How did you feel about Skyrim and Fallout 4? Because it’s the same game, but in space.

I would give it a B. The sheer size of the game is impressive (I completed 200 plot quests), and several of the quests, or at least the ideas contained within, are memorable—particularly some of the side quests. The ship builder is also a highlight, though I wish Bethesda would fix their janky camera issues. And the FPS gun mechanics are better than in their previous games.

But they also tried way too hard to make this a game people would want to play endlessly in new game plus, and there’s just not enough variety or real consequences to justify that. Once you play through it, that’s basically it. Sure, you could support this faction over that faction, but it doesn’t actually make any material difference in the game until what is effectively an ending clip show. They might have 120 star systems and thousands of worlds to land on, but one can only stand so much same-y autogenerated content. This is why I don’t play looter shooters.

And for a game about space travel, they really made actually traveling in space pretty unimportant via fast travel. Many of the systems, like outpost building, don’t really have a point, and the companions, while much better realized than Skyrim, are still not quite at the Mass Effect level. Don’t get me started on how the characters don’t seem to be situationally aware or adjust their tone or responses based on the world. There are only so many stop-everything heart-to-heart chats I can have during a life-or-death firefight.

But like I said, overall there’s enough there that I found worthwhile. Most people won’t spend as long on it as I did, but I think it’s a pleasant way to spend 50-150 hours.