I've finished this game. I'm in the process of acquiring all the trophies and while I really like the game, the glitches are a goddamn nightmare. I'm actually playing very infrequently because after about 5 consecutive freezes I get mad and stop playing the game. Days or weeks later I come back and continue the game.
Pros:
- Weapon variety is awesome, lots of weapons to find and only so much time to use them.
- Quest amount and variety in ways to complete them is great as well.
- Hardcore mode gives a lot of substance to the game. Food and water matter now, and you have to choose which weapons to bring cause the ammo has weight as well.
Cons:
- Small map compared to Fallout 3.
- Game freezes quite regularly in certain areas or during certain events (i.e. every single quest toward the end of the game).
- Extensive use of invisible walls to prevent you from taking shortcuts.
- Essentially empty map locations (check the
Mojave Drive-In for example, it's not connected to any quest, there's nothing unique to find there, and nothing interesting to see either).
- Special ammo is pretty unnecessary, I end up using special ammo only if I run out of the normal type. It's also quite a hassle to figure out what ammo type hurts who and then having to carry each type is a burden if you're playing on Hardcore mode. So I can live without special ammo.
Anyway, the pros really outweigh the cons (not in number, but I am being a little picky on my cons, and lazy in writing more pros), except for the freezing. It's borderline absurd how much trouble I have with freezing in this game. I turned off all automatic saving and it seemed to have helped a bit, at the very least it was taking less time to travel between locations. I made sure to save regularly anyway and it all seemed good until I got my last freeze. I haven't returned to the game yet to gauge if turning off automatic saving really helped or not, maybe later.
"Clearly my escape had not been anticipated, or my benevolent master would not have expended such efforts to prevent me from going. And if my departure displeased him, then that was a victory, however small, for me." - Raziel