I just finished the game and decided to give a summery of my thoughts on it.
The game is a fateful reincarnation of Fallout games,might even say that it is too fateful. Mainly the inventory could have been more modern and practical also the weapon skills could have been expanded in their usefulness. Now you could just pump the stat you need for the weapons and hit without pumping skills. There are also a few useless skills like first aid (2-3 checks) and survival(haven't seen a check with it),tinkering(also no check) and explosives(also no checks). On the other hand speech,barter and technology are pretty well implemented and frequently met during the game,it really felt rewarding investing in them. Pickpocket and lockpick were also well implemented,they are a decent way to get XP.
Attributes are also very well implemented in the dialogue,maybe the best part of the character creation. It was really fun seeing being able to use different attributes in dialogue and not only charisma like in most rpgs. Nothing feels like charming chicks by flexing muscle or ripping a booby trapped locker so hard that the traps get ripped apart or disabling a bomb by the power of muscle
. Also i find it nice that it was not always the right way to do it,some times you had to choose a different attribute for optimal result.
The combat was....like in Fallout game...serviceable. The Companions were lagging far too much behind and you had to constantly wait for them,that was the reason i decided to go lone wolf after i got pissed of waiting. The AP system could be annoying if you do sole,a lot of waiting turns while being able to do very little. It would have been better if there was a way to perma increase APs outside of character creation. A lot of inexperienced players could end up with a low Dex character and get pissed of a few hours in. Another criticism is for the lack of balance in the weapon's part,or maybe too much balance. Most weapons have kind of the same stats,you just have do the match of how much damage you could do per round. Some times a high tier weapon is worst than the one you found near the start of the game. Also the combat is really slow and cheat engine couldn't speed it up,oh well at least i managed to read some codex shit in between rounds.
On the other hand i really enjoyed the writing,it is rude and unapologetic....it feels real and natural. It is on far better level than anything Obsidian could pull off this days. It made me laugh when i stumbled on to something ridiculous and made me uneasy when i found some grim dark shit like a snuff slave cabal. Also it got the women right,seducing chick never felt out of place. Nothing like corrupting a young teen at a farm
. Another think i liked was the stories and the mysteries,like the two people at the fire in the forest. Shame that the devs couldn't expand on them by making more creepy locations and encounters. I felt that the mutants were under used in the game,never got to encounter most of them outside of their level. Like i never got to explore a lair of the shadow people in the dead city,they were just a random encounter that tried out once and the just skipped. Or how i never saw a giant spider outside of the red fighters or the giants mutants outside of the collapsed tunnel. For fuck sake i was surprised when i encountered a mutated gorilla by a random encounter.
The mechanical part of the game is also superb,i never had any problems in my whole playtrough,didn't found a single bugged quest...or any bug in that matter. It is the best game i have played in half a decade in that regard. Loading screens load fast and the game looks decent for the genre. I would say that the looks fit well with the atmosphere.
The level design was decent/good,some bunkers were a little bit too big filled with empty container... but from this suffers every single Fallout game. A lot of illogical garbage items,while ignoring some obvious things that could bring a lot of money if it was real situation. Like opening a container that have a brick and a fork and seeing it as a loot while ignoring the working PC and the well preserver beuro. But that is not a fault of the game,more of a personal nitpic of the genre
. The Hubs were well designed and felt realistic and natural. Still it would have been better with different factions and reputations system.
The ending sucked tho,the devs should have gone for a slide show without a narrator and not a voiced one where only 2-3 choices mattered.
Oh,i almost forgot,the portraits are really great. Love that they are all unique.
In the end the game is greater than the sum of its parts. I whole heartedly would recommend it. I may sound more negative than i am,that is because there parts that could have been a better even if they are good now. I have the feeling that time and money constraint had an effect on the game. Hope that the devs made enough money to make a second one and improve on this one. It is really good game that is well worth the money,even a ravaging scum like me will buy it once it hit GoG
.
