Recent reviews by Pallas Athena

The game itself is great. It's free to play, you can unlock most legends within reasonable play time and there are continuous events and updates. All legends feel unique. The gameplay is somewhat unique too in that it takes longer to kill/down an opponent than in most shooters, which took me some time to get used to. Also be prepared to get attacked by a third party, especially in ranked play.

EA's involvement is minimal, but where they get involved the game becomes instantly unenjoyable. I got an automated 7 day ban for saying ONE swearword at a teammate that was purposely throwing a ranked game because I didn't want to drop him an item I picked up from a crate - which isn't even reportable behavior. The mail I got stated that if I use "hate speech" again my whole EA account will be terminated. A profanity filter like litterally every other game uses didn't cross their minds?

There are plenty of gameplay reviews out here, but one thing I'd like to add to all that is the following: if you are not into history and the only nation of this time period that sounds familiar to you is Rome itself, don't get this game but get EU4 or CK2 instead. The game will became stale very fast if every nation you crush or play is the same to you.

The game itself is good, the monetization strategy is disgusting. Next to the obvious bandwagon of hate for taking down single player modding tools - that have been around for years with no problem - before doing something about cheaters, I'd like to remind everyone that this fully priced game has microtransactions. Well, micro is a big word because the prices for virtual money are disgusting. Futhermore rockstar failed to deliver on single player DLC since they noticed that they can just make a new color for a car and call it an gta online update and make money that way instead.

Congratulations on ruining one of the most solid game dev reputations on the market, carefully build up over more than a decade, in a single week. Can't say you don't deserve it.

I had almost no expectations for this game and I'm still disappointed.

First off, the big new feature: settlement building. I fail to see the point of tearing down ruined buildings just to build up another ruin in its place. You can either build a shack out of moldy wood or you can build a shack out of scrap metal plates. That's it. Your character has seen the old world and lived in it, has either a law degree or has been in the military, had its own house and you tell me that they fail to nail wooden boards to eachother in such a way that there are no holes in walls? Seriously, what? You can literally find bags of cement and cinderblocks around the world to build a decent concrete house that looks like you actually made an advancement over what was there at the start, but I guess that's too much to ask.

The other heavily advertised feature, the weapon and armor modification, is probably the most enjoyable part of this game. You know you did at least something right with the system when you're happier to find a toy car for its screws than you are when you find a house with multiple caps stashes in it. It gives you a reason to explore every house (most of which are open now, with no loading screens) and it feels like an unending treasure hunt. It should be noted however that this is slightly held back by the absolutely retarded perk system. Every perk has levels and every perk level has a level requirement. For example, you need to be level 13 to pick up the second level of gun nut (which unlocks a bunch of weapon mods). Not only will it take you hours to reach level 13, it also forces you to pick up perks you don't even want (yet?). This is why you have a thing called skills, Bethesda, so you can use these as perk requirement instead.

A feature I was personally really worried about, the power armor, came out really well. It actually felt like I was using power armor. I'd say it serves more as a sort of power up than as actual armor (which I see as a good thing because the layered armor thingy they got going on is the best they've done armor since Morrowind). It gives you the power to get past enemies you had no chance of taking on otherwise.

The story, dialog and voiced PC's. I'm not going to spoil anything, but Bethesda clearly has no idea what fallout is about. I refuse to believe that anyone in their offices played any fallout game when they started making f3. The constant lore rape is just painful. The disgusting dialogue wheel they stole from ass effect doesn't do anything good either. I genuinely hope that EA sues them just to make sure they never use that abomination again. It is the second worst offence in this game. Furthermore, most characters are boring and generic like we're used from bethesda. The most notable exeptions are some companions. I tried both the male and the female PC and they both do a good job at voice acting. I'd rather have seen a game without dialogue wheel and a silent protagonist, but if something saves the dialogue from being ride to hell tier memorable garbage it these two people. Oh the irony.

I just mentioned that the dialogue wheel was the second worst offence. You might wonder what the worst is then? This game is a console port. A bad one. Are you left handed? Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself, no numpad keybindings. Do you use anything other than a QWERTY keyboard? Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself we don't detect that ♥♥♥♥ in menu's and settlement building mode and because you rebound half your keys you'll be stuck running backwards and to the right while doing the latter. Do you have more than the recommended (console?) system requirements? Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself, a too high framerate will render it impossible to use terminals and will cause massive lipsync/audio issues. Do you get motion sickness from a FOV of 60? Yes, you guessed it, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself because there's no permanent way of changing it. This kind of BS will piss you after REALLY fast. They have put zero effort in the pc version (which I guess explains the high required specs for the average visuals you get). Speaking of effort, some parts of the game have really advanced and some are still the same ♥♥♥♥ from oblivion because they've been using the same engine for 13 years now. It's almost funny how you sometimes go from some really solid facial expressions to running in the exact same retarded way you've been doing the last 3 bethsoft games: like you just shat your pants.

It isn't a ♥♥♥♥ game, but it isn't a fallout game and there is just too much wasted potential. I guess I'll just buy a mod or two fix that.

I've seen devs pull a lot of money grabbing BS, but this is a whole new level. Good job on killing off your only succesful game and turning your players against you.

Changing my review to negative.

I still like this game and the previous titles in the series. I actually consider myself quite the fan of the elder scrolls franchise. Unfortunately, I cannot support these business practises so I'll voice my opinion the only way a can: An unsignificant negative review in the depths of steam.

In total, I paid about €105 for Skyrim and all of its DLC. Liked base game skyrim and dawnguard, was very disappointed in hearthfire (I don't even know what I expected -.-) and wouldn't even have gotten the buggy mess that is dragonborn anymore if it wasn't a massive plate of morrowind nostalgia.

Now, for some reason bethesda and valve feel like making €105 on a single game isn't enough, so "paid mods" are introduced. Now, I'm OK with paying for good content. Don't we all continiously do that? Who cares if there is a big company or a single person in his basement behind it?

Unfortunately only 25% of what you pay goes to the people who put their time and effort into creating the mods. Bethesda and valve take 75% of the profits on content they did absolutely nothing for. Even better, if it comes down to bugfixes, people are actually paying bethesda for fixing their f*cking game. Might as well just fire your entire QA team now, right? If you had one that is.

No new talent will come to a 4 year old game by introducing this feature in this way. If anything, and we can see this already, people are stealing from the nexus and actual modders are just taking their mods down to prevent this from happening. The community is shrinking instead of expanding.

Unless this is changed, I will no longer support steam/valve or bethesda in any way and I suggest you do the same for everyones sake: these companies are trying to get more milk out of a cow by reducing the amount of food it gets. The cow wil eventually starve and we all will be left with nothing.