I wanted to like this game (with its supposed focus on freedom and interesting characters), but could not.
It felt very dated, and there were too many immersion breaking flaws and bugs. In terms of graphics, level design, and animations, this feels like a game from 2005 (to a lesser extent also true for TES:Oblivion, but it certainly bothered me less there). The main quest offers good freedom of choice, but otherwise quests are mostly quantity over quality – a hallmark of Bethesda. Some of the characters were entertaining though, and voice acting is fairly good. Character leveling and perks are also quite well done.
The interface looks cool but is a total pain to use. There are no keyboard hotkeys, which means switching weapons or healing requires browsing through the full menu each time! Combat feels unbalanced (Oblivion and Skyrim were slightly better here) ranging from OK to frustratingly tedious or difficult. The difficulty of various foes often does not match with the expectations the game lore may give you. Enemies run around without any movement inertia making them frustratingly difficult to aim at. Hitbox detection is not great, and your bullets are often blocked by invisible walls if they pass near geometry. I also had lots of enemies get stuck behind geometry, with only legs clipping through the wall. Worst of all, at one point, my gun would not fire bullets – I would hear and see the gun fire, and the ammo counter would work, but no bullets – I got eaten alive, both ingame and in terms of frustration.
The mod experience was bad: I could not get most mods to work despite following all instructions etc. The mod scene may be vibrant, but it is still a total mess. It lacks curatorial refinement and there are no "1-click install" total-overhaul supermods (like the "complete" mod series for the Stalker games).
Buried underneath all the flaws is a good game, and you might find it, but I gave up after days of digging.
It felt very dated, and there were too many immersion breaking flaws and bugs. In terms of graphics, level design, and animations, this feels like a game from 2005 (to a lesser extent also true for TES:Oblivion, but it certainly bothered me less there). The main quest offers good freedom of choice, but otherwise quests are mostly quantity over quality – a hallmark of Bethesda. Some of the characters were entertaining though, and voice acting is fairly good. Character leveling and perks are also quite well done.
The interface looks cool but is a total pain to use. There are no keyboard hotkeys, which means switching weapons or healing requires browsing through the full menu each time! Combat feels unbalanced (Oblivion and Skyrim were slightly better here) ranging from OK to frustratingly tedious or difficult. The difficulty of various foes often does not match with the expectations the game lore may give you. Enemies run around without any movement inertia making them frustratingly difficult to aim at. Hitbox detection is not great, and your bullets are often blocked by invisible walls if they pass near geometry. I also had lots of enemies get stuck behind geometry, with only legs clipping through the wall. Worst of all, at one point, my gun would not fire bullets – I would hear and see the gun fire, and the ammo counter would work, but no bullets – I got eaten alive, both ingame and in terms of frustration.
The mod experience was bad: I could not get most mods to work despite following all instructions etc. The mod scene may be vibrant, but it is still a total mess. It lacks curatorial refinement and there are no "1-click install" total-overhaul supermods (like the "complete" mod series for the Stalker games).
Buried underneath all the flaws is a good game, and you might find it, but I gave up after days of digging.