I thought this would be the best DLC yet as I was having a lot of fun and then they hit you with that one "choice" at the end, that ends up being a 50/50 split with absolutely no nuance or thought
Leaves a really bad aftertaste to have the slaver be an ex-brotherhood soldier considering how eager this game is to get on its knees and suck the BoS off and paint them as the good guys, specially with how freeing the slaves somehow involves doing something awful for the hell of it

Just insanely weird ending, enough to make me dislike it despite being the DLC I like the most in terms of gameplay and setting

This is basically only a review of the main campaign, as I haven't done all the side content and I'm not done with all the dlc, but still

I Don't Know Man
The game itself is fun don't get me wrong, but I have so many problems with the way it engages in anything that isn't gameplay
Speaking of gameplay, I think the game feel of this game is pretty much a perfect translation of the combat in the original game. Not having any hitscan and having so much spread really works towards capturing that feel of only having 40% hit rate at level 1, I genuinely do adore it
But that's just with the shooting. The RPG aspects? Severely undercooked in my opinion
I don't like how skills work when it comes to passing checks, in the world and in dialogue, I wouldn't call it lazy but I just don't think it really makes your build matter in any way
The only times I've felt like my skillset actually mattered outside of shooting was whenever the rare SPEECH check showed up or a SCIENCE check all the way near the ending

And speaking of lackluster dialogue, there is such a shortage of it all thorough the game. This is not me speaking about the main story because sure you do talk a lot, but in the overall world. You will basically never find someone to talk to on the wasteland or in 80% of the locations. They have unique NPCs but they're always hostile the moment they see you, and you only get to learn through them through flavor text. I found it grating and extremely underwhelming. Sure you can speak to NPCs on main towns but it's never really deep, just your basic interactions with a few exceptions.

The sidequests I've done were pretty good at least, definitely worth going through.

Now, about that main story. On paper I think it's fine, if maybe a bit tired. Not much of it is original, hell even the Enclave is pretty much the same as in FO2 with a little twist. But again, on paper, the things about project Purity and your father are Fine, just okay. Some aspects of it are super lazy and I wish were waaay more delved into. A personal grip of mine is how they handle Super Mutants, they're just there, they're enemies for you to kill. And that leads to my major issue with this game, the execution. This game sets you out to kill stuff, and then you kill stuff, maybe you talk but then they take away input from you and make you kill stuff. Many story beats are forced on you and have no other outcome, you shoot stuff all the way to the ending and then you're done. It's tiring, it fails at being an RPG, it ends up feeling like a shooter that wants to be deeper but ultimately fails. I might be a bit too harsh but the last few hours of the story really drained me of good will to it. And don't get me started on the run towards the ending area, just absolutely key jingling with no real substance to it. Just tiring
Most of the content on the map is the same. You find place, place has enemies, you shoot enemies and you loot place. Rinse and repeat.

It's a fun game, but it's just missing a lot of stuff and did a lot to make me either irritated or angry.


And now that I've gotten all the hate out of my system I'm probably going to 100% the map and do all the DLCs because what even is shame