Put this off for so many years, have had in on multiple platforms and always liked playing it, but some of the collectathon stuff got super tedious and a bit boring after a while, as there's way too much stuff to do, but kind of... not enough at the same time? A lot of filler for side stuff, but at least it helps with progress.

Story was absolutely worth playing through though. Was really well-written, and full of charm. Ending made me tear up a little. This is more than just a GTA-clone. It has a well designed map, interesting direction with it not being very gunplay focused, and has some really fun combat mechanics that don't get old that quickly, as you're constantly learning new moves to spice up encounters. There's a lot of cool vehicles, but honestly driving is a little strange at times. Not a lot of main missions really. I think like 50 maybe total? Could've used more of those instead of so many short side-objectives, but all of the missions were pretty good, and nothing super tedious. Just the collectathon and side missions were mostly tedious.

Also I don't recommend doing the DLC. I only did so for all achievements, but they both didn't really add anything to the story and felt more like cheap cash-ins. Wish the publishers had this dev team work on DLC that centered around the future of Hong Kong after the story, and perhaps a DLC exploring the events prior to this game, as both are kinda vague. Would've made for more compelling DLC. Though these two are just holiday-themed DLC's and feature very little content. The content there is very lackluster.

A few things bugged me about achievement hunting. Triad XP takes forever to get, and requires you to go way out of your way to get to level 10. Some of the stuff was bugged too.

Bugs are kind of common on PC it seems. Had a few issues where gun sounds, car engines, or dialogue would play over everything else going on, and persist no matter what I did. Exiting the game fixed it. Also a few missions became bugged a couple times where objectives were not visible. Two of the DLC ones involved driving cars into the water and they gave you no marker. There's also sometimes graphical bugs which maybe was due to me playing at 170 FPS, but barrels and other props sometimes flew in the air. People sometimes were stuck in the ground, and sometimes getting into cars shot me or other people up into the air, or fixated them into weird positions. Not game-breaking, but kinda takes out of the experience.

Main story and gameplay is worth a play though. If you don't really care about achievement hunting, this is a fantastic game. I won't say too much about it, other than it's just really well-written. Probably see no real reason to play this again. Doesn't really have any replay value I don't think. Kinda sad I finally 100%ed it, as I kinda enjoyed playing it a lot, but now I can move on to other things.

Easily one of the best games of all time. Absolutely stands on its own in multiple levels. I have too many hours in this to count. At least 1000-2000 from Xbox 360, and around 200 on PC.

With how much praise this gets, there's really not much people can say about this now, without just parroting what's already been said though. Yeah; this game is one of the rarest open world games that 100% deserves the open world. There might be some emptiness at play, but it feels like an accurate depiction of the real life place it's trying to portray. The wild west, Las Vegas-esuqe atmosphere just goes with this post-apocalyptic game like two peas in a pod. Much of the voice acting is top-notch, and albeit suffers from the Bethesda trope of so many minor characters being voiced by the same pool of around 5 voice actors, they all definitely feel likable or hatable. This is just from top to bottom one of the greatest games of all time.

So much to explore, and so much to do. Character builds don't feel too linear, but there's definitely charm to hyperfocusing on specific skillset. Certain skills matter more than others, which is just always how Fallout games have been. The unlinearity really lets you try out everything you find, which makes the game more fun to discover new areas. For those that wish; lots of lore is hidden in each individual area, which some may consider cheap lore, but I absolutely adore it. One of my favorite pieces of lore is entirely through terminals, and said areas reward you with some of my favorite items in the game. That's how much detail there is in just about everything.

You cannot talk about the magnificent levels of detail without talking about the sheer unlinearity of the story. Unlike most unlinear games; this one really takes notes of your path, and you see the impact of it as it goes on. I'm at least a few dozen playthroughs into this game now, and I am still finding out new dialogue based on how differently I've done things. That's how much attention to detail there is.

Of course I must bring up what others say; that this was all done in 18 months, which is why much of the planned content was re-worked into DLC. All of the DLC's are fantastic, and completely worthwhile experiences. You can expect a few to maybe play differently to how you've played the game before, but they're all top-notch and all link to each other in some form. As well as linking to the main story in some way or another too. One of the DLC's in particular: "Dead Money" has got to be my favorite part about the game.

In 2024; this has aged perfectly well. Maybe the FPS mechanics are a bit clunky if you play on controller, but for keyboard players, rejoice in how fantastic this aged. I do recommend some performance mods and retexture packs if you wanna spruce up the game a bit. Thankfully the commonly recommended ones tend to be very easy to install, and don't take away from the vanilla experience of the game. Some bug fixes might help some too, but I tend to not play with them; as I find some of the bugs easy to avoid, and others to make the game more fun. There's lots of guides for these things. So an easy search engine search can hook you up.

All in all; this game is easily one of my favorite games ever. A masterclass. Well-detailed, well-loved, and well-maintained by a wonderful community of people who all see this for what it is. The best Fallout game. One of the best role-playing games. One of the best games of all time. It's hard to find things to hate about this game, and if you do dislike this game, it's understandable. I know people who played this and trashed the shit out of it, and now it's one of their favorite games of all time. Most things with perfect scores always have their share of flaws. I honestly do not have much ill to say about this. It's absolute perfection in my eyes.

There's so many janky elements in this game, but I am generally willing to excuse it due to how much fun this game is.

I feel like all of the FromSoft games I've always came away with a sour note, but as I keep playing this game on new playthroughs; I start to appreciate them even more. This one is the game I seem to just keep appreciating more about it as I keep replaying.

All of the bosses are difficult, but not really in such a way that I feel defeating them becomes a chore rather than entertaining. I mean, sometimes I still get a bit frustrated at myself because the outdated mechanics do get in the way at times, but largely I feel I've become good enough at how this plays that it's not much of an issue.

I feel though, Dark Souls does have certain things it does right as opposed to the other titles FromSoft has released since then. Notably the parry system. I like how forgiving it is once you really know how it works. I get that they probably realized how overpowered it was, which is why in modern games its frame-based depending on what weapon you use, but the muscle memory has meant that I've had a really hard time adapting to other games.

Overall though this is probably my favorite soulslike game. It's definitely the one I return to most at this point, and still always get excited every time I start a new playthrough.