My experience with the game has been relatively decent. I was incredibly skeptical at first but then
| Story | 6/10 |
| Gameplay | 8/10 |
| Graphics | 6/10 |
| Sound | 9/10 |
| Value | 5/10 |
| Overall | 6/10 |
While the world does feel lifeless that doesn't really take away from the overall experience. Sure I miss the personalities of the NPC's but even with all of them gone I still get the Fallout vibe from traveling around the map. The quest system is unique and they REALLY put a lot of work into building up the lore around most of them. The main issue is that it's not spoon fed to you and you have to look around for a note or a holotape to get the full story. I personally love this approach and I'm not being distracted by some random NPC bugging out because it's a Bethesda game either, so that's another plus. The overall writing and voice acting is phenomenal once you listen to the holotapes and for the most part the entries in the terminals are top notch.
The gameplay is by far the most fun out of all the previous releases. Combat is solid and now that they've patched out the framerate lock on PC it's even better. The game isn't very difficult, especially if you're with a group. Being in a group offers many perks too. From perk card sharing, bonus xp, and whatever else you and your friends can make up along the way. I can't count how many hours I spent trying to get to a specific objective only for my friend to discover something else and we go and check it out and then we find something else and check that out and so on only for us to have ended up going in the complete opposite direction of the objective and being lost in the world.
Solo is probably the biggest downside to the game but then again it was NEVER marketed to be a singleplayer game. If you went in thinking you'd get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of this by yourself then you're a fool because it was clearly designed to be played with a group. That's not to say you can't play it alone, you certainly can but I think it kind of negates the true purpose of the game.
I see a lot of people complaining about bugs, I've seen videos about bugs too, I personally have only experienced one bug and that was the game crashing while loading into a world. That was easily solved by lowering my graphics settings. Other than that I have yet to experience anything else that would warrant complaining about. The worst would be an enemy stuck in t-pose as it loads in but then as I got closer it would correct itself. Though I will not deny that the game is incredibly buggy as we've come to expect from Bethesda, I just haven't experienced as many as everyone else seems to be.
My biggest complaints are the issues they make after they release a new patch and that they do a poor job explaining a lot of the basic things that you will be doing constantly, like perk cards and blueprints for your camp. The stash size was increased recently and resolved that issue and I understand how the perk cards work now but I did have to roll a new character after I realized how bad I miffed it. The blueprint thing I still don't get all too much but I found a good spot to leave my camp anyway so I don't intend on moving it. The camp system is a bit janky at times too but that's more my own personal tastes as opposed to being a fault of the game. It's not the games fault that I want to build a house boat out in the middle of a lake and I can't because the foundations don't reach the bottom. That's mine for wanting to put it in a place it clearly can not go.
All in all the game has been fun so far. When I'm playing by myself I'm usually exploring new areas, capturing a workshop, collecting materials for crafting or all three in preparation for when I play with my friends. I enjoy it by myself because it's nice to pop on the classical radio while I rummage through a blown out factory or take down a mob of ghouls in the woods, occasionally running into another player where I offer them some purified water and rad-away (since I easily have over 100 of each after 2-3 hours). Then when my friends are on we get working on those quests or at least try to, not really, one of us ends up getting side tracked and then we all end up getting side tracked. Plus you can't really beat the sense of accomplishment from successfully defending your workshop from a level 50 Scorchbeast or taking down a level 95 Scorchbeast Queen with 20 other players after someone drops a nuke.
In closing it's a fun game if you want it to be and if you didn't let your expectations cloud what it really was, which all it is is a multiplayer open world survival game with the Fallout flair tacked on to it and a rough one at best. It's clearly not meant for everyone, judging by the overwhelmingly negative reviews but for those of you who may be interested in it, I recommend seeing if a friend will let you try it out first or if possible then rent it. Otherwise I'd encourage you to either wait til they drop it to like $20 USD or not get it at all.
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