35 hours in, level 20.
I got so swamped with questing content and places to explore, entering Vegas seems still far away.
Factions feel realistic and infuse the world with a great deal of depth and player with options. Quests are rarely of simple fed-ex kind and even when they are, they usually have a side effect - making player explore and thus find even more content. There are also "miscellaneous" quests which don´t make any use of quest markers rewarding a more proactive player. Lots of skill checks both in and out of dialogue.
Exploration is definitely rewarding and tougher places often reward player with unique or just good loot.
Dungeons I´ve visited were so far of two kinds.
Smaller caves/hideouts with mediocre to bad loot which make the ecosystem more believable/add flavour to exploration/give player a chance to score some exp points. Second type were vaults. I´ve visited two so far, one felt like System Shock 2 with tons of phat loot inside, the other had great story and effing ridiculous finale where I had to reload at least 10 times, heh.
I´m sure more types are yet to come.
I´m playing with two companions, one of whose made combat significantly easier, at least in open terrain. Their combat AI is a bit wacky in close quarters and in a more complicated terrain player needs to be a bit careful not to loose them, but overall they work well. On hard difficulty, they can die quite often and in some particular scenarios it was very difficult to keep both alive, so I don´t think they unbalance the game much.
Writing is solid, voice acting mediocre to good and I feel that for this kind of game NPCs have just the right amount of dialogues, giving them some depth without being excessively wordy. Great thing is how well "organized" the writing is - a lot content is inter-related, NPCs reference other NPCs, events, factions or places in the gameworld, gradually adding more depth to the world. Really, the more I play, the more world around comes alive. Since the game is extremely open ended, I´m sure everyone experiences this gradual "deepening" differently and it leads to a different bigger picture for everyone.
Hardcore mode is maybe a misnomer, because it doesn´t make the game significantly more difficult, but it adds a lot to the overall immersion value by bringing a sensible realism factor into the experience, as well as makes looting more worthwhile. Also, I don´t know how much it´s different from non-hardcore game,
but due to the limited carrying capacity I have to evaluate what to take with me rather often, even with strength 6, strong back perk and two companions to boot.
Crafting system is useful and quite complex and further rewards skill investment and exploring.
Wild Wasteland trait is quite subdued and doesn´t really change the overall feel of the game. These "wild" encounters are rare, nothing really fourth wall breaking and, again, reward exploration with some fun diversion. I also got really useful loot from one of these.
Anyway, even after 35 hours of playing, I think I´m still in a "scratching the surface" phase and since I´m already level 20, it makes me think levelling is definitely too fast. The mod which either raises the cap higher and accordingly adjusts encounters and maybe skill/perk gain, or makes the levelling slower will be a definite must for a potential second playthrough.
The game can be probably finished relatively fast, but thanks to the amount and quality of its content, I don´t think it´s a good way to experience it.
Had three crashes so far, encountered no apparent new bugs (just been lucky I guess), no slowdowns.
The game probably has its weaker aspects, but I´m so engrossed by the overall experience and the game´s good points right now that I frankly don´t see anything notable other than a bit bothersome UI and a bit suboptimal combat system. There was one quest tied to the main questline which was rather over the top, but since it was an exception rather than norm I didn´t mind it, plus it was fun in itself and its quest design was great. And it worked well as a throback to 50´s sci-fis.
Other than that, the world seems inherently consistent and organic.
Anyway, so far it´s definite thumbs up from me and right now I think this might end up being the best sandbox-y modern cRPG.
There is a leveling mod out there that decreases leveling speed by 70%. I'm not sure if it's tweakable or not. I've been to two small towns and all the areas between and I'm level 6 already. Leveling will need to be slowed down a bit for sure. 30 is the max level in this game and I'm 1/5th done already?
