Fallout 4 is probably my second favorite game to play (behind the one-and-only fabulous New Vegas, of course), and in fact I was just playing it a couple minutes ago. There are some good things that the game did, settlements were a cool idea and were executed fairly well in the game (tho the Minutemen can sorta ruin that). I thought the game handled companions probably the best out of the games (tho perhaps it might be tied with NV), with the relationship option adding an interesting dimension to having such companions. The factions were all pretty intriguing, with the Railroad having an underground revolutionary feel while the Institute had an Illuminati/deep state feel in how it manipulated the Commonwealth from behind the scenes. Weapon/armor crafting was a nice touch too, though the weapon types were a bit too few tbh.

However, the story honestly is what kinda drags down the game for me. Dear Bethesda, I don’t give a mole rat’s arse about finding some family member I spent like 4 minutes in the intro with. Personally, I wish the main quest would have focused entirely on the synth question and power play between the factions and cut the family drama out. And then the Minutemen. I love the historical Minutemen and the idea behind them, and I really wish they had been implemented as an actual faction, ie more than just a few survivors in Concord, but perhaps an actual local government/militia that the player could join and help. Honestly, making the MM to be the Yes Man of Fallout 4 was a huge mistake as it forced the player to be a good guy in order to go independent.

The voice acting and dialogue was alright, but I could do without, or better yet have voice actors who sound like hardened post-apocalyptic survivors and not 30s something suburbanites. I wish skills had stayed though

I dislike the lack of proper side quests, most of the quests just end up being "go to this place swarming with raiders, super mutants or ghouls, retrieve or build this thing, come back" and that takes a lot out of the experience for me

I found maybe 2 side quests memorable, the robot pirates, and the Deathclaw egg. Valentine and Cait had okay quests, but they felt like they were missing something. everything else is just soup in my brain

The things like about Fallout 4:

- Companions (my favourite is Danse 😉)

- I didn’t mind the voiced player character, but it was a bit of a shock when I played New Vegas and the player character had no voice lines. (Fallout 4 was the first ever Fallout game I played and is now my favourite video game)

- The graphics were pretty decent for 2015/16, and still ain’t too bad today in 2021.

- Random Encounters (I like the one where you coming across a Mr.Gutsy who’s going on about a mandatory curfew and doesn’t realise that “The war, is over.” It’s fun with a higher level charisma because you can make the crazy robot think that it’s caught in a dialogue loop, before it ends up self-destructing.

- Far Harbour and Nuka World

The things I don’t like about Fallout 4:

- Quest and some dialogue glitches. (“Check your fire, we’ve got hostiles.”)

- Really trippy looking graphics glitches

- Game crashes and freezing (especially on my PS4)

- The 0kb glitch not allowing me to save my game progress (PS4)

- Laggy Downtown Boston and Charleston

I overall like Fallout 4 a lot, more than Fallout 3 personally. Having a voice acted protagonist I thought had potential, unfortunately they went for Telltale dialogue system where you have at most three distinct options and four dialogue choices mapped to the face buttons- a Bioware style dialogue reticule would have suited a Fallout game far better. Otherwise I found a lot of the character and RP stuff if anything more flexible than Fo3, sure you could make your character look aged, older than your father even, but it'd be purely cosmetic and make no sense in the context of the story, plus for as slow as Fo4's into is compared to NV- atleast the game doesn't tell literally your entire life story before you get out into the Wastes.

My main bugbears are with the massive amounts of technical issues with Fo4. "Working as intended" Fo4 is an amazing game with a few nit picks here and there, however when you factor in the bugs and other problems it is worthy of some considerable criticism. Also if any one design decisions implemented as intended is just straight up bad it's the way that the MM quests are almost entirely radiant and persistently spammed into your quest log, that really jams things up considerably, there's so much more to do in the game than clear out the same handful of dungeons over and over again but that's what the game is pushing you towards when you engage with the MM and it's a shame.

I guess it's hard to avoid the air of ambivalence that surrounds Fo4, it's a good game but a frustrating one. Not in the sense that a game gets frustrating due to the level of challenge, far from it; more a frustration with design decisions and technical issues.

It was very different from the previous games. I personally loved it, but many others don't.

Fallout 4 is my all time personal favorite game, the story isn’t as good as previous games but (and yes this is small) the fact that your character talks, like for real, is why I played that game for a very long time. Sure there are glitches and the graphics don’t shine as much as they should but there’s something about that game that’s just hit or miss for some people.

I liked the voiced protagonist as well, but I understand why some people prefer a silent protagonist for roleplaying purposes.

If I couldn't use mods FO4, I would have lost interest after a month. I still have no interest in even trying FO76.

As for the stated limits- these are easy to bypass. I ignore Garvey- let him cower in the museum, and usually leave Danse at the Police station. They are tedious characters, so why interact with them? Just bypass them. And why submit to the Bethesda rat maze. I don't need to visit the institute to rescue Curie and Cait, or do wander around recruiting settlers who have been crafted and voiced by modders. This playthrough, I am building up Everett estates as a base. I swam to Kasumi's house and visited Acadia around level 10 (just jump off the boat and turn left hugging the the shore and jumping up the seawall then make a bee line up the mountain-bypassing the Alan/ Avery meet and greet/ Island creature battle.

With Weaponsmith, I have a ton more weapons that FO3, and I can upgrade ammo types and build as much ammo as I need. I have killed zero humans or supermutants. I stun them instead. It's a challenge to keep the kill count of sentient life at zero. Well, Kellogg has to die if you want to help curie to fulfill her dreams. Maybe it is possible to use the Valkyrie teleport gun to remove Colter. Haven't tried that yet.

Weak story, weak characters, weak environment.

It has a lot of good, but it followed New Vegas which excelled in all three. The story and factions are pretty meh. New Vegas had a fantastic plot and the factions were great. Your actions had impact with the factions. You could build them up and see results. Even as the general of the Minutemen you have no real control over them. You don't get to shape their behavior or change them in any meaningful way. They are just there.

And then of course their were the characters from companions to villains which were just so much better. Nobody in F4 is particularly interesting except for Curie and Valentine. Everyone else is boring or so generic they are forgettable. Even the villains are bland.

And lastly, the environment is so boring. It is basically the same as Fallout 3 but with more brick. It was nothing new and engaging, just dreary grey and confusing cityscapes.

People don't like fallout 4 because it is different from new vegas and everyone loves new vegas so much that they think that anything different is bad