Fallout 4

It's been a couple of weeks since I got the game, and I just beat the main story line today so I figured I'd give my thoughts.

It's a lot of fun really, game play is well done and especially at the beginning the story flows really well, giving a sense of urgency and connection that Bethesda's previous entries in the series don't really have, but it does have some problems as well. I'll do a list.

Pro

• The crafting system, if you like the Hearthfire expansion for Skyrim, you will really like the system here, many towns and locations have workbenches from which you can enter workshop mode and scrap local terrain, constructions, or some items for raw materials, which you can then build into homes, furniture, defenses, and shops, it is very deep and a massive time waster. It is pretty unintuitive at first though I'll give it that.
• The modding system, basically an extension of the crafting system with how it uses resource, this relies more on the junk you find laying around out on your adventures though. See a desk fan? Take it! It has screws in it that you need! Take all the duct tape and wonderglue you come across, virtually all mods need it, figuring out the stuff you need and going hunting for it is fun.
  As to modding itself, every weapon and armor has one or more slots that can hold a variety of mods, and you can do anything from strapping a heating coil to your sledgehammer to putting a night vision scope on your laser pistol... or a jet pack on your power armor. Using this feature it is possible to get a lot more life out of stuff you pick up early in the game than you might initially think.
• Combat, specifically outside of VATS, Bethesda seems to have made an effort to make the FPS element of the game a little more bearable than it has been in the past and I appreciate that.
• Dialogue system, instead of selecting a script from a menu of choices, you get a few options that indicate the direction you want the conversation to head, for the most part this works fairly nicely, although I do have to admit the prompts can be a little unclear, such as when I selected what I thought was a request for clarification and ended up having to murder a household.
• Choices, a problem with the previous games in the series, indeed one shared by most RPGs in general, is the good vs evil choices are very rigidly defined and the game goes out of its way to make you feel bad for choosing them, the choices are often between something like "save the kitten" and "Wear the kittens skull as a hat". Not so here, for the most part all the factions you interact with have their ups and downs, and the actions you take are pretty justifiable based on how the game sets up, basically you are from a Vault, as is usual, and your son has been stolen, when you escape the Vault your goal is to get him back. Now with that motivation it makes it understandable when you tell some random settler to fuck off when they ask you to deal with the raiders who are stealing their corn, or when you ally yourself with a faction of questionable morals but enough resources to help you find him.
  It also helps that the choices are rarely so clearcut as the example I gave above. there are shades of grey to be had and arguments that could be made for almost any path you choose, it's a major step up from the artificial freedom of a karma system and obvious good/evil choices.
• Great plot twist near the end, a few of em really, I was genuinely surprised and enjoyed it a lot.
  

Cons

• The story looses its urgency once you get off the rails you are on at the start of the game, it is a huge open world with lots of distractions, and the whole "rescue the family member" thing makes you want to get right to it, but the world keeps throwing major gameplay elements and factions with massive quest chains unrelated to this that sort of detract from the urgency, you have the choice of either attempting to stick with the streamlined story, or missing a large part of the game altogether.
• Similarly the story drags a bit near the end, I ended up allying myself with the Brotherhood of Steel so I can't speak for the rest of the endgame, but it felt like there was a good couple hours of make work quests put in just to pad the game out, which is unnecessary in a game of this size and scope.
• For gods sake people, make aluminum and adhesive more common, my rocket launcher needs three barrels, but after repairing my power armor I am always out.
• It has it's share of bugs, I've watched quest NPCs calmly phase into a pillar where I could not speak to them, or get stuck on corners, VATS melee combat screws up on the regular, and once in a while entire towns have gone hostile on me for no discernible reason, reloading solves the problem just fine thankfully, but it is still pretty annoying, I imagine patches are forthcoming.

I am sure there is more I missed, and more I  could talk about, but that is enough for now, despite the flaws it remains a worthy entry into the series, and now I am going to replay it as a barely sentient lucky oaf.