Some of this is obviously personal preference and opinion, and not everyone will agree, but I want to air my thoughts so far, based on my playing time, and that of some friends as well.

Warning #1: Very long, but very detailed Warning#2: Will attempt to keep as spoiler free as possible, referencing vaguely, without much detail, but still kind of spoiler-ish for the game in general. I love Fallout games, and this game is a good game for sure. What it isn't, is Fallout.

*PROS:

-Settlement building, a bit clunky, and I despise privet hedges, but I love that we can do this!!

-Weapon modding, while it feels like it limits the amount of weapons in the game, (as there are some mods/combinations that may never get touched or used), it adds a cool new element

-Cait..enough said <3

-Nick Valentine is pretty much the best voiced and dialogued character in this game, and my favorite vanilla companion of any Fallout. (sorry Nick, favorite all time companion is a modded one named Vanessa from New Vegas, she was amazingly done and I hope the author of her makes one for FO4)

-Once the creation kit is released, (come on guys, that's like, the best part imo of pc games, and I wish it had been pretty much finished and usable around launch time), I feel like some absolutely EPIC mods will hit the game.

-A lot of potential if they do things right for DLC and such. Maybe add seasons in, to a degree, and each real life holliday causes towns to decorate accordingly.

*CONS:

-You can't really be an evil guy, not that I do in games anyways usually, but that's the point, RPGs are about CHOICE

-Your choices have almost no effect in the game

-You get rushed through the beginning, meaning the main driving force of the game, doesn't drive you at all

-Linear main story with a very bad ending that leaves a sour taste, resolves nothing, and invalidates the, (already non driven motivation), drive to find out the truth and fix things

-Choices feel so limited, especially since most of the time, the choices lead to the same result

-Main factions, of which it feels there are too few of, lead to crap choices at the end of their stories, with no way to change what has to be done

-Might be personal bias here, but I miss the old system where skills/perks actually influenced dialogue and other things, and also miss gear degradation. It was something you had to keep on top of, and really made you more careful and tactical, so as to preserve your stuff long enough to finish an area and get it repaired.

-You can max out a character in every way and get every perk and max them. The great thing about an RPG, is that you can build specific roles with characters. There are actual builds people play and fit into and attempt to perfect. By every player being able to level until infinity. and max every single thing, there is nothing UNIQUE about any players. Sure, you have melee types, snipers, etc...but they could switch on a dime to be absolutely any role, any time. Let the mods do that, it shouldn't be a vanilla component. A level 300 Sole Survivor for example, can just mow over everything no problem and doesn't have to approach anything, with any sort of tactical mindset or thought

-Game is too easy. I have NEVER liked playing games on their hardest difficulty, as it just doesn't feel worth the frustration to me, yet, I play this on survival, because that feels like hard mode to me. Enemies become bullet sponges for awhile, but even that goes away once you get a bit higher and have a good weapon. If enemies continued scaling with you, it would be much better than just adding a bunch of HP to them

-Companions feel useless at some points. I like keeping one along, but since they have a level cap and you don't, they become something to just BE there. You can't adjust their tactics in any way like New Vegas, nor do they really fulfill any specific roles either.

-Voice acting, I actually don't mind if it's voiced or not, but some of the voice acting is...pretty lackluster...Personally, I really dislike the Travis character, and he is the main reason I don't listen to the radio. I mean, your choices pretty much, are a station with some good music, but a vj some may like and some may not, classical music, (which I mean, not my cup of tea personally, and even THAT goes away if you choose the majority of ways the game can end, so those that DO like it, lose it), and some radio stories? Little more variety would have been nice, including the ability to place your own music into a personal station. (may not be immersive, but not everyone would have to use it, nor does everyone care about using the radio for lore reasons, they may just want some music in game)

-Many, many missed opportunities. You never get to choose any kind of race you want to be, like super mutant, synth, ghoul... Though that may be a lot of extra work to bring it into the story somehow, still would be worth it. The area where the bombs land has nothing interesting there really, combat zone is a big letdown to what could have been, Diamond City is super small and not very impressive...A cool feature would be to set up your own shop stall there, upgradeable, and place someone, or a protectron, in charge, and earn some caps that way. (yes you can build traders at your settlements, but the supposed, "hub", location could be a cool place to have a main shop

-It's been 200 years, (can we not have a modern Fallout that isn't set in roughly the same 10-20 years or so?), how have people NOT learned to rake leaves or pick up trash in settlements? I mean, yea, some mods have made that a thing, but why should mods have HAD to?

-Feels like a lack of enemy types, especially when it comes to raiders. Apparently all raiders are united? No separate factions of them?

-Romance feels...empty...sure, some of the dialogue is really pretty good for trying to romance someone, (I'm a big fan of how Cait talks when romancing her, feels like a lot of character depth and soul baring). After that however, it just falls flat, you don't feel like it matters.

-Why does settlement defense really matter much? You can build the best possible defense, but once you get attacked, unless you are there, things get destroyed anyways.

-Companions ruin sneaking...

-Everything in the entire map just feels way too similar, no variety.

-Only one companion allowed, would be nice to have 2, especially with passive dialogue, could be plenty of jokes inserted there or drama, or witty banter, etc...At least 3 and NV, (if I remember correctly, it's been a bit), let you have 1 human and 1 non human at the same time

-Weapon customization feels limited. I mean, who ISN'T going to use the parts that add the best stats? If maybe there were more options that let you paint the weapons, and choose different looking types of each mod, we could make some really unique ones

-Feels like Bethesda made more of a skeleton and framework of a game for modders to finish and pretty up for them

-Please, Bethesda, stop trying to rebuild the same engine over and over and push it to the limit, hurting a lot of things in the process. Use a new engine so you can push the limit even higher and create not just a game, but an experience that can't easily be forgotten!

-Pretty big lack of children and their roles in this one, at least it feels that way.

-The UI is still pretty clunky, the map, especially local, is a pain, especially with annoying scanlines and being hard to make out sometimes. The color of the HUD in power armor is headache inducing...

-When you're done reading this review, another settlement needs our help, let me mark it on your map

On the races thing and enemy type thing, obviously aliens exist in this universe, so why not let them play a bigger part? Surely they can't ALL be bad and want to kill whatever they run across? Alien companion maybe? (preferably a different type of alien, as the current type aren't something I personally would want to run around with). Different alien races, some willing to talk with us and to be in society

Lastly, yes, mods can and will improve/fix/add on to a lot of this, they shouldn't HAVE to do some of it, as it could have been vanilla.

Overall, I'm having fun playing the game, but I don't feel like I'm playing Fallout