Fallout 76 - The Review (2026)

[00:07] this time bringing you my review for Fallout 76 roughly 8 years after the fact as I love to be on time. But in reality, I was just very curious about on it as it is pretty much the only Fallout title besides maybe shelter that

[00:22] curious to jump in and finally get a feel for it after all the years and updates have passed just to kind of see where it is. Now this unintentionally Bethesda announcements. That is genuinely a coincidence. I've been

[00:37] mention the expansion they announced here in a little while, but obviously this review is just a review as opposed to a 100% if it's not exceedingly obvious that is because this game is a live service title at the end of the day

[00:51] really make any sense because there is because it's no longer available, but also more yet to come. And so as a this game for I think it was about 80 hours total running through all the

[01:06] major content, getting to the end game and basically setting myself up to play few things that I am missing are basically grinds and stuff, but in spite of the fact it has been so many years later, I do actually need to inform you

[01:20] that I received a key for the burning Springs bundle that they released when the burning Springs update dropped all the way back in December of 2025. At least I think it was December, but roughly 7 months or so ago and while I

[01:32] they gave me that little bundle which is like an in-store thing that just has some items in it, but still I am required to of course disclose that just so you're aware, but otherwise let's get on with the rest of this starting with a

[01:45] brief overview. Now I had not played Fallout 76 really much at all since it released like a couple of hours before this mostly enough to verify that it was a live service game and not something I was going to take a lot of joy in. And

[01:59] challenged while playing through this game. If you watch my first impressions about the way certain things were implemented, the multiplayer aspect, the microtransaction shop, etc. And I'll say this before we dive into specifics. This

[02:15] game was better than I expected. They did some things here that I think are at the very least interesting, even if not all of them landed with me. I'll just the way they changed VATS here, which I did not expect. The VAT system always

[02:29] being a method of of course bridging the gap between the early entries and the more action-oriented entries of the later series. Its exact implementation has always been a little let's say contentious. And in this one, being a

[02:42] time doesn't slow down or stop, but rather VATS gives you a percent chance to hit the target that you can actually see as opposed to needing to aim. But the thing is that actually still solves

[02:54] feral ghouls, which move in a sort of erratic way that can be hard for me to track. And so I wound up really enjoying that. On the other side of things, the cash shop is mostly irrelevant if you don't want to mess with it. Like there's

[03:07] and whatnot, but I never found that useful at all. And then the rest of it mainly seems to be like if you really want to get into building up your own camp, which is admittedly not for me. So it was mostly an irrelevant feature. And

[03:20] with the utility tab in particular, I was worried it might sort of infringe on I think the only thing that really does that is the way they had to change some things to account for the fact that this is a multiplayer title at the end of the

[03:33] day. And I would say that specifically, that part, the things that they had to do in order to make this a multiplayer title are really where this game loses me. And it winds up from going like super interesting and being set in a

[03:45] close to to being something that I'm still not wild about, which is mainly the way they changed things like progression etc. to set it up for longevity let's say to keep people playing. There are some grinds towards

[03:59] which is where I decided to stop cuz I don't really want to do that as that isn't the kind of thing I want from a Fallout experience personally. But stuff like that is what I'm hoping to dive into here but beyond that really all I

[04:12] can tell you is how the game looks these days. I did not play it on launch I did it outside of maybe an anecdote or two about what I have heard but in that sense all this video really can be is me talking about how I feel about how the

[04:25] game is right now which puts me in a good position to then of course follow up with the Raven Rock expansion that they announced a week or two back. From there let's get into the more specific things starting with the technical state

[04:38] of this game. How is it running and perhaps unsurprisingly a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand it only crashed on me twice over 80 hours. On the other I had quite a few problems with various quests here and there. Occasionally I would be

[04:51] in the middle of a longer quest and like the server maintenance thing would world I was currently on because it only gives you a 20 minute timer and then that quest progress resets on interior cells. For the most part some of them

[05:04] though it becomes a bit of an issue. There are quests that only sort of update once you get back out of the interior portion like the normal dungeon or so that you would explore previously and so if something happens while you're

[05:17] in there you're going to have to redo it. This actually features in quite a few bugs like there is a side quest with one of the allies you can pick up a guy named Beckett and there's a pretty common bug right at the end of his whole

[05:29] quest line after the end of a fairly long dungeon that if you pick the wrong you have to do the entire thing over again because when you exit out it's going to reset it. So that got extremely annoying. On the flip side of that in

[05:42] the Atlantic City expedition there's apparently a very long standing bug where in what I would describe as one of the worst quests I've ever seen that requires you to take yourself out in order to somehow bypass the check. And

[05:55] at least March I could find people talking about it. And I ran into the the exact same way because apparently nobody's bothered to even fix that, of the team gutted, hard to say how many resources they have left to do that. So,

[06:10] long story short, the technical state of this one leaves a bit to be desired honestly. And it isn't exactly like the single-player games where you can mod You're kind of just stuck with them. And I will just go on a little bit of a

[06:22] tangent here. I mentioned that the quest that had that Atlantic City bug was one of the worst quests I've ever seen, and I am not exaggerating. I kid you not, they have you go impersonate a clown and then put on a clown show, and that's

[06:34] where this bug happens. And that's about the perfect descriptor for it. The whole [clears throat] definitely the low point of the entire review. Thankfully, there were other parts that I enjoyed and things I appreciated, but I don't think

[06:48] I'll be forgetting that particular experience and not in a good way. Now, from here, I do want to break down the differences between multiplayer, single-player, like the shop, kind of just all those general live service-y

[07:01] gameplay, which is a little different than what I normally do. But I feel like questions I had going into this game was like, how much do you need to interact there's not actually that many people on

[07:15] a given world state. So, I think it's like 24 at a maximum. So, what does that actually look like in terms of gameplay? Well, the answer is the game is divided aspects of it. And like the main one, the thing you can do the most of, is

[07:29] single-player exploration and questing. Now, some of the sort of presentation of multiplayer part of it. Like, for instance, progress in interior cells only sort of saving once you finish. but by and large almost everything can be

[07:44] done solo. There are several things that are definitely much, much easier with other people like the scorched beast queen fight and some of the events are just again much, much easier with people and thankfully on the multiplayer side

[07:56] of things they actually made that pretty easy to deal with. So I'm pretty play a lot of MMOs and everything, but it's just not my thing anymore. I don't do it very sparingly and honestly kind of avoid it as much as I can. But to be

[08:10] honest, the way multiplayer is implemented here it does kind of support that approach. So these days there are public teams that can be created. These can be for just casual running around. You can join up and just mess around

[08:23] specific purposes like clearing public events or doing daily ops which are like which are like little mini dungeons and those are very like drop-in, drop-out. Everybody's usually pretty cool about it. There's like some emotes and stuff

[08:38] to communicate and it really doesn't put any burden on you as a player at all. probably do want a group for can be pretty easily tackled this way because request to join or anything. You just hit the join button and that's all. Very

[08:52] non-committal if you will. Now given that this is a live service game and has ongoing updates but is buy to play, what does the monetization model look like? Well, as many people are I'm sure aware you buy the game. These days the base

[09:05] game is $40 US and that comes with all of the free updates. need to buy any DLC and so the way this game makes money and the way it keeps servers going and pays for those updates is basically two things. The cash shop as well as the

[09:19] seasons and the Fallout first subscription. So subscribing to Fallout first gets you a bunch of benefits per month. It also allows you to set up a private server or a private world where you can play on your own or just purely

[09:32] drop-in and drop-out nature of things. If you want to play completely by yourself, that is honestly not a bad way to approach it, but I'm really not personally, and the part where you're going to probably feel like you might

[09:46] want to is a part that I kind of got a little bit annoyed with in ESO as well, size, and by picking up Fallout First, they remove that limit, which means, of course, they're selling you a solution to a problem that they themselves have

[10:00] created, and I'm never a big fan of that kind of thing. And that's where I think start to influence the actual game design that everywhere else in the game, it doesn't really do that. But again, that was mainly an in-game problem. Um

[10:14] where I am right now, I still have some stash space left, but that said, I'm not pretty close to the point where if I were to continue playing, I would have didn't want to pay for this, which I don't love. Now, another part of this

[10:28] of their in-game currency per month, which are atoms. You can also earn a ton of that for free. bought a couple things I'm about to talk about because they give you so much of it, but most of what you can actually spend it on is cosmetic

[10:41] stuff in the shop that unless you like really care about building up your camp and trying to make that as cool as possible is otherwise pretty forgettable utility stuff in the form of repair kits or some convenience items that I never

[10:54] found necessary, to the point where buying them just to bypass the tiniest of inconvenience that dealing with the system is, like repairing requiring some materials instead of being for free with a repair kit, and the fact that they

[11:07] like every other day, and you can also get them from doing like the scorched queen event left me a little bit surprised that I think the shop is both super unintrusive, mostly cosmetic, and honestly, as a result, mostly,

[11:21] thankfully, forgettable. I still don't love that it's there personally, but it's pretty unintrusive, which I do appreciate on that front, at least. Now, another aspect to this is seasons. So, they have an ongoing season system where

[11:34] you'll earn points simply by playing the game. Mostly, this ranks you up in that like these tickets to spend on in-game rewards. That also seem free, but some of it is tied to Fallout First as well. And speaking for myself at least, I

[11:47] never felt compelled to really dive down in and try to earn those rewards or something. It was just kind of a nice bonus when I was there, I guess. Now, all of that stuff talked about, let's talk about what I did personally. So,

[11:59] about going into this is what was the new player experience like for somebody jumping in 8 years later after all these updates. And it's a bit of a mixed bag. self-inflicted and we'll get to that in a moment, but mostly I would say the new

[12:13] player experience is not great. I spent probably about 20 or so hours of this experience just trying to like get over the basics of the things I felt like I had to do before I could start more, uh, let's say systematically clearing things

[12:27] out. But that 20 hours that I spent doing that is actually with some player boosts. Now, this is a mix of one that they've added to the game for free and then a paid one as well, which I got also for free from the atoms they give

[12:39] you from doing challenges. So, when you leave the vault for the first time, start a level one character or a level 20. And I want to point out that the game presents the level 20 option as the recommended one. On my impressions

[12:52] video, I got some people saying that you have to start from one and that's how you get an idea of all the progression and everything. And I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am pointing out the game is actively saying the opposite.

[13:04] Now, I played for a few hours previously. Uh, this time around I took few levels to get the basics out of the way, and then there's actually [clears throat] a secondary boost that you buy for 1,500 atoms, which will take

[13:17] you to level 50, which is the end of like the main progression. Though really starts, but we'll save that for a little bit from now. Level 50 is the point at which you stop getting special points, start getting legendary perks,

[13:30] and then thinking long-term in terms of what your build actually is. More or it's about building upwards. Now, this is the part where I do think a little absolutely self-inflicted, and I'm not trying to say that it isn't, because at

[13:44] available, and you kind of get bombarded with quests. But, again, I want to point at level 20 already, which is what they recommend. Like, you step out of the vault, pick the recommended level 20 and then it's just quest after quest being

[13:58] little difficult to figure out like what you should be doing when, or like what quest line leads where. And I wound up, again, spending about 20 or so hours just kind of feeling like I was getting the basics of the experience out of the

[14:11] game, which I did not love. Now, I was able to buy that level 50 boost, as I mentioned, because I think the Burning Springs Bundle thing they gave me came with some atoms, and then you earn them over time by doing challenges in game,

[14:24] objectives. And I got enough of those that I could just pay for the character And then, over the course of the 80 or so hours, I got enough to do a second one, which is necessary for like the single mutually exclusive achievement

[14:37] this game has, for some reason. One of the campaigns which we're about to talk Raiders or like the Wastelanders one, there's an option towards the end of that quest line to side with one side or the other, and it leads to a mutually

[14:50] use that second character boost this time around to eventually go grab that it via that second character. Just wanted to point it out how kind of odd that was. Nonetheless, though, from here, let's go ahead and talk about the

[15:05] various main campaigns, if you will. Now, this game is interesting in the sense that it had its base campaign, if you will, which was back when the game didn't have any NPCs or anything. And so, this one is told through robots and

[15:19] the most part. It's like the main thing around the scorched plague and everything that is pretty much old news these days. Then you have stuff like the Wastelanders update, which brought in sort of introductory quest, which by the

[15:32] little better as like a good starting point because that quest takes you around more or less the starting area called the forest and gives you a good quest line to follow while also filling out the basics and getting you up to

[15:45] mechanics. If anything, I think it's probably the closest is going to get to individual systems work and it's a pretty good place to actually start playing the game even if the quest itself isn't like super long or involved

[16:00] some people who have moved in with some of their problems leading you ultimately to like a hidden stash. That was then followed on by the Brotherhood of Steel and then there are others in these days like the expeditions, the Skyline Valley

[16:14] of the various smaller updates that have brought new content like Burning Springs which brought a whole new area, which by the way, I've got to say, they said that was going to take place in an irradiated hellscape that is Ohio these days, but I

[16:27] just Ohio. I don't know that they changed anything at all. Very confusing. But to go into a few more specifics there, I will say while you don't really get the full experience of there being nobody around and you coming out of the

[16:40] vault, the base game main campaign is still probably the the most fleshed out in terms of interesting background so to speak. So for those who don't know, Fallout 76 I believe it's 25 years after the bombs dropped. So not all that long

[16:55] ago and in fact, your job from Vault 76 is to repopulate the wasteland and hopefully make it a better place to start rebuilding society. But with the recentness of the Great War, there are a lot of especially potent mutations and

[17:11] things that didn't have the ability to survive long term, but are a menace in things like the unique cryptid mutations. I think even the mutation system itself, which we'll talk about, but that's kind of the setup. And then,

[17:24] Initially, you would have found that people like the responders and stuff had died out, but these days are just like actually people there. But, along that the scorched plague and how everybody

[17:36] reacted to it. You see, one of the other things that was going on in this area of Appalachia is that they had developed a new mining technique using nukes that would basically create a new material called ultracite. Ultracite wound up

[17:49] being something of interest to things like the scorched beast. The scorched beast themselves, I believe, were created by the Enclave. And by the way, This is just from what I understand. I am not saying that this is like

[18:02] absolutely 100% what happened, but my understanding of this is that the Enclave was doing experiments here, which created the scorched beast, which themselves are somehow related to this ultracite material. As you basically

[18:15] only find them where it is. On top of that, it seems like the queen, which you wind up killing by dropping a nuke and luring it out, was the only one that All of them, however, all of the scorched, that is, are a hive mind that

[18:29] you killing the queen and also the one that could reproduce, it slowly dies ultracite, which was only found around this area as well, it never really wasteland, which is why we don't see this stuff anywhere else. And the main

[18:44] story is about you discovering all of that, finding a way to inoculate people against the scorched plague, and also making sure it can no longer spread. And logs and learning about how all the different factions fought against this

[18:58] before ultimately being wiped out and new people moving in via all the updates probably where the game is at its strongest in terms of storytelling, and it was a good time. Now, on the other side of that, outside of the Wayward, uh

[19:11] the Wastelanders, brought the Raiders and the Settlers into town. These guys are both after a vault full of gold, the sort of new Fort Knox, if you will, and the idea here is that you're going to help one of them eventually help you to

[19:26] your reputation with them. This is the part that's super grindy because well, quest and stuff for them, you can ultimately only choose one to actually mutually exclusive achievement. But after you're done, you still have a ton

[19:41] of rep to grind and it looks like there are only um very few ways to grind it and it just takes an extremely long time to do. The heist itself was okay, but it was very standard like heist stuff. Build a team, do the heist. There's some

[19:53] interesting reveals along the way, but very standard as far as that stuff goes. Then we have the Brotherhood of Steel. I enjoyed this one personally just because I like the Brotherhood of Steel. As a story, I think it was fine. Uh you wind

[20:06] after they move back into the area. And there's a conflict between Paladin Rahmani and the Knight Shin guy and you ultimately have to choose between them while also getting to the bottom of some of the super mutant expansion that has

[20:19] been happening because well, initially, apparently West Tek infected some town, which turned them all into super mutants. It seems like there's been more the result of a bunch of experiments that the uh let's say dubious testing

[20:34] that was let's say verified poorly by the scientists doing it led to all these into the bottom of that and basically teach them how they were wrong, which is fight at the end of it was pretty cool, but for the most part, I just like that

[20:48] one cuz I like the Brotherhood of Steel. That is admittedly on my own bias. I think it's fine otherwise. Now, I think one of the better quest lines as well was actually in Skyline Valley with the Lost. So, the Lost were really

[21:00] interesting because they seemed to basically be ghouls who were then also doubly affected by an experiment gone wrong, which added like a sort of extra layer to their already deteriorating senses, and you wind up coming into

[21:13] guy that caused it all, a dude named Hugo in the vault there, who is be all right. And I actually don't want to spoil this one too much. I thought it was pretty neat. One of the better sort of main campaign stories. Uh then there

[21:27] was all of things like the expeditions that were added, the Atlantic City one and the pit. Atlantic City has a little story quest line to the expeditions part like those little mini dungeons you can jump into, which can also be done solo,

[21:41] by the way, and you get rewards for completing them, the usual stuff. And added, like the recent Burning Springs update, which has its own little systems in that part of Ohio you wind up going into instead of West Virginia, where the

[21:54] involved with some raiders there. But you can also do a bunch of bounty hunting, as well. That one was a little smaller than I expected it to be, to be again, doing those bounty hunts, which brings some of the more challenging

[22:06] the only events where I saw players actually getting killed, because just kind of smash through them, just because everybody else is also really strong now, so things just kind of get deleted really quickly. So, long story

[22:20] short, while the main main story is quite good, as you would probably expect it's gotten very fragmented and all over the place. None of this stuff really order. A lot of these quest lines are, for the most part, doable whenever. They

[22:34] one point, which was honestly pretty neat as a concept. And the upcoming expansion is supposed to drop uh Raven Rock. I believe that was the one that was intended to be a sort of like prequel into Fallout 3, although that's

[22:47] sometime after this as well, so but that's of course related to Fallout 3, with it. But overall, I would describe it as a mixed bag. Some of it's perfectly fine, some of it's kind of blah, but the main story around the

[22:59] went into that was pretty compelling stuff. Now, I will say on top of all of that, one thing that kind of gets me about this game is the tone always feels Fallout has definitely always had that sort of let's say dark sense of humor,

[23:15] but here in Fallout 76 they tend to lean into the sort of wacky and zany side of it frequently. And it's a mixed bag. Some of it I think fits like the cryptid sit well with me, but at the end of the day they're there because it's fun and

[23:29] people to have fun playing it together ultimately, but that also sort of takes gets into like the single player versus multiplayer thing again, and I don't really want to rehash that. But I will say the thing that gets me is dropping

[23:42] the nukes. So, as part of like the main main campaign, if you will, you can and kind of need to really eventually get a nuke set off on the prime fissure site where the scorched beast queen will then be summoned and fight it to sort of cut

[23:56] of where the main story ended previously. In order to do that, you the uh well, what's left of the Enclave anyway, at least here that is. Do a bunch of the work to actually get the silos up and running so you can then set

[24:11] off said nuke. And that works perfectly well that one time. You need to set off to cut the head off of this plague. It's a sort of necessary evil situation that I actually enjoy as a narrative choice

[24:23] you should really want to do, but it is necessary to end this very real threat of this plague. Almost like, you know, cutting off an arm before an infection works great the one time, but the

[24:36] problem is they keep dropping. Often times having nothing to do with that. And this even comes into play later where you have to nuke a mine to get it open in order to go fight an enemy down there. And it's just kind of silly I

[24:48] kind of takes away the weight of what is supposed to be this big gigantic thing both in the real world obviously, but also even in the context of this game. what it is, I just don't love that personally. Now, from there, let's move

[25:04] on a little bit to character building, if you will. So, character building comes in a few, I would say, unique ways to this game, but should feel relatively familiar to you. There is a cosmetic character creation. This is basically

[25:16] actually wind up changing this from the menu basically whenever you want after to it in any way. And the rest of character building is really down to progression itself. Now, you're first going to pick your special attributes.

[25:30] attributes, but they work a little bit differently here in the sense that the maximum is 15, and as you add points to them until you get to level 50, you increase your perk points for that particular attribute, which are

[25:43] connected to a bunch of perk cards. These perk cards determine, of course, and the effect they have on you, like reducing the weight of items, all sorts of various combat effects, increasing your usefulness in VATS, etc., etc. Now,

[25:58] one of those cards for free, and then every five levels, you get a pack of cards to unlock, which gives you a random assortment. And so, over time, you eventually build up a solid pool of the cards, and you can use them as you

[26:12] please, swap them out, etc. There's eventually a way to like give yourself a separate loadout to change and adjust as you please as well. Now, another thing about perks is that you can rank some of them up. Each of them has a star rating,

[26:25] and you can basically use duplicates of the same perk in order to get greater effects out of them at the cost of increasing their cost in terms of your special points. Now, you can also scrap these extra perk cards, and you're going

[26:37] to do that to gather up perk coins, because after level 50, you will start earning legendary perks every so often. You can pick these from a pool, and you starts increasing, like the next one comes at 150, and you can spend those

[26:52] perk coins on increasing the effect from these legendary perks as well, which is another form of long-term progression here. And I will say I eventually came where especially at the beginning of the game, it doesn't feel great as you're

[27:06] both trying to get the cards themselves you actually want to use, which takes a long time, but then they're also like gated individually by attribute, and it eventually get used to it though and actually wound up kind of enjoying it,

[27:19] I think having the appropriate attribute directly confine your perks to that makes you feel a little more constrained in a way that I think helps make unique character builds so to speak, but at the same time Fallout 76 isn't a game that

[27:32] like really leans into that either as despite being able to group up, there's not like that holy trinity of MMO roles of like tank, healer, etc. You don't need to do that. Like everybody can basically do everything in terms of

[27:44] healing and DPS, etc. So it kind of becomes this awkward thing where I this system itself, and yet the system itself doesn't give you gameplay reasons to fully dive into what should be

[27:56] I would say perhaps the most unique thing being that becoming a ghoul would have if you are a ghoul, that kind of thing. So that was just kind of odd gear. Now I'm going to be honest with

[28:11] ever really come around on this part, which is the gear itself because well rebuilding the wasteland is a big part of it or at least was, and that is sort of represented by the way you get your gear and the way it gets modded out

[28:26] again very similar to the way Fallout 4's weapon mod system worked where where and then mod out your weapons, and that is present here. But the issue that I have with it so to speak is that in order to learn the mods in this game,

[28:39] type, and in order to break down that type. And so what winds up happening is weapon you would eventually like to use to get the mods to turn a version of it

[28:52] into the version of it you actually want. Now, the good news is that while there are various levels to each uh individual item up to 50, which have different like strength ranges, other than that, you can pretty much uh mod

[29:04] heart's content as long as you have the supplies, which then allows you to create the exact version of that weapon you want, including legendary modifiers. legendary modifiers. And while you can add them at random at first, there's

[29:18] resource you'll get just by playing the game called legendary script to buy like individual legendary things, and then you can eventually craft those as well to put the exact legendary modifiers you want on something. And while it is very

[29:31] time-intensive, that's kind of the end-game grind where I got to, which is and I'm at the point where I'm just fine-tuning exactly what my gear looks like, utilizing that system. And while it's fine once you get to that point,

[29:45] especially starting out, it just kind of feels bad to constantly be destroying weapons you would kind of like to use, but would be kind of useless if you did you have because you don't have the mods to make it what you want. Now, I also

[29:57] multiplayer and stuff works here, they kind of have to do that in order to stop overpowered, but also give you something to progress towards, but it's just not a change I'm wild about personally. Now, beyond that, you can also learn various

[30:11] things in your camp as well. So, learning recipes even beyond your gear is a big part of general progression. And then last but not least, as far as progression goes, I did want to also mention mutations. Mutations are such a

[30:24] fun idea that it doesn't feel like they chose to do anything with, really. So, you can, by taking on radiation, potentially get mutations. These offer fun little gameplay effects. The problem with these, it's really easy to cure

[30:37] this with a perk that sort of locks it in a little better and makes that less typically come with some sort of drawback as well as a positive benefit. which gives you extra carry weight, lets you jump really high, but also lowers

[30:53] your intelligence. And for certain builds, that can be really useful. Now, understand, there are also uh consumable items you can get that will just way you can keep these mutations a little more reliably, but I do kind of

[31:06] wish they had again just leaned into this more. It's a really cool idea. And lot of the flaw system from both The Outer Worlds games. And in that sense, I this and make it like a whole thing, as it would be one of the ways you could

[31:19] vary up your build and do some really fun stuff. But, as of right now, most of of them that are really interesting, but as a whole, the system felt like they done, to be honest. That finally though brings us to the gameplay and world of

[31:34] Fallout 76. Now, gameplay-wise, it's relatively easy to describe, but we'll get into some specifics though. And this is uh essentially because it's Fallout gist of it, really. The most basic explanation possible, but also the most

[31:47] accurate one, because I believe, if I'm not mistaken, they built on Fallout 4 to naturally, then plays and feels very much the same. Now, there are still some that stash size I mentioned a bit earlier. So, a lot of stuff has uh

[32:02] weight that was not in Fallout 4. This is something they iterated upon and found a balance with over time, I believe, and so it's not as bad as it used to be, from what I to do all that crafting

[32:17] don't really have the inventory for it. So, you store this in your camp stash, unless you've got Fallout 1st or whatever. Now, I will say this was plenty, but I am starting to reach the edge of that stash limit, and it's where

[32:31] being a little more judicious with what I carry around, or pay for Fallout 1st, annoyance of it. So, dealing with that particular limit is because of all the probably one of the more notable changes. And while that was a little bit

[32:46] were playing on survival in particular, it's very noteworthy here as sort of the baseline experience. On top of that, you bit of settlement building. You can set up a camp pretty much anywhere where

[32:59] that's going to allow you to then build a little settlement in that area. I personally think this is cool as a concept, but I lack the creativity to stuff because I'm just looking for a functional base. Now, I will say this

[33:14] really seems to be the spot where they're trying to get people to pay for the stuff you can lean into, so much of it is just cosmetic stuff for building up the camp you want to make. And again, I can't be bothered with it personally,

[33:27] want. On top of that, they've also added some light survival mechanics as a baseline. And what I mean by light is that you technically speaking should eat and drink. From what I understand, this used to give you debuffs. Now it does

[33:43] don't have to deal with this at all if you want, but you should eat and drink cuz you get some buffs from keeping it at reasonable levels, but it's also not starving or something. Now, beyond that, much of the experience is questing and

[33:57] exploration and then taking part in multiplayer events where you see fit. And then of course the like general side quests and stuff. So, the basic single-player questing and exploration that you can do is very, very Fallout 4.

[34:09] talked about, there's side quests to find. Some of them are really interesting, like I thought the Mistress of Mystery one was fun just as a sort of counterplay to Silver Shroud from Fallout 4. There was also a lot to be

[34:21] found in the Ash Heap around the mining company there and the Ultracite that the mining companies that were taking advantage of the place. And then of structurally speaking, you should be familiar with this game if you've played

[34:34] other Bethesda titles. You basically explore, find locations, explore those. storytelling. These days there's actual NPCs to interact with, a couple of towns like Foundation, Crater, and Fort Atlas. And this is the part where it really

[34:47] single-player game with other people running around here and there. And relatively small, it never feels overwhelming. Although you do have to can loot things and then it won't be

[34:59] kind of thing. But being set in West Virginia, it really kind of leans into the area of Appalachia as you would probably expect. Now, that's actually where I live, just farther south. I don't live quite as north as this is.

[35:11] But in this zone of West Virginia, we have major different biomes like the relatively peaceful and safe. You've got the ash heap, the toxic valley, the savage divide, the mire, the cranberry bog. And they kind of get more dangerous

[35:26] as you go and you're having to manage like diseases and stuff as well. I will here. Most enemies that can give you a disease are like marked as a diseased enemy with an icon and everything. And you can also pick up diseases from being

[35:39] in waterborne areas, that kind of stuff. And you'll have to put on like a hazmat suit or a gas mask to avoid airborne stuff as well. And I kind of like what fun and kind of gives the world a dangerous feeling outside of of course

[35:53] is noteworthy because there isn't a lot of like radiation to be afraid of. some enemies that deal with it, but it's pretty easy to avoid getting irradiated as a condition. Now, all along those zones, there's all that environmental

[36:07] storytelling I mentioned. A big part of this leans into the cryptids. These are particularly, from what I understand, volatile mutations that did not last much past the Fallout 76 area and past the Great War, of course, but were

[36:19] present here for a little while. And this takes the form of various folklore and cryptozoology, etc. to make some interesting enemies to fight like a Snallygaster or Wendigos. My personal favorite was probably the Sheepsquatch,

[36:32] but that was just kind of fun in what felt like an appropriate way. Even if Like you fight enough of these things and you're just like, "Ugh, this guy again." But there are some further adjustments to it. Like there's a

[36:44] Mothman cult who seem to be worshipping the Mothman. There's also the Eldritch horror thing that has been present in a bunch of games taking the form of this Mine, which is not something you can actually interact with, but you can go

[36:58] background storyline that I don't think they'll ever lean fully into, but is one of those things you can kind of get lost in across the series. And that is to say nothing of all the various dailies and things you can get up to that are on

[37:11] game does have daily quests you can undertake. This is one of the primary ways to earn reputation with the Raiders or the Settlers, which is very slow and painful. There are also those public events, the daily ops, the expeditions,

[37:23] multi- player side you can lean into if you just want to kind of get into the more loot grinding aspect of it and trying to of course farm out exactly where I'm at personally. But that's pretty much what I've got to say on the

[37:36] specifically. Definitely better than I expected. I'm glad it didn't feel as much of an MMO as I was worried it was going to. I actually did wind up enjoying this part of it. It tends to be the thing Bethesda does well, like them

[37:49] or hate them. I will say I still kind of miss the sandbox elements and I think multi- player parts work take away from those elements. And so what is left for somebody looking for that single player experience is mostly an inferior single

[38:03] player experience compared to their other work, but it has in elements that I had a surprising amount of fun joining away even if it does feel kind of silly at times. But speaking of blasting away,

[38:16] Now I honestly too much to say about combat that you I assume if you're watching this you likely played Fallout 4 as well. And if how combat works here for the most part.

[38:30] to talk about in that regard so I won't spend as long on this as I normally do. they made to VATS. Like I mentioned it You bring up VATS it gives you a percent chance to hit based on the usual factors

[38:44] but nothing is slowed down and rather than having to aim or it being worried about your aim you simply take that percent chance to actually hit and this stuff to make it more interesting and again I wound up really liking this

[38:57] because I think it actually kind of helps you especially with enemies that act more erratically and it kind of accomplishes the point of VATS still which is to help you aim at things on a character skill level that you don't

[39:09] necessarily have the player skill to manage. I wound up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I was going to which was very nice. Now on the enemy side of I guess not exactly surprised but thought it was of note that a lot of the

[39:22] enemies you fight don't really have like big group mechanics though. Whereas you a boss fight might have all these different mechanics you have to manage that's not really a thing here. There are like a couple of them like the

[39:34] Wendigo Colossus can do like this big shout thing which makes everybody run away in fear but that's kind of about as complicated as it gets. Other than that mechanics most things aren't alive long enough to use them even if they did. So

[39:47] outside of just like their general basic attack they'll be using you don't really have to worry about that side of things. Probably also worth a quick mention about the way the dynamic level scaling works here. So like many a game that

[39:59] Bethesda has made Fallout 76 makes use of a scaling mechanic for the various this is a dynamic scaling so they will kind of always be based on whatever your level is and then that is power in relation to you. However at the same

[40:14] time most of the game is pretty easy and then I'm at a point now where there are but that's just because I haven't done that sort of final tier of grinding out point where I should be fighting those guys. Almost everything can still be

[40:28] done solo. There's again a couple of things you probably want to group for, probably meant more for a group can usually be soloed like the expeditions, the best reward for that one without a team. So, there is level scaling and it

[40:42] what level you are that you are still capable of participating in all the can hop into and out of and all that. But, you don't really feel that scaling, post level 100 and start getting your legendary perks going. Beyond that, it's

[40:58] pretty much the usual stuff, kind of boring to explain it. You know, armor, resistances, things like that. There's diminishing returns on your own armor in you're not be able to destroy absolutely everything, but that's kind of limited

[41:11] especially when you are in power armor, of course. Power armor is super useful armor is a thing here, it's readily available. There's a bunch of new suits and skins for said power armor, which again leads into that sort of

[41:24] terms of trying to make yourself look super cool in a way that doesn't necessarily have to be conducive to the lore. And without just unnecessarily explaining basic mechanics, those were my own personal thoughts on the thing.

[41:37] Next up, how does this thing play on the Steam Deck? Fallout 76 is a game that in fact predates the Steam Deck a little bit and perhaps unsurprisingly then, it mostly seems to run pretty well over there Fallout 4 does. Really, the only

[41:50] thing it got dinged for was text, having to use the keyboard pull up as well as smaller text in some of the menus that have a lot of text going on, which I can in some of the item menus. And while you certainly can't have every setting maxed

[42:04] over there, has the usual things you would want, provided of course you have the internet connection to play it on that platform as it is required. Next up, before we sign off on this thing, let's start talking a little bit about

[42:17] the future expansion. So, we don't have a ton of details on this, but this game should have been obvious as a live service title to begin with, but we also know that it is very specifically getting an expansion next year in 2027

[42:30] and presumably at least the one in Fallout 3 as I believe it's meant to lead into Fallout 3, kind of explaining what went on at that location before will cover that separately in the future. Doing all this for this video

[42:46] kind of got me set up to do that. So, that will be nice and then between now stuff here and there. I'll pop into this game every once in a while to do some of that and then hopefully finish it up completely around the time that DLC

[42:58] else with it, but given the cuts to the Fallout 76 team, it's hard to say exactly what the future for this game looks like beyond that. So, I suppose together. Which then brings us to positives, negatives, and then we'll

[43:12] wrap this thing up. So, on the positive side of things, the setting itself, Appalachia, very, very cool. You know, it's home to me, parts of it anyway. I love seeing what they did there, the cryptids, the exploration, the actual

[43:24] the scorched and the plague and everything. That was a really enjoyable everything else going on with it. The way they've implemented multiplayer is for the most part unobtrusive. If anything, it really only affects certain

[43:38] accommodate it, the exact way progression works, etc. But by and large, I would say I think the fun that having that aspect of the game brings does outweigh kind of what they took away, but I'm always going to be more of

[43:51] a single player kind of guy, so still not a perfect solution by any means, more negative points. The sacrifices they had to make to the single player experience in the name of making it multiplayer are at times what makes the

[44:04] game feel a little weird. Like all those bugs and stuff with quests that only sort of save provided you actually managed to get out of the dungeon in some way and you have to redo that whole quest. We don't really see sort of

[44:17] more traditional sandbox that we're used to with Bethesda's titles, things like it sparingly, there is still some of that multiplayer grind in there. Like just to give specific examples, I don't need to do it, but I would like to

[44:31] mostly just so I can potentially get at some of the items there and also grab if I'm being honest. And then there's also the stamps from the expeditions. I need 500 of those to get an auto axe, which is actually a weapon I both want

[44:46] to mess around with and it also has an achievement tied to it and that seems to be outside of just getting lucky a bit of a grind to actually obtain, which is sort of in-game weapon grind, which is where I'm at personally trying to tailor

[44:59] gear and making the most of individual experiences. And those aren't things that I love personally, which brings me to my conclusion. I would say that Fallout 76, as somebody who doesn't love the type of game it's trying to be, is

[45:13] focus on the single-player parts and what they did with those aspects are enjoyable on their own and you can do them on their own. I think most of the multiplayer stuff they added was fun, but I'm always going to be left with, as

[45:26] is always the case with these type of games, what about the future? Will they potentially turn this into a purely solo experience if they decide to turn the servers off one day? I certainly hope so. It would be a shame for this to

[45:38] become completely unavailable the way that Bethesda has absolutely done with while those are mobile games, yes, I would hope for a bigger title like this that they had plans to turn it into a solo experience in the event that they

[45:51] no longer want to sustain it as a live service. We've seen this company deal with that at least on a different platform. And while Legends and Blades I successful enough that there weren't exactly riots about it. I will say that

[46:04] while I don't think this game is going anywhere in the immediate future, it's something to ask yourself about. But at the end of the day, I paid $40 for the base game, which is what the base game is now by the way, $40 US. For that, I

[46:18] got about 80 hours out of this. I've hit the point at which uh the grind is just not something I'm super into and I'll kind of touch base with this here and there over the time between now and the next expansion, but I for the most part

[46:30] had a pretty good time for the money spent. And while I don't love everything about it and I would be lying if I said it was a type of game that is really for me, I am still glad that I played it and I got the sort of context that this game

[46:44] provides to the overall series. I'm glad I got out of my bubble a little bit and chose to approach this with an open mind. And while I again feel like I got my $40 worth out of it, I am still left with the question that I have to bring

[46:57] to every live service game, which is will I continue to enjoy this when they continue to make changes in the future, which is just not something I can know until of course I experience it. But as for what Fallout 76 is right now and my

[47:12] I've got for you. I hope you got something out of this. I'll touch base expansion releases, but that is pretty hope you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this down in

[47:25] course means to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz, but thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.