it was a nerfed build.
In ME (2? I think it was, but might have been 3) I was trying to see just how vertical my Mako could go to get out of tricky situations on planets - visually, the most vertical I got was pretty close to 90 degrees vertical, lol, but that speed boost had to be very well timed to be effective (just like in real life - too soon and you lose the effect before cresting the ridge, too late and you've already lost forward momentum). It's crazy things like this when exploring that kept me engaged
and entertained lol.
I'm finding that out. I feel into a quest early in the game (level 9) and to progress it, it's recommended I be at least level 35!
The game is overwhelming with the sheer amount of stuff you can do with varying storylines.
You don't know just how true that is - and just how much *more* overwhelming it's gonna get.
I think I remember that sort of scenario - early on quest that you can literally do nothing about for hours and hours of gameplay time. There are a couple, but one of them was that one you have run into, I *think* it's the longest delay of all the quests, so you're safe from finding anything worse there.
But there may be another one that needs a 15+ level delay. I'll have to go back and look.
To me, though, the difference is that, in Starfield, some of those storylines are utter trash, either the storylines themselves or the way the dialog is written (and sometimes both) feel too ... wooden. I love a lot of the aspects of it, and some of the storylines are superb, but some of them are, simply put,
less than stellar.
Cyberpunk, OTOH, not only have (somewhat) improved the storyline arcs they already had, they massively improved it with the Phantom Liberty DLC, taking it to a whole new level. I think that part of this is the fact that there are some pretty recognizable voices in the entire game, from Silverhand and Reed to V (male) and Takemura, whereas there are not a lot of recognizable voices in Starfield, which is not to say the voicing of characters was bad in Starfield - just not nearly as recognizable. Part of it, though, is the fact that this is an established 'universe' because of Pondsmith's original tabletop game, whereas Starfield is, for all intents and purposes, new, And, finally, part o it is that in Cyberpunk, your V always voices dialog choices, instead of being old style RPG select dialog as an 'action' - one of the things I really do not like in this day and age. Though, considering that the game was thought to have been in development since 2015, it makes a lot more sense.
Still, though, it's an open universe,
per se, and as long as you pay the bills, you can be out there for a long, long time without getting a lot done in terms of the main storyline lol.
