I wanted to like this game so much.
I love the Fallout setting.
Fallout/Fallout 2 were formative games for me.
Fallout 3 was only okay but a decent entry into the modern era of design.
New Vegas is still one of my favorite RPGs, and frankly one of my favorite games overall.
The nostalgia and love I have for this series was overwhelming at the time. I truly wanted to love this game. I gave it so much time, just hoping I hadn't reached "The good part" yet. At the time reviews were good so it had to get good eventually right?
It's such a disappointment.
I will start by giving the game some credit: It has a pretty decent main story. I did like the premise of trying to find your kid and the idea of "synths" vs humans struggle. And that's all the praise I have for this game.
The gameplay was outdated the day it came out. This was already evident in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but as time went on and shooters kept improving, it became more and more apparent that Bethesda's combat never evolved. More importantly though, the previously mentioned fallout games had other elements to fall back on to help carry the sub-par combat, such as RPG elements, interesting characters and a living world you want to explore. So lets talk about those.
The RPG mechanics in this game are horrendous. In the place of the more nuanced and varied dialogue system of previous games, in this game the player was offered only a few options per dialogue, usually consisting of "Yes", "No", "Sarcastic", "Mean" or "End conversation" answers. On top of that, certain answers like the "sarcastic" answers could sometimes lead to my character saying something drastically different from what I expected to say when I picked the option. Not only did this make the character feel less like my own, but it made all diplomatic types of playthroughs feel hollow and not worth doing at all.
This lack of dialogue options made it very hard to connect with any characters, even my own, and this in turn made me less inclined to explore and find new characters.
When I did explore and find things, they were not very memorable. After 114 hours on this game, I can only recall one single distinct encounter in this whole game.
I spent like 20h with Fallout 1 as a child and I remember more from that. My memories of the other Fallout games are littered with good memories and moments. This is the only one where I remember almost nothing.
Nothing in this game was impactful; it all felt like filler. The worst part? There's SOOOOOOO much of it. This wouldn't be so bad if it were in any way compelling, but with so much worthless content in the game, I eventually lost interest in even trying to find the only plot thread that still had any interest at all to me: The main story. Even the sunk cost of time I'd already put into the game ended up not being strong enough to get me through finishing it.
TL DR: This game is bad and I waited way, way too long to see if it would get better because of my love of prior Fallout games. I want my time back.
I love the Fallout setting.
Fallout/Fallout 2 were formative games for me.
Fallout 3 was only okay but a decent entry into the modern era of design.
New Vegas is still one of my favorite RPGs, and frankly one of my favorite games overall.
The nostalgia and love I have for this series was overwhelming at the time. I truly wanted to love this game. I gave it so much time, just hoping I hadn't reached "The good part" yet. At the time reviews were good so it had to get good eventually right?
It's such a disappointment.
I will start by giving the game some credit: It has a pretty decent main story. I did like the premise of trying to find your kid and the idea of "synths" vs humans struggle. And that's all the praise I have for this game.
The gameplay was outdated the day it came out. This was already evident in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but as time went on and shooters kept improving, it became more and more apparent that Bethesda's combat never evolved. More importantly though, the previously mentioned fallout games had other elements to fall back on to help carry the sub-par combat, such as RPG elements, interesting characters and a living world you want to explore. So lets talk about those.
The RPG mechanics in this game are horrendous. In the place of the more nuanced and varied dialogue system of previous games, in this game the player was offered only a few options per dialogue, usually consisting of "Yes", "No", "Sarcastic", "Mean" or "End conversation" answers. On top of that, certain answers like the "sarcastic" answers could sometimes lead to my character saying something drastically different from what I expected to say when I picked the option. Not only did this make the character feel less like my own, but it made all diplomatic types of playthroughs feel hollow and not worth doing at all.
This lack of dialogue options made it very hard to connect with any characters, even my own, and this in turn made me less inclined to explore and find new characters.
When I did explore and find things, they were not very memorable. After 114 hours on this game, I can only recall one single distinct encounter in this whole game.
I spent like 20h with Fallout 1 as a child and I remember more from that. My memories of the other Fallout games are littered with good memories and moments. This is the only one where I remember almost nothing.
Nothing in this game was impactful; it all felt like filler. The worst part? There's SOOOOOOO much of it. This wouldn't be so bad if it were in any way compelling, but with so much worthless content in the game, I eventually lost interest in even trying to find the only plot thread that still had any interest at all to me: The main story. Even the sunk cost of time I'd already put into the game ended up not being strong enough to get me through finishing it.
TL DR: This game is bad and I waited way, way too long to see if it would get better because of my love of prior Fallout games. I want my time back.