Great characters, great art direction, good combat that allows a wide variety of builds, an exceptional soundtrack, pretty big world with quite a lot of activities and challenges and two bad endings that just don't allow the game to be a masterpiece. Is obvious that developers were torn between two endings as everyone else disscussing them in public and they decided that instead of even a slight possibility that one might look better than the other they just made both unappealing once you see them (most likely each side added their negative aspects to opposing ending as compromise). Is also unfortunate that in E33 at the end it doesn't matter how much player gets involved in the game and try to care about the world and characters, do their quests and form strong friendships when this is one important aspect of the game. This is especially sad since the game tries to make it look as main characters grow in the game, open up and get a different perspective. (edit) This game needs to played two times to get invested fully in the story as many hints and spoilers are not obvious especially in many cutcenes. Also regarding my criticism of the endings after replaying I concluded that there is only one good ending and is the "bad" one.
The game obviously wasn't properly balanced as with my lone wolf character on highest difficulty I ended game on level 36 with 300+ unspent skill points. An obvious reason for this is OP stealth system with many stealth/solo oriented perks, incredible solo XP gain (it was quite easy to get a full level from every random encounter with robo kids just from killing them in stealth) and very strange container looting XP system. On quests side game is ok as many, even main, quests allow to bypass the quest by stealing required item, otherwise is needed to do at least 2 subquests for each faction to get all parts for next step which after around half the game becomes repetitive. There is a good variation of side quests. Depending on factions reputation/dialogs almost all endings can be available at the end and one special ending requiring to not complete a faction main quest which is good as it allows to do a completionist run and see each faction impact on the world and the truth about it all in special ending. Game has good variation of armors/weapons/relics for specific builds but main issue is random traders inventories which is bad for upgrading weapons as each upgrade requires more rare items so is needed to constantly travel from hub to hub and save scum before opening traders to get required components. Overall it was a fun game
As many report crashes and performance issues here are steps that I did to make mod work: - (for Steam version) downgraded Fallout 4 by downloading all depos from console (there is guide provided by mod developers) - renamed old folder and copied all depot files to new "Fallout 4" folder - created a separate instance in Mod Organizer 2 of Fallout 4 (with local ini and saves enabled) - copied F4SE files from mod folder to Fallout 4 - copied ini files from mod "__Config" folder to MO2 instance "profiles/Default" folder - run F4SE via MO2 to check that vanilla game works - copy "Data" folder from mod folder to MO2 instance "mods" folder and ranamed it "Fallout London" - after running MO2 it should appear and can be enabled Nothing else is installed, had a crash on train after which I installed Buffout, no more crashes for more that 2 hours, FPS dropped only in market to 45+ FPS, London open area is stable 60 FPS. This way not only Fallout 4 will be separated from mod files but you can easily install other mods quickly and test their compatibilty
Everything in this game says that too many resources were spent on too many things as such the end result is an "ok" game. In short: - Gameplay: boring, horrible D&D gameplay. D&D ruleset just doesn't work in a CRPG. You can't roleplay someone when everything you do is not decided by your abilities/skills, but by a roll of dice. Getting a critical failure on a very easy persuasion check with all bonuses is as bad as getting a critical success on an impossible one with no bonuses at all and some argue that this is exceptional roleplaying. Whole game gameplay is just a glorified slot machine and developers made sure that you remember this at every step with the roll dice animation. - Graphics: at first glance game looks very visually impressive and huge in scope, but sadly it has same issue as Elden Ring - very soon it becomes background noise and you just focus on game itself and every next area I was looking for closest waypoint to not waste any more time on useless "sightseeing" as most of maps are empty in terms of useful content, but cluttered in terms of objects of no importance (and there will be no Vaati here explaining why near that river those two fishing rods are left under that specific angle) - Story: too much Mass Effect "homage" and lots of "see it somewhere before" quests, with few exceptions, but what really got me was the ending. In this game with so many "decisions" and characters the game just ends with credits roll, obviously we can't expect from "best RPG of decade" to reflect on player's decisions made on the way to the end, no, is up to our own imagination. - Companions: as much as they tried they aren't as memorable as companions in Mass Effect or Dragon Age Origins and some were too much "inspired" from other media, like making a companion reject all they believed in to accept the opposite Overall a good value for its price, but not even close to a masterpiece, worth to play once (even though at this time less that 10% completed the game).
An interesting setting spoiled by bad execution. Average graphics, average to bad dialogs, average quests, average skill system, awful jokes, very on the nose NPC style, an average plot and as a result a completely forgetable game. Is so strange I still can remember lot of things from Gothic, Mass Effect or Fallout 2 played years ago, but after a month since playing this game I can't remember much about it except its preachy tone about how universally bad corporations are. Is very ironic that as with Cyberpunk this game tries to push an anti-corporate, anti-elite message and first thing the publisher does to push the right message is to make the game an egs (and later windows store) timed exclusive, also during this time Obsidian sold to Microsoft which pushed even further how fake whole "anti-corporate" message is.
