Had a great time with this. You can tell just how much more is going on under the surface in New Vegas when compared to both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. The alignment system, the what seems like infinite amount of ways you can finish side quests, etc. Even though it’s a smaller game, New Vegas feels like a much deeper and fuller experience. It’s extremely impressive.

But (uh oh, here comes the O word), I do think both the writing and story are kind of overrated. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great and a lot better than what’s found in the Bethesda titles, but I’ve heard the words “greatest of” thrown around when folks talk about this game and I just do not agree. Things still go from 0 to 100 relatively quickly for example, which is something I’ve disliked about every single Fallout story.

The gameplay’s almost exactly the same as Fallout 3’s so there’s not a lot to talk about, but I will say that companions felt a lot more competent this time around. It’s also by far the buggiest Fallout game unfortunately, especially during the endgame. It feels like most of the complicated under-the-surface systems start breaking apart. I even ran into a game-breaking bug that was related to the platinum chip, but I thankfully had an earlier save to revert to.