I pretty much agree with everything you said, except the combat.

I really enjoy the combat in Starfield. I was really impressed by how fluid the shooting is and how fun some of the environments are to fight in.

But overall, I agree. Starfield is an underwhelming disappointment.

Totally agree! I've pumped a good amount of time into Starfield and the only reason why was because of the gameplay.

I really enjoy the combat, the boost packs and the low/no gravity parts of the game. They are really, genuinely fun!

But absolutely everything in the game's world, story and lore is just underwhelming.

Nothing matters in the game. Every time there's a glimmer of a good idea, it fails to deliver.

One example: quite early in my first playthrough, I landed on a planet and ran into a crew who were building something. One of the crew had run off and they asked you to find him.

On my way to search for him, the ground started shaking really violently. It did this every few minutes.

My mind started racing. I was thinking that the planet was going to explode or something and I imagined myself trying to save this missing worker and get him to a ship to evacuate to safety. Or at least have the ground start cracking around me causing damage.

... But no. The mission was basically a fetch-quest. The crew member returned with barely a thank you. And the planet continued to shake every few minutes.

It was after several hours more that I discovered that multiple planets had this tremor/quake and it didn't mean anything.

And also, even more planets had that same sodding crew on them with a missing member to go find.

Such a wasted opportunity and idea to actually do something exciting. Like imagine a planet in the game that did get destroyed and you had to finish some missions, or try to escape before it happened? That would have been cool!

But basically every mission I did, every POI encountered ended up being lacklustre and underwhelming.

... But I do still enjoy the combat. So I guess that's something.

Though the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games didn't need modders to 'fix' them.

Modders improved some areas, but mostly just added some cool, fun new gameplay elements and features. They enhanced the games. But the games were/are great on their own.

Starfield's modders are basically having to fix things that just didn't work well in the base game.

Like currency, POIs being identical, actual transport on planets, making the follower AI actually work well (so they don't get lost and suddenly reappear nearby or throw grenades at you), even fixing the menu system and UI.

If you love Starfield that's great. Genuinely don't have a problem with people liking it.

But when people say that Skyrim and other Bethesda games had similar problems at launch, that's just wrong.

They weren't perfect games, but any issues and bugs were fixed with updates.

With Starfield, its biggest problems would require remaking entire parts of the game (such as repetitive POIs, boring planets, how every mission doesn't really affect or change anything in the game world).