Recent reviews by Nickle King

This is how to do a remaster. Improve, add, and retain. Well done Atlus. Well done.

This game is a lesser version of Fallout 3. Yes, it looks better, but the content of the game is so much more mindless and boring. The Sci-Fi and Fantasy elements of the Fallout games are so much less in this one.

For example, and yes, there will be some non main story spoilers for both games. In Fallout 3, you find a strange transmission when wandering around the Wastes. if you search enough, you get enveloped in light and get lifted into the sky and black out. When you come to, aliens have you on a table and are about to start experimenting. Mercifully, you black out again. You awake in a cell with another Wastelander. You stage an escape and from there you fight unique robots, shielded soldiers, Human Alien abominations in a massive complex, and it all culminates in a ship to ship fight for survival.

In Fallout 4, there is a single inexplicably crashed alien ship that they never retrieved or looted. No dungeon, no mutants, no robo guards. It feels more like an obligation than a fun thing to find. It has an alien gun, that's about it.

Another example. In Fallout 3, there is a building named after the Lovecraftian mythos. Inside, you see hallucinations, dozens of ghouls, hear audiotapes of a man going crazy and succumbing to some sort of odd ghoulification, and, underneath the building, you find a ritual site surrounding an obelisk. The DLC gives more purpose to this obelisk, but even without it it's an eerie find.

In Fallout 4, you are told to visit a museum dedicated to the Salem Witch Trails by some no named security guard because strange noises have been reported there. You go inside through the basement, and you find a strongish Deathclaw that some military company stole the eggs from. They couldn't even have it be that some malevolent force drew the Deathclaw to the museum. They had to rationalize why it was there. It's not even a creepy, haunted looking Deathclaw. And the museum itself? Other than a mannequin hung from a tree, it's just a run down, haphazardly floor planned building with some mannequins standing around.
Even the Vaults suffer this same treatment. The terrible experiments, the creepy, sometimes otherworldly moments, the sci-fi horrors? All gone. Every Vault is either occupied by raiders, or scavengers, or just some wildlife. Even the experiments are lame.

Fallout 3? Testing inaudible frequency sound on creative individuals to see if they would revert to savage instinct, a full dive VR community, cloning, FEV experimentation, and releasing trace amounts of drugs into the air supply.

Fallout 4? If you take people who were former addicts, clean them up after an extended amount of time, then make a large cache of drugs available to them, what would happen? Can you guess what happened next!? On top of that, Vault Tek can test that outside a Vault. They don't need an extended control group for that. Hell. Releasing that amount of drugs in a confined community would probably eventually lead to the same outcome!
Compared to Fallout 3, this game is just mindless and mundane. It's just "look at the pretty graphics and get addicted to the experience and leveling up sounds." It's still fun enough, I guess, but it's too long and crammed with too much for how little it engages your mind. To the point that the ending (no spoilers) is so predictable, I called it from the moment my character thawed out in the Vault at the beginning.

----- Response to select comments with special shoutout to kris.aalst. Ya. I should have thought of that. Thanks.

Yes. I am comparing a DLC to an Easter Egg. Because it's a bad Easter egg. And, to be clear because it seems your not getting my point, my problem wasn't just because it's a bad Easter egg, but that it was a waste of potential. The game is so lacking in imagination, it could have been so much more. It didn't need to be as big as it was in Fallout 3's DLC, but it could have been SOMETHING more than "Find crash ship. Find cave nearby. Kill alien. Get gun."

And, as for Nuka World or Far Harbor? No. I have not played them, I didn't mention them for that reason, and I won't be playing them. I didn't like the base game. Why would I spend more money to play more? And, you know what, I don't know anything about those DLCs, but I don't think it's an argument you guys want to make either. Because, if you compare Fallout 4 DLC to Fallout 3 DLC, I would bet half of what I own that they wouldn't be as interesting or imaginative as getting abducted by aliens, going to a town taken over by slavers and both sides of the conflict being morally grey, and going to a bayou where you get a chunk of your brain harvested after being blessed by psychedelics.

I could be wrong. They could be great. But from what I saw from the base game, and seeing Bethesda's output these last few years, I doubt it.

If you liked the game, power to you. But people play games for different reasons. If the mostly mindless settlement building, or the endless calls for help, or the robot sailing ship was enough for you, then it was enough for you. But for me? I want solid narrative, solid interpersonal interactions, and an imaginative world to explore. And I was just coming off playing Fallout 3, which had all those things. And to anyone else who wants that, this game is a MASSIVE letdown. Heck. I didn't even get into the dialogue choices and how boring they were. Fallout 3: Your skills and stats can dictate unique interactions with anyone applicable to your expertise, sometimes numbering in 6 or 7 choices to respond with, most being unique. Fallout 4: "Be Positive, Be Negative, Be Sarcastic, Be a ♥♥♥♥, with Be Clueless thrown in randomly." Every conversation.

Bethesda could have done so much better. Because we've seen them do so much better in the past. Today's Bethesda is not your friend. They don't care about their fans. They care about drilling as much money out of them for the least amount of effort. Skyrim was the start of the fall, Fallout 4 was another step down. And then came Fallout 76 and that whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. They keep getting worse, and they don't seem to even want to change it. Doesn't that bother you? And, if it doesn't, why not? Bethesda straight up lies to it's fans regularly. Todd Howard is known for lying on stage to people's faces. Todd Howard is the head of the company that is making these games with more and more problems and less and less content. Why doesn't that bother you?

You want a fun challenge? This is the place to be.

Just finished the game. I had fun, as it reminded me of older, simpler, more confined stories from the NES and SNES years. It's lighthearted, imaginative, and has a fairly well thought out world that, I'm assuming, we're going to be seeing me of in the future.

I will make some notes for the developers though, on the chance they might see this. Some criticisms and possible fixes. There will be spoilers, so reader beware.
1. The endless fetch quests got exceedingly tedious. Not because they are, in themselves, bad, but you stuffed the game to the gills with them. I understand that with a 2-D Platformer, there's only so much you can do without programming in new engines, but there is a reason why the SNES and NES games were shorter. They didn't shove THIS MUCH inane, tasteless tasks in to pad out the game.
Possible fixes. Cut down the quests that have nothing to do with progression. There is no reason these adventurers trying to save people and gain treasure would stop to help kids find playmates, or a child find a parent less than a screen transition away. Add more puzzle quests, maybe more Menhir-style puzzles to break up the monotony. Or more incentive to do Fishing, or more in depth Trapping. Something to think about for the main game.
2. The dismount of this game is terrible. I do like that there wasn't a token "Dad's actually ok" ending, but there was nothing to really sink your teeth into at the end. Random bandits appear despite not having any way to get there, a new named character shows up that we only just heard his name maybe 10 minutes ago and he's just HERE now and gone. And the final boss was visually interesting, but slow, weak, and lacking any sense of threat that you've been building up. I mean, we never even found out what this power hungry narcissist's NAME was, or why he wanted this power. Was he really just a "Am Evil Want Power" character? Because you went into backstories with so many other characters, and hinted at some with lesser ones, but the final boss get's that kind of treatment?
Fixes. It doesn't have to be much. Some of the recordings could have been that this Mage had been kicked out of other places, and is now obsessed with furthering his research to prove the other lands are weak. Maybe he was kicked out for being too extreme, even for the Empire. Maybe he was an agent sent out by some faction in the world and he was researching for a greater cause. Just SOMETHING to motivate him into gaining power.
3. The CONSTANT "Completed Quest!" "New Quest!" "GO HERE NOW!" notifications! They don't need to be so many and so in your face! When you accomplish something, the first thing on your mind shouldn't be "I'm got enough time to check my Youtube feed while this song and dance goes wastes my time." Main story quests can get that treatment. "Go to the bar and eat" should not.
Fixes. You want to highlight big events, not every event. Make the player feel like they accomplished something big. Just have the quest tracker flash a nice little sunburst when it changes to the next task.

Edit: I decided to go back into the game to finish the Black Task card missions, just to see what was there for the completion bonus...And there was nothing but MORE inane tasks. But not just more, but the SAME EXACT tasks I had just done. No fanfare. No final goal or party. Just more inane busywork. Come on people! When you put pepper on something, do you unscrew the cap!? Do yourselves a favor and hire a QA team. Some group of people to tell you "No. That's enough." You NEED it.

This is a Remaster done right. Is it perfect? No. Some of the character lines are mismatched or nonsensical, and playing on XBox controllers can be aggravating as the directional pad isn't sensitive enough for this style of game. The remixed music is some of the best in gaming done better. The characters are perfect recreations from the original show. The artwork is beautiful. Very much a great game.

As with any good question...

My Secret word: Greed

More delving into the mind.

My secret word: Understanding

Questions. From mundane to uncomfortable. They force you to look inward. For those who have not done this, it can be an eye opening experiance.

My secret word: Angel

It's a fun little game with some VERY memorable characters. Over the top dialog combined with some great artistry. And this is all before the expansion comes out. Would recommend.

Never support Studios who change the product AFTER PURCHASE!