Fallout 4 is the second best Fallout game after New Vegas. The hate I see for FO4 is unwarranted. While the lack of real choice and the repetition of radiant quests in the base game are kind of a letdown, I think it's more than made up for by the settlement crafting features and the storylines featured in the DLCs (especially in Far Harbor). The quests and ethical dilemmas in Far Harbor were really great and a major improvement over most of those in the base game. Also, while some people have criticized the aspect of having to scavenge for parts all the time, I found that it made exploring every corner of the world more fun and worthwhile. There were often areas and locations that I would have otherwise seen no point in visiting. I really hope this comes back in the next single player Fallout game. I also like that every location respawns new enemies and scrap after a given period of time. This seemed a little more realistic, as in real life I think that raiders and others would eventually come in and take over previously cleared out locations and buildings. It also means there's always more shit to scavenge if you need to go back on a supply run. One complaint I would make about FO3 and New Vegas is that once you've cleared out an area or done all of the available quests in a particular area or settlement, there are few reasons to return. So I guess I'm torn on stuff like radiant quests in FO4. On one hand, they can be tedious and redundant, but on the other hand, I enjoy returning to certain locations at times. I enjoy returning to settlements to improve structures and defenses periodically. I enjoy building up various settlements in unique ways, for instance I built a water treatment plant at Sanctuary. In my head canon, Sanctuary is built up to be a supplier of fresh drinking water to the rest of the commonwealth. Meanwhile I designed my settlement build for Dalton Farm on the Island to be a port town where major supply shipments could come through. I had a big concrete dock reaching out into the ocean, and you come in to see a restaurant, tavern, trading post, etc. Every settlement has its own unique feel so it's cool to build them up accordingly. Some can have the feel of major trading hub towns, while others feel more like backwater frontier outposts. I liked sending all of my ghoul settlers to the Slog and thought of it as a fortified refuge for them, since there is a lot of prejudice against ghouls in the Fallout universe and I wanted them to have a place where they could live without discrimination.
I think if Bethesda could make a game that blended the fun of settlement building with the choice and roleplaying of New Vegas, they would have the perfect Fallout game. Now that Obsidian and Bethesda are both owned by the same company, I would love to see another collaboration, with Obsidian using the Fallout 4 engine and gameplay mechanics but writing something better than the same old tired "you are the savior of the world and must choose one faction while wiping out all the others" that seems to be standard with Bethesda games. I liked that in NV, even the supposedly "good" choices almost always carried their own consequences and ramifications--nothing was ever a black and white choice and one could make a case for supporting even the most "evil" factions like Caesar's Legion.
Bethesda makes beautiful games with awesome mechanics, but they really fall short in the story department. Fallout 4 was basically Skyrim set in the Wasteland. And limiting player speech choices to 4 in Fallout 4 really bothered me, especially when it was often the case that there might only be 1 or 2 actual choices available with most of the available speech options leading to the same 1 or 2 paths. It was lazy and the writers could have done better in that regard.
Another frustrating thing is that Bethesda doesn't do much to fix bugs. On console, I still find the game lags a lot in the Boston downtown area. I have to save constantly as the framerate drags and my game crashes frequently. It's a shame and I find myself almost avoiding that area altogether--this sucks, because there's a lot of cool ruins to explore there. I dislike how Bethesda basically leaves it up to modders to fix their buggy games.
I don't mean to rag on Bethesda so much, I really do love their games, but I want to be able to actually play them without worrying about a million little bugs they aren't going to fix. Of course one could argue it's a 6 year old game and they shouldn't have to worry about addressing these issues, but there is still a pretty large and active fanbase for FO 4, as I think it takes a while to play through for every faction (I've still avoided playing for the brotherhood or institute yet), there are various player builds one can use, building up settlements and supply lines doesn't get old for a while, etc. I did get the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch, a mod that addresses some of the bugs and issues, but that's what I'm talking about, Bethesda should've fixed that themselves instead of leaving it to unpaid fans to make mods that fix their issues. And that patch still doesn't fix the lagginess and crashing I experience in areas like downtown Boston.
