"LEGENDARY ENEMY HAS MUTATED"
When I first saw that pretty early on in the game I knew it was gonna be dogshit.
You just described every bioturd game. baldurs gate 1&2: Walk two meters and game vomits 10 enemies at you, then rinse and repeat. Neverwinter: Same. Dragon age origins: Same. Mass effect: Same. Mass effect 2: Same, but even worse.The problem with verticality is that once you begin exploring the city, game explodes into noise and psychotic violence as much as, say, Bioshock Infinite does during most of it's levels. There are enemies everywhere, you can't walk one apartment without getting shot at from everywhere. It's like someone brew an anti-Tarkovsky potion, the Michael Bay essence, the shallowest and most awful and tasteless kind of experience, an ultimate non-art. This is why people are drawn to base building in this game, it's because that is the only moment where you can find rest and when game shuts the fuck up. That's why Far Harbour was liked even by bethesdards themselves - even they could not stand the Noise, and why Glowing Sea is a better part of the game. Fallout 4 biggest chunk of exploration is all Noise, and what it does, as most of forced noise always does, is it rips you out of the setting, of location, it does not allow you to immerse in the game world at all. Again, like all the pictures and statues and messages in nu-Shock but you can't take a breath and explore them, because there is just constant fucking bloodbath all around - or cutscenes.
When character in old Fallouts arrives into most settlements he has a time to look around, be just himself, check on the people and listen to music. Nu-games don't give you that time.
And one other thing should be said about world map of Fallout 1&2. The thing they do, you travel the big world, you go from one unique settlement to another, or unique base or encounter. In nu-Fallout, you travel from coffee shop to gas station to middle school (with mutants) to high shool (with ghouls) to hospital (with mutants). New Vegas somehow battled the issue with calm moment of just being on the road, meeting lonely traveler, or going through farm lands. F4 world just doesn't make any sense. It's a trip for groceries with raiders and mutants.
I would say that this game is pretty good. Dialog choices are useless, but so they were in every bioware game, where every choice is just pseudo choice. I dont get that why people are whining about engine. Its very good in fo4, 200+ hours and one crash and that was because of too high fps, once got stuck inside boat, but managed to fast travel and one broken quest. Thats quite bug free experience from so huge game.
Side quests are endless, yet quality of them is not any worse than any other rpg generic fetch quests. Also love how lively the world is, you see monsters fighting each other all the time. Most rpg;s are just shallow and empty worlds where everything is static.
Companions are interesting and has far more personality than in any bioware game, but still fallout 2 have better companions. Atleast Piper is lovely, cant say from others.
Skill system simplification was a good thing, it made perks and leveling more meaningful when every point does something useful, unlike in fo 1,2 or 3, where most skill points were useless unless they surpassed certain threshold. But i still think they overdid the simplification, instead of getting rid of skills, they should have just made them in to 5 tier system: Very poor, poor, average, good, Very Good.
Settlement system was nice, but they overdid it. They should have made some of them a friendly towns. I had to play about 50 hours to find first friendly town and that is too much.
Radiation storms were nice idea, but bit poorly done as they were not threat. Just putting 20 to 30 times higher radiations would have made it a cool game play feature. Glowing sea was bit disappointment as it was not dangerously radiated than i thought.
You just described every bioturd game. baldurs gate 1&2: Walk two meters and game vomits 10 enemies at you, then rinse and repeat. Neverwinter: Same. Dragon age origins: Same. Mass effect: Same. Mass effect 2: Same, but even worse.
Atleast combat is good in fallout 4. Shoot legs from enemy and they start crawling at you, shoot their weapon from their arms and every weapon is useful, unlike in mass turd 1 where only useful weapon is assault rifle or mega mass turd 2 where only good weapon is sniper rifle.
And you can sneak to avoid combat, thats not possible in any bioware games.
Also i find the main quest in fallout 4 far more interesting than what mass effect or any quest that bioware has made.
Honestly, the most aggregious thing for me is how utterly boring it is. The quests were usually just poorly veiled fetch/kill quests, the most fun thing was wandering aimlessly, but even then, it only lasts for a small period of time. This is caused by boring AF FPS gameplay, where there are very few differences between weapons, even for uniques.