The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds was overall a very enjoyable experience. It’s strong points are the story, dialogue, quests, and the early RPG progression systems. The characters and quests are clever and I laughed lots. There are always multiple ways to complete quests; sneak, shoot, or talk usually. It does a good job of letting you play how you want. The early progression is fun but this leads into the main fault of the game which limits it from being an A. The game is way too easy after the first section. I rarely died in the last 75% of the game and I played on hard. Because the game is so easy you don’t really have to think about how you want to spend your perks, or spend your money, or upgrade your equipment. It doesn’t matter, you are going to walk in and crush the enemy anyways. This was disappointing because the gameplay itself is very basic the same way fallout gameplay is basic. You aren’t playing the game for the gameplay, so the only thing that kept me entertained during the later half of the game was the world building, story, and just general enjoyable dialogue. Don’t get me wrong it is still very fun, but it would have been better if I had to actually think about decisions more. If this game had a better sense of progression and required more strategy to how you played then it could have been an A.

Final Score: A-  

This was really good and there's a lot to like, even though my review is kind of negative and goes over the few things that keep it from being a must-play. The final stretch kind of funnels you down one path all while taking away your character's agency and giving it all to Welles. Stealth does the Deus Ex Invisible War kind of thing where there's always a stealthy solution to everything... and it's to find the little hole in the wall that just walks past any confrontation (and no XP for doing so). Too much focus on combat and looting for (a) a game that should be more of an adventure and (b) because of the limited options with weapon types, damage types, and ammo, makes loot almost entirely pointless. Stuff like the science weapons quest or finding unique variants are fun but don't do enough to solve the problem that you will have thousands and thousands of bullets of each of the three types at the end of the game - and that's including with heavy use.

The hub worlds were pretty small, too, which made a lot of the above feel limited. You finish exploring each world quickly, pick up some quests in the handful of towns per world, and that's it. Once you walk through the world once (a pretty short, single-direction walk), the only change between each visit is that enemies respawn. Enemies that never really change. You'd be forgiven for relying on fast travel after doing your round-trip of each world. It's not like you lose out on anything interesting. It also makes the worlds feel completeable, which is a weird goal for an RPG. You go to the handful of major locations, pick up a handful of quests, and loot some stuff so you have way too much money, medicine, and ammo. There are few if any incidental locations like a Bethesda game or even Breath of the Wild so curiosity isn't rewarded too heavily beyond a small handful of unique weapons or geographic formations.

It's one of those RPGs where the builds can at times have very different playthroughs (though there's always those side quests that are combat, period), but it almost would have been better off had you picked from "Combat, Stealth, or Talky" builds at the beginning and ignored all the stats.

I also thought it was weird how trivial it was to be friends with every faction up until the very end, where you are friends with every single faction save one. It's cool that your reputation has a pretty large impact on the last world, but all you need to do is do some quests on each world and boom you're friends with everybody. There was even one big decision I made that stopped me from 100% a faction on Groundbreaker, but it didn't matter because the outcome of my decision only prevented me from doing something, it wasn't a choice.

Which is kind of the biggest problem is that nothing was a choice, except Welles vs. The Board at the very end. Your reputation had an effect but it was only ever a benefit, never a choice. Unless you really messed up or had a bad character build, you're going to max everything and get the best everything. You don't lose out on relationships or quests or loot based on who you side with. You just get a reward or you don't, making your choices feel like they don't have a real impact.