tl;dr
Keep your money until next year's christmas. The modders will have to work double shifts to finish this console game.
With the exception of the first ten minutes and what you saw in the trailers, this review is spoiler free.
The Pro's:
* there's alot of Fallout in here
* modding support should be decent since its based on the Skyrim engine
* the combat feels fluid enough for a RPG
* ironsights for most guns
* VATS now slows down time instead of pausing the game (I like it)
* so far no gamestopping bugs except for constant crashes when I exit the game
* borderless fullscreen mode
* Apple/Android app is a nice touch for people who like to have the map open at all times, it works for me
* animated hair (PhysX?)
* not a single CTD so far
* Dogmeat is kinda useful now, he pins down opponents, occasionally finds loot piles and won't die five minutes after you found him (like he did in Fallout 3)
* Dogmeat goes into "sneak mode" when you do, looks very cute
* Dogmeat generally behaves like a "real" dog, he runs away from you to sniff at things, runs ahead or stays back for a bit, he doesn't seem like a follower bot
* conversations are much more natural than in previous Bethesda games (more than 2 actors involved, actions happening, etc,), but they're bugged to hell, more on that below
* you can move the camera arround freely during conversations and even run arround, the talker will continue to talk and wait until you focus him again to present your four response options, no more being tidally locked to a single NPC
* interesting armor system (you can strap armor on top of your armor, like shoulderpads)
* you can use the Minigun from the Power Armor without actually using the Power Armor (weird, but its Fallout)
* Ghouls have become semi-zombies, some are laying arround like a corpse until they notice you or continue to crawl when their legs are gone, try to jump & bite you without arms
* tinkering with your Power Armor feels like working on your own car
* I was sceptical about the voiced protagonist, but the female does a decent job, it will make modding quite a bit harder though
* If you play the standard female player character (the one shown in the trailers), Piper looks almost exactly like you. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but for RP-reasons I will pretend that she is my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-niece.
The Con's:
* boring but also rushed prologue/tutorial in the most ugly environment imaginable
* yes, even more boring than the doctor's questions in F:NV
* getting the mighty Power Armor ten minutes into the game is an odd design choice
* no food/water required, a step back from F:NV
* "Survival" difficulty has nothing in common with survival games, not even F:NV
* C-movie quality dialogs, at least during the first hours, it gets better the moment you meet Piper
* the village building is vastly oversimplified (I razed 3 buildings in 10 seconds) and feels like its been rushed on top of the game for feature creep
* the village building quickly becomes a chore thanks to the ridiculous UI
* still the same outworldy "hacking" of computer terminals (guess 4 times, then get locked out, although this time you can retry after 10sec), reminds me of Sudoku
* holstered weapons disappear from existance
* Bethesda tries to copy Bioware's RPG dialog cutscenes ... and fails, sometimes the camera goes nuts and shows a blank wall, sometimes it zooms to intimate distances so you can count the actors nose hairs (if the detail level were that good, that is)
* enemies fall out of the sky, Dragon Age 2-style
* enemies regulary get stuck, jitter arround, generally bug out
* cars still got built-in nukes that go off if you look at them funny (it's okay if you like it, I don't)
* extreme loading times even for small buildings, SSDs are a huge help, but still
* ugly, washed out graphics, it could be my imagination but I remember Fallout 3 to be prettier and less cartoon'y
* FPS rollercoaster, even though my Skyrim runs at constant 60 FPS with 2K textures
* don't even try to compare Fallout 4's landscape to Skyrim, it will make you weep
* wax museum character models
* gigantic, oversized console UI (as usual)
* literally the most unintuitive UI controls for a PC game of all times, Bethesda tried really really hard to pi** off PC players this time, this goes especially to the Pip-boy handling
* several keys hardcoded, for example you can't switch the F-key back to 1st/3rd person like it was in Skyrim
* EVE Online character creator with bonkers Gamepad-turned-into-Keyboard controls
* dialogs only offer four responses with one trying to be extra-witty, like those dumbed down Bioware RPGs
* console not working (for me), setting FoV to an acceptable level made extra hard
* talent tree looks pretty and funny, but also unnessecarily bloated (pro tip: you can scroll down!)
* most weapons take up a quarter of the screen, I'm not even talking about rocket launchers, just pistols
* loot menu pops up everywhere and ruins immersion, no more opening boxes to see what's inside, especially distracting in combat
* talking to sleeping people sometimes makes them stand up immediatly, instead of waking and getting up
More to follow ...
