Finished it yesterday. Game is - fine. Good effort. By the numbers. B+
The main problem I had was that I didn't care about *anything* that was happening. Monarch really took the wind out of my sail, as it was a larger retread of Edgewater. I only saw it through because I felt that I was near the end once I was done there and that turned out to be right.
Kept mulling the idea of an idiot melee character playthrough who leans on companions and accepts every flaw, but - nah, I'm good.
- even on hard, this game is too easy; balanced for people who mainline the story, I suppose.
- I amassed several thousand shots of each ammo type (had 10k light ammo at one point)
- flaws system is a cool idea (perk points in exchange for permanent debuffs to stats or resits), but...
- ...most Perks blow? I almost picked at random some time past level 20
- perks are bland so you can't screw yourself over? Likely.
- putting more than 80 points (maybe even 60) into any weapon ability is pointless, but...
- ...it does make it feel OK to use weapons your character isn't proficient with (not that I ever needed to)
- companions are OK; would have appreciated them more in a different game
- my game thinks Parvati is dead, so it insta fails her companion quest when I accept it :<
- but that's also the only major bug I've encountered ⭐
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- doing Max' companion quest felt like a mistake. Helping him find his inner peace made him appear lobotomized. Completely doused the fire in him. If there's a different way to do it, I suggest you do that. Don't 'shoot' his inner self. My ending slide had him looking out to sea and everything. :scust
- "The Board" is effectively one person. Call me naive, but I actually expected to negotiate with someone, balance various interests, present my case, have my efforts with the corporations throughout the game pay off in conversation, rather than a handful off troops per corps/group helping me storm the last bastion...
- ...redundantly, as I could holo-sneak past everything (didn't even get much use out of Phineas' nice shotgun)
So, the colony is not getting the nutrients they need because the terraform fucked things up, but what about the Cysty-pigs? They're thriving, apparently, but presumably not metabolizing the nutrients people need? What about Saltuna? Embertown was falling apart because they started stretching and substituting, but it sounded like things were fine so long as it was rolling in. The dissidents in Embertown also found a way to thrive, but neither the good nor the bad guys fully acknowledge it. They could have at least handwaved these things. You're supposed to think it's just mismanagment until you find out about the nutrient problem, but with these loose threads it still looks like mismanagment. Maybe I missed something...
tl;dr Not even industry legends (Boyarsky and Cain) get to make a big budget RPG with interesting ideas, huh? :goty2
Ok, finished the game pretty much 100% and explored everywhere in about 23 hours total. Changed the combat from easy to hard and eventually back to easy just because it's boring combat and all the status effects stuff is super annoying in the end area.
I liked that
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My focus on 100 hacking & lockpick let me beat the final boss without fighting it.
There was also a nice bit on one of the areas where having SAM along let him initiate a dialogue with aggressive mechs and ask them when the last time they were cleaned was and then they changed to cleaning protocol and all became non-hostile.
The little bits of party interaction throughout were always nice touches.
The ending was good. I enjoyed the cliffhanger ending and the ending slides made it feel more like an adventure in retrospect. I definitely felt the back half was much stronger than the front half of the game with more interesting quests and characters. Edgewater factions were so boring. Groundbreaker is solid, Monarch is boring to explore at first but good after you can just fast travel quickly between areas and you're questing for people and endgame is solid.
At the end of the day I'd say it's about as good as Fallout 1 and a solid 8/10. It could be A LOT better both in writing, world design and gameplay, but over time the quality of the writing barks between companions, the world and ADA really shine and the good quests stick out as quality rpg design. There's good stuff here.
But will I be back for the DLC explansions? Especially since 1/3rd of the space map is unavailable currently which is super lame and totally going to be the expansions. Maybe not. I don't know if it's compelling enough to want to jump back in, especially since there's nothing they can do with the combat at endgame where I'm at to make it enjoyable, so any DLC would just be running through FPS style with my shock assault rifle and playing for the story and questing.
Will I be back for Outer Worlds II if they make it? Yeah, since the ground work is there and it feels about on par with Fallout 1 give or take, the potential for Outer Worlds II to be more like a Fallout II is enough that I'd come back for a sequel.
Was worth playing and engaging enough to finish it in a week or so. But boy is the game boring for a long while. By the end everything plays on the locations, world lore and characters that have been built up and so it's pretty satisfying in the questing, but the first half was really rough.
Also re: companion quests
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I didn't like that for Ellie they didn't give any branching at all for the outcome of her questline where you changes the beneficiary to be herself from the life insurance funds. I wanted an option to tell her to grow the fuck up and move on and basically just say no to her stupid scheme but no option besides just not doing her quest.
I don't need a history lesson, I've been playing broken Bethesda RPGs since Daggerfall. Fallout 76 was butt, but until they release Starfield or a mainline Fallout or Elder Scoll game that doesn't hook me for 60-80 hours, I don't believe the antihype.
Well in my opinion, Fallout 4 was the worst Fallout they have ever made. The worst RPG even. Id be hesistant to even call it an RPG.
The fact that they have confirmed they are using the same engine for Starfield and TES6 as the one they were using for Fallout 4 gives me 0 hope.
And yeah, the constant lying has made me lose any and all respect I once had for this shit company.
Jim Sterling, is that you???
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...you're not wrong