Fallout 76

430 hours in and I think I have a good grasp at most things in the game. I purposely avoided the game at its original release because of the bad reviews and also I was not interested in a multi-player fallout game. But saw it was on sale for really cheap and figured why not, I'll give it a shot all these years later. And overall it's pretty solid. I had a lot of difficulty starting the game on my PC, I had stutter problems with my 4070ti super card and had AI work me through file edits and nvidia settings to fix the issue. Once that was done, then the next problem happened... the bombardment of missions. I didn't know what quest was what, controls were weird, and didn't even know how to use VATS until several days into the game. The learning curve for me was pretty high despite having played several fallout games in the past. I also never played multi-player before much so I was really confused about the environment -- basically how players interact with each other when exploring or during quests, or even how teams worked, just overall game mechanics was weird for me. And every time I thought I understood how the currency system works, I'm tossed a new currency unit to figure out and how to use it. I basically just roamed around and tried to explore parts of the map without dying. But once you get to level 50 then some of those higher level weapons and armor you can use. And getting power armor helped with carry limits and staying alive. But then the next major thing happened and it's the stashbox limits. You can put 1200 weight units into the box and once that fills up, the game becomes inventory management simulator. So the remedy is to shell out $15/mo or whatever it is for Fallout 1st so you can store unlimited scrap in a scrapbox.... but mind you the stashbox still has the 1200 limit as before but the catch is all your scrap should be removed to leave more room for weapons and armor. So once I hit around level 200 I caved and got Fallout 1st and it's made the game much more enjoyable, unfortunately at an added cost. I'm now level 430-ish and decently strong, but I still have a ways to go. Now for the game itself... Some quests are decent, some are boring, some mediocre, and some genuinely fun or interesting. Sound effects are pretty cool, like the gatling gun is pretty awesome for the first time. Voice acting is hilarious at times which actually makes me chuckle. The area to explore is pretty large and diverse. Enemies are pretty cool overall and a wide variety. I'm maxing out the game basically and the visuals are nice for an older game, but would love to see what they can do with the next Fallout game. Controls took me a long time to figure out, but that's me with every game basically. The other players in the game are great... I've encountered I think zero issues in 8 months of playing. Some of the lore and game features like "infestations" make no logical sense, the devs just make new ways to fight enemies but it's all the same thing under the hood. If you can get this for really cheap, like 5 bucks or less, it's a great way to test out the game and see if you like it. It's one of those games that I thought I wouldn't like, but here I am 8 months later still playing and paying my monthly dues to Todd.