Dropped it like a stone at the 24 hour mark. Here's my TED talk.
I'll preface this mini-non-review-just-getting-my-thoughts-down with a disclaimer that I'm not a Bethesda hater. I've completed TES 3-5 and Fallout 1-4 and had a good time with mostly everything with the exception of Fallout 4, and even then I played it for 56 hours with nothing better to do. I WANTED to love this and spend a month with it. But I can't pretend.
I'll also start with the positives. It plays better than anything they've made before, like a decent "real" shooter. It looks good with the caveat that it's *for their style of game, where freaks have to have the ability to put 10,000 sandwiches in a room and have the game not crash. It sounds good, no complaints there. Some story highlights, as below. But none of that makes up for the fact that the game is dreadfully boring.
The main quest being the worst part of the game is nothing new for Bethesda, but they've hit a new low with this one. I'm 2/3rds done and the "big emotional moment" had no impact on me because the companion they told me to care about that didn't make it out was as shallow as a shower, and everything I'd done up to that point was a mind numbing fetch quest for abilities I never needed or wanted to use. A handful of side quests were interesting. The Mantis stuff, one about a rogue AI, and parts of the factions. Looking at the length of each, I'd about finished the UC, most of the rangers, some crimson fleet and not much Ryujin. Most of that was banal as it comes with some highlights. The Hannibal Lecter stand-in was somewhat interesting for a brief minute. Couldn't even begin to pretend about a single companion and it really doesn't help that the VA is mediocre across the board.
I haven't spent a penny at vendors because no gear was worth it compared to what I could scavenge and I couldn't afford a ship until I found a much better one that handled every space fight fine anyway. I saw no immediate benefit in base building but tried it and quickly ran out of myrid types of resource required after wasting an hour fiddling around with the resource extraction minigame where you find the ideal spot on a planet. The benefit? More resources to build more base, I guess. I completed maybe two research projects that I didn't use. I never upgraded or crafted a single thing because I felt no need. There's systems piled upon systems that I feel have no tangible benefit because the game is ostensible a first-person shooter and you can complete the entire thing by peeking from behind a wall and consistently headshotting a bullet sponge for two minutes. I've spent most of my game in loading screens because physically travelling between these places is never worth it, and when you're forced to, 99% of the time it's pressing numlock+shift and moving the mouse until you get there with no resistance.
I'm genuinely happy for the people that are having a blast with this, I really am. I bet if you're a space nerd this is one of the games you've always dreamed of, along with NMS. Sad to say, the setting alone isn't enough to distract me from a list of issues far longer than this already too-long post goes into. I'm not even half finished with my complaints and I'm struggling to thing of further positive things to say. A game should not require 24 hours to "get good", let alone 6 or 12. If anyone actually wasted their time reading this, thank you, and I hope you're having fun. For me, it's back to Baldur's Gate 3 for a third run before Spider-Man 2 or maybe even the Cyberpunk DLC.
) of time to play. I have been goofing around and AshleyFromWork just dinged level 21. I have not even started the main missions yet. I should probably get on that soon.
