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Great critique of Fallout 4 by Noah Caldwell-Gervais
I liked his perspectives own previous fallout games but this perspective, even from only(!) having invested about 100 hours into Fallout 4 and not yet having completed any of the main faction quest lines, really demonstrates he's missed or overlooked some fundamental things. From this I can only conclude he went into the game absolutely cold and did not even having watch the S.P.E.C.I.A.L videos, which I think would have served him better and prepared him to make different build decisions early on.
For example he talks about having to invest four early levelling points to boost Strength to get the Strong Back perk, because carrying stuff is obviously key for wealth or crafting, but in the next breath dismisses the early armour crafting options as useless. If he'd looked more carefully he would have seen that if you want to boost carrying capacity early then then adding pockets to your gear is the easiest and fastest way to do this short of starting with a high Strength build and the materials are readily accessible to low level players.
He mentioned he had a high Intelligence, high Charm build and found it difficult, which is hardly surprising unless he was planning on charming Deathclaws or challenging them to a nice game of chess. High Intelligence and Charm builds have always been a harder choice in modern Fallout games because fundamentally, there is generally a fair amount of combat and neither Intelligence or Charm help combat nor stealth, which is what you need if you're planning to avoid or minimise combat.
But his simplified explanations of S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats (e.g. Luck is for VATS, Perception is for targeting, Agility for Action Points, Charisma is for Caps etc) suggests he's not really conscious of the wider impact of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L beyond the headline mechanics. He also suggests the Luck perk Idiot Savant and low Intelligence as an alternative to average or high Intelligence but I believe early testing has demonstrated that the random experience boosts given by the perk are no substitute for more Intelligence over the long haul so this is also a tougher/slower way to play the game.
He mentions not realising early on that a microscope is more valuable than a hunting rifle. The caps and component breakdowns are visible in the inventory screen and knowing which components are used in which type of mods is a case of applied sense (it's fairly logical for the most part) or just looking at crafting recipes which are visible from the get go. So him not know is really a case of him not checking.
And wackily, judging by the video at least, he doesn't seem to know that you can move around the environment with the workshop mode active. He moves somewhere, engages workshop, places something, exits workshop mode, moves somewhere else, engages workshop mode, rinse repeat. No wonder he found it hard work! But he's not wrong about the poor explanation of most settlement mechanics.
First impressions are always interesting but I'll be interesting hearing his impressions after a few more play throughs. Plus 60 hours he invested, he's barely scratched the surface of this game. Evidenced by his claim that there's only one Intelligence level check - I've encountered more than that and I'm a long way from completion although it's fair to say there seem to be far less non-Charm skill checks through the game which is a little disappointing.