The Outer Worlds

This game felt like somebody had a good concept, gathered 20% of money and manpower necessary and then used that to execute a fraction of the original idea in the most shallow way possible. Game mechanics (1/5): You have 3 moves in combat: move, shoot or heal. This is further exacerbated by how there are only two types of enemies: the one that shoots damage from afar and the one that runs up and hits you up close. The social system is, honestly, the strong point in terms of game mechanics, because a simple barebones system can work better for this than something gimmicky. The stealth gamestyle offers the most boring, waiting based game play you can imagine. No lockpicking or computer hacking minigame. Items are small icons with identical stat blocks save for the values. By the time I got to the Groundbreaker I was not looking at what I was collecting at all. The games does not reward exploration at all. The most you usually get out of it is a box with generic who gives a rat's ass level loot. Art (4/5): The game is pretty, sounds good and the voice acting is decent. Writing (3/5): There are a number of good ideas and effective deliveries in there, but overall it feels disjointed and unplanned. Content (2/5): What we have up to Byzantium is good. That's where I expected to get to the deep end so to speak. The first two areas felt like a good intro, Monarch was a good chapter 1 and then I moved on to Byzantium expecting a sprawling central city chock full of questlines, factions, secrets to discover etc. Instead that's when the game ends the open world concept and just forces you down the remaining few main questline missions. Companions: (2/5): They each have a mostly well written personality, a boring, short companion questline and an identical combat impact. They speak, but don't really impact the game in any other way. I just didn't feel particularly connected with any of them and didn't feel like they were much of a benefit to have around either.

Played it on Gamepass on launch and frankly thankful I didn't pay more than $1 for it. Comes off like the devs did the bare minimum to emulate New Vegas into Unreal Engine 4 and then basically stopped putting in effort after. General list of grievances include: -Character building seems neat at first given the amount of skills until you realize incrementally increasing skill barely do a thing and have to level them up to 20/40/60/80/100 points to have an actual important effect happen which kills what could be more mixed builds. Feats are some of the most generic live seen in a RPG period. -Too many damn items in the open world to be remotely challenging. Unless Supernova difficulty changed that (played it on Hard), I'd imagine it's a cakewalk with how easy it is to steal food and find water (hell, there's a freaking river near the first town that you can sip out of anytime). -Weapons are uncreative as there are literal "Mk2/3" versions of guns/melee weapons to find meaning there is an objectively better gun to use all the time (meaning unlike New Vegas where you can do a literal BB gun stealth run even late game, Outer Worlds has none of that due to its constricting builds and weapon variety). -Writing feels extremely subpar and world building can basically be summed up with "corporations are bad" theme without anything else to it. -Characters are mostly one dimensional with plot twists you can see a mile away if they even have one. Only ones I liked were Vicar (which is just a poor man's Virgil from Arcanum) and SAM who doesn't even get a side quest other than repair him. Only reason why I don't give it one star is that it as a game is functional and was generally bug free from my experience which given Obsidian's track record is surprising (though on the other hand, given how basic the game is, one could argue it'd be a wonder if it did have big technical issues). Also it was only 30 hours after doing most side quests so it didn't waste my time by much.

I admit it's a bit early to leave a final verdict on this game, but after a few hours this is my impression: - Not really an RPG. More like a first person shooter with simplified RPG elements - No real depth. Nothing has occurred in the game so far that really makes me want to keep playing. - The story so far has just been shallow excuses to point me to the next checkpoint. - FPS combat is really detrimental to a game like this. Seems to be no tactic to it. Just trade bullets/blows. I usually don't go for first person perspective RPGS and the likes, as I much prefer tactical turn-based RPGs with focus on story. That's not what the game aims to be, so it wouldn't be fair to criticize for that. But being what it is, it doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table.

just because Bethesda Fallout76/4 are bad/not good doesn't mean this is by default it had some broken quests and they are not planing on fixing the story begins in a good note with interesting missions and characters but very soon you feel like it's just chores to the point at the very end i was like i don't enjoy playing this any more just let me finish

I've put around 70 hours into the game and I can say that I covered most of the content (quests, zones etc.) Let me give you the good and the bad and then a bottom line: Good: - Mechanics work - No bugs or technical issues - Sufficient amount of quests and activities to cover the zones - Interesting story that steadily evolves - The two DLCs - Murder on Eridanos and Peril on Gorgon are very, very good DLCs and complete the game and the universe as a whole - Multiple ways to achieve the goals - stealth, diplomacy, fighting - Almost all skills are useful - Interesting world that isn't based on a duplication of Earth's biome and locations, Halcyon realy feels like an alien, strange place Bad: - Game is not very difficult, I've played on Hard and didn't find difficult encounters - Itemization could be better and more randomized, at certain point you find the same number and types of weapons. The DLCs add more weapons though. - The mockery of a corporate world failure that is the Board and the sheer incompetency of every corporation is intended for caricaturistic purposes, but it feels way too unrealistic and a bit over the top. It should've been done with moderation and introduce a bit more nuance - As other reviewers pointed out, the second half of the game feels kind of empty and rushed Overall - a good game, give it a try and get it on a discount, but make sure you get the DLCs otherwise you are missing on the better content, in my honest opinon. For the standalone game - I would say it is 3/5, but with the DLCs, simply because they are pretty well done and show the effort of the team to finish what they've started, I will put it at 4/5.