I just completed the game (without the expansion). It's definitely on the top of the barrel when it comes to single character games, maybe my very favourite among those.
The "fight in post-apo creepy subway with night vision watches" setting is cool as it is always, and I like the tone which is ballsy but also not retarded down-to-earth dark.
I like how the world is essentially a (very) big, (very) open dungeon, with some emphasis on coherency and good balance between big size and fleshed-out enough mundane area, leave alone all the extensive towns and unique dungeons and encounters.
One of the best part of the game is certainly how interactive environment is and how fleshed-out dungeons are.
I used stealth, lockpicking and intimidation and it's obvious there are many parts I would have approached differently with hacking and persuasion instead.
The dungeons are often very good, with extremely good level desing which cleverly acknowledges the character's abilites, and the dungeon with the AI in Deep caverns especially is excellent.
I think factions should really first and foremost be a way to reach a same goal via different means (with quests from each one to gain more influence than another because it's only natural and because why not, but I think it's not the most important aspect), so in the junkyard especially I like how they simply open a different entrance to the real deal. The junkyard is also a good representation of how content is "gated" (I mean, not really gated in fact) the very good way, with simply some high but far from stupidly high lockpicking check, there's a good chance you would only go there after getting a quest, but maybe you won't and it's no big deal. I think the game is a very good example of how to gate quest content overall when many other games do it much, much worse. Loosely gated content and also skippable stuff that let place to emergent narrative, in fact for example after managing to enter the Institute of Tchort I think I did not take any more quest for the rest of the game from the tchortists nor anyone except for this lonely man in the Deep Caverns I think, while chatting with tchortists seems like the natural way to go since I had to hide my way into fully hostile places. It's very cool the game lets you do so and that it's very fun too since the level design is so good.
Deep caverns is very good at being a huge area where you're given an objective and you just have to uncover how to deal with it and deal with it. It wouldn't be shameful as a full standalone game, so it's quite impressive it's finally a little part of the game.
Finally combat is more than decent for a single character game. I used stealth-enhancing vests, bombs (molotov cocktails especially). For the rest I started with SMGs, then also got a fifth point in strength to be able to a sniper rifle because I thought it worked better than laser pistols against enemies which took no damage from the SMGs (it was also good to deal with the arena). I also used an Acid pistol to deal with the final fight in the arena and then also against some enemies (like this black crawler, you get about no reward for this one by the way?). I also switched from SMGs to an assault rifle which only requires 5 in strength because I felt like the 48 AP extra burst attack I got when killing an enemy was a better extra burst than a 22 AP SMG one. When taking my last stat point, I think, I checked all the feats, I don't think I did before, it seems assault rifles are better with higher strength because you can get a feat which replaces 5 bullet bursts by 7 bullet bursts or something, but that's fine, I thought my character was good enough and fun enough to play. If anything the parts with quickly respawning enemies at the end (but also overall some mundane cave parts) may have been a bit boring without stealth, so although' I often don't use stealth in games I thought it was a good choice in this one.
Overall a very good game.
