Yea, I found out the hard way that power armor still makes you drown. That's also only if you have the full suit on and stay in the full suit the whole time. If you get out or remove a piece while under water, you will drown a lot faster.
Anyway, as for reviews, I'd say the story is better than most Bethesda games, but still not great.
I ended up siding with the Railroad in the end, because I was siding with the Institute until Shaun was like "Now kill the leader of the Railroad because I don't like her!" and I was like "But she's my fr-" "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU DON'T COME BACK UNTIL SHE'S DEAD!"
Seriously, I thought maybe they would let me use my new found director position to work for Synth freedom, but no, it was either kill or be killed. I guess that's kind of the message of the game, in a way. Although, I have no idea why Synth-Shaun shows up at the end, besides "real" Shaun going "Hey I reprogrammed this kid to be your kid. Here you go try not to fuck him up too bad."
Honestly? I thought Synths were just going to be mind-controlled sleepers with implants and everyone was just being idiots about it, but no, they were really robots with blood. And then I thought that "real" Shaun was going to be a Synth and Synth-Shaun was actually the real Shaun the whole time, but no, they somehow kept Kellogg alive until he was, like 120, but they couldn't keep Shaun alive for 60 years.
I also wish more happens when you romance someone. I mean, I'm glad they didn't go with a BioWare-esque sex scene, but I wish more would happen besides them going from "I guess we're friends" to "I love you forever never leave me!"
I do like the new dialogue system, and the UI takes a little getting used to, but it's actually not bad. I see people complaining about the dialogue choices being dumbed down or Mass Effect-like, but let me put it this way: So far, I haven't run into a time where choosing a different dialogue option resulted in my character saying the same thing. I ran into that all the time in Mass Effect.
I wish there were a few more options when it comes to building settlements, but that's my only complaint there. Another thing I miss from NV was being able to craft ammo. With the new crafting system, you'd think I'd be able to turn all of these components into bullets. Guess I'm gonna have to get a mod for that.
The map isn't as big as I thought it was going to be, but that's alright. It's chock-full of locations and extra goodies, so it makes up for it. The perk system was one thing I thought I was going to hate, but ended up growing on me. It kind of discourages min-maxing and puts emphasis on things like Charisma and Luck, which usually fell by the wayside in earlier games. There are a few bugs, such as sending companions to a certain settlement putting them in an inaccessible room, or children still counting as hostiles even though you can't kill them.
I overall enjoyed the game a lot, and am still enjoying it on a second playthrough. I'm definitely going to be modding it heavily later, and I'm guessing so will a lot of people, but I also look forward to seeing what they'll do with official DLC. Doing something else with the Memory Den might be fun, or putting more reasons to visit the Glowing Sea. In summary, I still love Fallout, I still love Bethesda, and I look forward to the future of the franchise.
I played 80% of the time without PA, only started using on level 40+ or something. But damn, they make things go much smoother.
And of course, you always look badass, and when someone threatens you, you can't help but lel.
My character is level 38, and I haven't been without power armor since level 25. I look like a lady Space Marine, too, with the Vault-Tec paint giving me extra Charisma so I can go around telling everyone to shoot their friends instead of me.