I agree with this review for the most part.
They really learned nothing in the story department, it was basically the same general idea from Fallout 3 but instead of the Enclave it's the super spewky Institute, and you can actually side with them now!
I won't lie, the combat is actually very enjoyable, and is easily the best out of all of the newer fallout games. I haven't played around with melee combat too much though, but it did seem like watered down Skyrim combat, not that I'd expect much more from a Fallout game.
The worst bug for me is when you try to switch weapons but instead get stuck with no weapon in your hands, and sometimes your hands / gun disappear and you have to fuck around with the camera to make them pop up again. Sometimes I get stuck at crafting benches though, usually the cooking station when I don't have the resources for the vegetable starch, it'll lock me out and I'll have to load the autosave.
I really like the map, it's just a shame that they decided to focus on player-made settlements which have very little to no depth to them at all. I really do like the settlement building system, it's just incredibly disappointing that there's really only two or three native settlements and the rest have to built manually.
The dialogue is by far the largest let down, and I'd say that it mainly has to do with them going with a voice actor for the main character. They really cut down on the amount of dialogue variety that could be in the game, and then took it another step by implementing the worst dialogue wheel I've ever used. I'll go with the most well known example of this and point out the "HATE NEWSPAPERS" option when you first get to Diamond City, who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to limit your choices to Yes, No (yes), Sarcastic and Info (yes)?
There's very little roleplaying to be done here as well, which is largely due to your character's back story being 100% set in stone. Loving wife and newborn baby, happy family man living in a fenced middle class neighborhood with a vault right next door. Then the bombs fall, and you have to get revenge and get back your son! Doesn't really leave a whole lot of options for future character development, and there really don't seem to be any opportunities to be anything but the "good guy" regardless. Obsidian really got it right with New Vegas, in my opinion. You knew what your profession was, but aside from that, you had a blank slate to work with, and you could really decide how your character would interact with the Mojave.
The main story is pretty confusing at times too, since you have 4 factions to work with but no real way to tell what your standing is with each one. You're left hoping that you've taken the right steps to remain aligned with your faction of choice, until you get the final quest that lets you "lock in" with them. Unfortunately, it's very easy to lock in with the wrong faction, and many people are complaining about the Brother Hood quest line locking them in against the Institute and Railroad with practically no warning. I decided to stick with the Railroad, but I've still found myself working with the Institute at the same time. I've done a good number of quests for both factions, and often times they're completely contradictory. Desdemona from the Railroad sent me out to kill some coursers at Ticonderoga, and not even five minutes later I was helping the Institute convince a dude to join them and help them with their reactor, which made me piss off a bunch of minutemen in the process.
I still like the game, and I'm going to be putting a fucking huge amount of hours into it, especially after the GECK drops and the real mods start coming out. But I really think it's kind of a let down when compared to F1, F2 and NV. I didn't even play the first two games until well after I played Fallout 3, so I don't really have a nostalgia bias. I really hope the next fallout game will at least have some of the Obsidian developers from NV on it's team.
