Competent but airless - there's so much stuff but you only moderately want to do some of it. Was really into it at the beginning (especially after that memorably bleak first level) but quickly afterwards felt like I was just waiting for it to end. The open world feels like an MMO that had its servers shut down, with mostly forgettable locations loosely cobbled together piecemeal with no real sense of oneness - a far cry from the deeply lived-in feel of Skyrim's maps. Unlike others I'm not completely against the watering-down/removal of the RPG elements and as per usual I don't give a shit about mods; but the main story as a whole feels like a rushed, tiresome exposition dump - the mother/father angle is so boring in this and the voiced protagonist adds nothing to the mix either. The stuff with the institute is beyond lame, BoS story feels like tedious fetch quests, Minutemen don't have enough exclusive missions to their arc. Etc. etc. Bethesda's endearing jank helps keep this diverting on a moment-to-moment basis - you can put a live frag grenade in a drug-addicted old lady's pocket while she's sleeping, kill a robot with pencil ammo, break the game six ways from Sunday and get to level 200 in an hour, all that jazz. But it feels less than stellar here even in the face of its objective evolution. IGN giving this their perfect 10 rating tells you all you need to know about it. Far Harbor 4ever.