Story is bland, forgetful, shallow, and outright stupid at points. Lack of factions, boring cookie-cutter quests, and just poor decisions in terms of story-telling are just a few broad complaints in this department.
Graphics are a non-factor for me, I never expect much in this department from Bethesda and the game looks good enough for my tastes. Though I do wonder how other devs are able to make massive open world games that look leagues ahead of F4.
Lip-syncing and voice acting are your standard Bethesda fare(Read: terrible). Preston's VA should consider a different line of work and Mama Murphy could easily fall into my list of most annoying vidya characters ever.
Roleplaying opportunities have been almost completely scrapped. The lack of skills really cuts into this, but that's more a personal preference of mine. Installing the full dialog UI mod is just downright disheartening once you begin to see how little choice you have in anything. My biggest complaint in this area however is the voiced protagonist. That decision was a new level of stupidity. I cannot for the life of me understand why Bethesda thought, at least in terms of overall quality, that was a good idea to implement and devote resources too.
Combat is better than F3 and NV (Comparisons to the old games is just apples and oranges so no point even bringing those up when it comes to gameplay for the most part). Dedicated grenade and melee buttons were nice additions.
Hacking mini-game is still boring and the fact that Bethesda hasn't gone back to the infinitely more entertaining Oblivion-style lockpicking mini-game baffles me. Both require almost zero effort and can be easily brute forced with no real thought or skill needed to complete.
Power armor feels pointless and unrewarding considering you get a full set almost 10 minutes out of the Vault and every other raider group seems to have their own makeshift set. [Side note: How the hell does the female MC know how to operate power armor? Is this ever explained?]
The settlement building is far and away the best thing this game has going for it. I've spent a large portion of my playtime just messing around with the settlements, but without mods to add fixes, new items, and limit removals, it quickly loses steam. Settlement defense is also a joke. Who cares that my guards are armed to the teeth and I've got the entire perimeter lined with heavy laser turrets with a Defense total in the 200s; If you don't fast travel back there right now your settlement is gonna be overrun by a handful of half-naked, drugged out raiders with pipe rifles!
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There's just so much about Fallout 4 that is mediocre to average. Bethesda did almost nothing to push the series forward or build on the previous gains made by them or Obsidian. Outside of the weapon mod system and the settlement building, nothing in this game has any depth whatsoever. It's a 5/10-6/10 game.
I love Bethesda games, been playing them since Redguard, but I make no qualms about what they offer in their games. They essentially give you a large sandbox that is really fun to play in, only the sandbox is littered with feces because the cat accidentally thought it was its litterbox. Sure you will always have loads of mods to shovel out most of the turds, but you'll never really be able to escape that lingering smell of piss and shit. Why anyone would ever willingly choose to play a Bethesda game on a console if they had a computer capable of handling the game is beyond me.
I'd call that my two-cents, but it feels more like a whole dollar. Anyways, feel free to pick apart any detail you feel like focusing on.
. I may not play that way much myself (I feel too bad playing an evil/asshole character in Bethesda games) but I think it should be doable. Especially in a game where they know that a big thing people focus on is being able to play who you want. They really lessoned that between the dialogue choices they give, the character being voiced, and giving a very set background to the character (that the dialogue choices kinda already assumes your personality).
