Definitely one the first 'open world survival crafting sandbox' games I've enjoyed in a long while, sucking me in from start to finish while managing to capture the atmosphere the original games were so famous for.
The stories here are top notch with great writing, characters are interesting, nuanced, thought-through, and the central tension resonates through the game world at every level. Don't get me wrong there are some swings that miss like 'Hard Luck Blues' and 'I Don't Hurt Anymore', but these are few and far between. My only real gripe is the occasional lack of closure - some mission chains end abruptly, and others seem to end without any of the NPC's acknowledging what happened which took me out of the experience a bit.
Combat meanwhile is more stagnant. Gunplay especially feels clunky and oddly numeric. Movement doesn't feel like it makes a difference so I tend to stand in place aiming and trying to avoid anything thrown my way. It doesn't feel like a firefight, it feels like trading numbers. This extends to the gun progression as well since the upgraded laser weapons just feel like you need less hits, and from the start to finish I didn't 'develop' any combat skill short of learning to trigger VATS for bonuses.
I'm chalking a lot of that clunkiness up to the oblivion engine as you can feel the devs putting heart and soul into it regardless. The mission design and the way in which skills directly impact speech and action options is where all the fun of the game lies, making it as easy to talk your way out of a problem or negotiate a peaceful solution as to draw your gun and start blasting. The depth with which the skills enable and limit your interactions makes multiple playthroughs far more interesting to explore.
Having completed the main story I was surprised how enjoyable FONV was given that it's in a genre I try to avoid - but Obsidian did their best to address the homogeneity and shallowness that tends to make these games unplayable to me. Don't get me wrong it's still graphically dated and missing a lot of quality of life features, but if you can get your head around the mods that can be mitigated. I'm curious to try 4 at some point, but for now I have the DLC to go through so I'll come back to this at some point to grind those out. Overall, a fun and deep revitalisation of the classic fallout formula, imperfect but full of charm and care.
The stories here are top notch with great writing, characters are interesting, nuanced, thought-through, and the central tension resonates through the game world at every level. Don't get me wrong there are some swings that miss like 'Hard Luck Blues' and 'I Don't Hurt Anymore', but these are few and far between. My only real gripe is the occasional lack of closure - some mission chains end abruptly, and others seem to end without any of the NPC's acknowledging what happened which took me out of the experience a bit.
Combat meanwhile is more stagnant. Gunplay especially feels clunky and oddly numeric. Movement doesn't feel like it makes a difference so I tend to stand in place aiming and trying to avoid anything thrown my way. It doesn't feel like a firefight, it feels like trading numbers. This extends to the gun progression as well since the upgraded laser weapons just feel like you need less hits, and from the start to finish I didn't 'develop' any combat skill short of learning to trigger VATS for bonuses.
I'm chalking a lot of that clunkiness up to the oblivion engine as you can feel the devs putting heart and soul into it regardless. The mission design and the way in which skills directly impact speech and action options is where all the fun of the game lies, making it as easy to talk your way out of a problem or negotiate a peaceful solution as to draw your gun and start blasting. The depth with which the skills enable and limit your interactions makes multiple playthroughs far more interesting to explore.
Having completed the main story I was surprised how enjoyable FONV was given that it's in a genre I try to avoid - but Obsidian did their best to address the homogeneity and shallowness that tends to make these games unplayable to me. Don't get me wrong it's still graphically dated and missing a lot of quality of life features, but if you can get your head around the mods that can be mitigated. I'm curious to try 4 at some point, but for now I have the DLC to go through so I'll come back to this at some point to grind those out. Overall, a fun and deep revitalisation of the classic fallout formula, imperfect but full of charm and care.