I've been looking at the reactions to Starfield because it's arguably the one game that caught my eye from all the next gen stuff, as an observer. Seems like a marmite kind of game so far, in that you either love it or you hate it... Hilariously, both sides seem to be prefacing their opinions with the suggestion that the other side must be bullshitting, or be a shill or a fanboy applying copium of some sort.
I'm disappointed that you don't have the option to take off and travel manually as an explorer. I doubt there will be a way to add this feature in either. That said, if people are saying it will take longer to finish than Skyrim and the likes did, with the fast travel at the core, I doubt most would travel the manual way for long. It still would have been nice to have the option.
The one criticism I've noticed that is consistent, is there is no wow moment at the start, which might be a mistake, since a lot look for that moment at the start of a highly anticipated game. It has even been said that the start of the game is kind of bland looking and uninteresting, leading to snap judgements that the whole game must be boring. From what I gather, the slow start does make sense later in the game, which makes up for it for some. 12+ hours later might be too long for some people, who play an hour or so a night and some don't play games every day either.
I still want to play it eventually(along with Cyberpunk) by then all the technical issues a bugs should be ironed out too. It's nice to see plenty are having a blast with the game already, despite it not being perfect.