How are you enjoying yourself?

I finished the game yesterday. With two exceptions, I completed every side quest I could find. One was in Byzantium and I didn't get it until later. It involved modeling different types of armor. I didn't have the armors saved anywhere, and didn't feel like running around to get them.

The other side quest that I didn't complete was due to a bug. In the process of completing the quest to find out about the Early Retirement Program, I killed a bunch of mechanicals and pissed the Board off so much that I became kill-on-sight to them. Any Board affiliated guards, and some Board affiliated named NPCs would attack me on sight, including the quest giver. Unnamed NPCs still counted as "enemies" for the sake of limiting fast travel. This made getting back to my ship extremely difficult. I ran, and managed to make it back to my ship. I did story stuff and eventually got my negative Board reputation set back to 0%.

Returning to Byzantium, now the UNNAMED NPCs would shoot me on sight but the guards didn't shoot until I shot back at the civilians. I figured maybe this was a bug because I had left Byzantium while in combat, so maybe it didn't reset. I replayed about an hour of the game, and got back to the point where my reputation was reset. Unnamed NPCs were still "enemies," but at least the guards, named NPCs, and unnamed NPCs were no longer attacking me on sight. Except for the quest giver of that one quest. She attacked me on sight, and responding to her attack resulted in the guards attacking. I reloaded my save and avoided her.

I then completed the game, which ends kind of abruptly. Still, there was voiceover narration saying everything that happened to the colony and my companions afterwards, and I admit to being a sucker for that kind of thing. It seemed to make sense with all the choices I had made. The ending opens up a possible sequel that has the potential to be very different and interesting. There was one major decision during a side quest that should've resulted in a bit of change at the end, but was never mentioned again.

I'm a long time Obsidian fan, so I was always going to play this. The writing, dialogue, and voice acting are all top-notch. The companions are the archetypical companions one would expect in this game (and two of them are very clearly Firefly-inspired), but they're acted well and 4/6 of them are actually likable (with one having their real character growth moment at the end).

Usually in an RPG like this, you get to the point where money is irrelevant and your character is so powerful that nothing really presents a challenge. Playing on the hard difficulty, even combat against basic enemies was a challenge for probably 3/4 of the game. Money is always tight because it's used to upgrade weapons and armor, and the prices become outrageously expensive with no obvious way to get more money. I would've liked some more side quests in the form of a bounty board or something similar.

My biggest disappointments are the of lack variety in weapons and armor, the way weapon modding works, and the perk system. There are about half a dozen perks that are just about addressing carrying weight. The thing that sucks the most in RPGs is a thing that the game asks you to spend multiple perks to mitigate. It's a bad system that doesn't really offer much in the way of variety.

Overall, though, I played this game for the world, story, characters, and choices, and those were mostly great. This game is both what I expect and what I like from Obsidian. I'd love to see what comes next in this universe.

4/5

I stopped playing after about 7 hours because I found it to be too mechanical, had too much busywork, and felt no connection to the characters nor story.

Objectively, it is well made; but I personally found next-to-no enjoyment out of it.