Played the 4 hours today. First 2 alone to get out of the vault and lvl up, then with a higher lvl friend.
It was... Mediocre.
It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
I've never played any open world survival mmo before, as most of them didn't interest me, so while I did know what to expect, the Fallout skin helped a lot.
Game looks fine, I dunno what all the bitching is about. It can look outright gorgeous in some places. Yes it's no SC, but it's perfectly fine for a Bethesda game. Also, it's a console MMO, what did you expect? Raytracing with multibounce realtime GI ligthing, and 8K per-pixel displacement maps?
Audio is there as well, the usual fallout sounds, nice music, maybe a bit more punchy gun sounds compared to what I remember from F4, and it melds well with the gameplay.
Gameplay is... well, I kinda liked it! There I said it! As someone who put in 250+ hours per every fallout game since 3 (and skyrim ofc), I still like it. There is nothing new really, but it works for a first impression. You get quests, go out, find the quest location, collect the item or activate the thing, and get your reward. Like in every RPG. It's not that different...
The combat is kinda annoying though. It can get chaotic and laggy fast. Enemies, especially smaller mutated things like molerats and rabid dogs keep popping in at 2-3 feet away and swarm the player instantly. It's fun for the first 2-3 times, than it just becomes annoying. The Very.Autoaim,Totally.Stupid - aka VATS - is bad. It's bad cos it's necessary. I may not be the best shot in FPS games, but I have much less trouble getting through a level of Brutal Doom on Realism difficulty than hitting a goddamn bloodsucking Tick in this game. With all the lag and RPG-so-you-can-miss-from-point-blank system, it is very much a necessity.
Pipe pistols and such low tier weapons finally have an actual use, which is a plus, as I never ever had to use one in F4...
There are some things that might be really more of a chore in the long run, like having to look for repair materials (couldn't find a single piece of aluminium to repair my guns with. Also, aluminium in pipe guns and 50's bolt action rifles? wtf bethesda, at least watch a yourtube video on it ffs...), NPCs destroying what you built (a super mutant shot my 'tato plant...), and once you discover everything and do all the quests, I guess there won't be much left to do other than endless PVP and grinding world events.
Also, bugs and lag are everywhere. From floating NPC-s to shots registering only seconds later, I've seen loads of silly things that needs to get fixed, and fast.
Voice chat didn't work for me, it didn't pick up my voice (mic was working fine in discord and windows) and I had to switch to the global area chat to hear my teammate as setting it to Team-only didn't work.
Playing in a team was fun. It makes for a more silly/arcade version of Fallout. As long as you don't expect any deep strategic play, it's fun. Run around with a couple o mates, shoot up stuff, loot stuff, complete some quests and events, level up, laugh at the silly hovering robot getting stuck on an inch high pebble, rinse and repeat until had enough. As long as you don't take it seriously, it works.
I guess in the long run this game will live or die on the small dedicated fan base that will keep on building large bases, battling it out with other clans for the Nukes, getting wiped out, and repeating it again and again, until something more shiny comes along in the same genre.
Is it a cashgrab? Hell yeah it is! But as long as it's fun and good enough, why not? The writers of Fallout 5 have to be paid from something...
TLDR: While I found it kinda fun, I won't be pre-ordering this. It's worthy of a 20usd price tag at best, as it is "only" Fallout 4 stitched together into a mostly working generic Survival MMO. It feels like a Mod or DLC, not a full new title. Like a better one of those early-access games that were born out of a mod. It works, it feels like Fallout, it can be fun, but it's not Fallout 5.
I'll try to give it a go tomorrow as well. Maybe I can find some aluminum to weld up my hardened-steel shotgun with...