I'll start this by saying I played Starfield for around 100 hours and mostly enjoyed it so you understand where I'm coming from.

Starfield has about the least compelling main story Bethesda has ever released. The main story is very short and very shallow.

The game overall has about as much content as any Bethesda game. The main reason people are calling it sparse is that content being spread out across the galaxy rather than a functionally small area.

I thought the faction quests were all enjoyable. I also think people are quick to discount how stable the game is. The stability improvements were a massive change to Creation engine. In 100 hours, I had 2 crashes. Compare that to Skyrim, which I have 2k hours in, or fallout 4 that require an unofficial patch to keep vanilla from crashing at least every 30 minutes.

Ultimately, Starfield seems to lean more into people who will talk to everybody than it does people who want to be guided. For the guided, there's probably about 30 hours of content. For the explorers, there's probably closer to 150 hours plus the shallower radiant stuff. I'm not in love with the main story or the perks system and I definitely don't think the game provided the industry with any innovations, but I don't feel like I wasted my money even a little.

My suggestion to anybody would be once you can ignore the main quest, do everything else first. The main quest doesn't enhance gameplay or the universe in any real way.