TL;DR version: Bethesda's most ambitious work, but some pieces don't fit that well.
Before I get into my analysis, I have to address some points brought up: Yes you can max out everything. Only takes you lvl 264. Fuckin' lazy casual mainstreamers... no way this being feasible without months if not years of grinding.

Building different characters IS why F4's system is that way.
Lockpicking / hacking / crafting takes about 20 perk points alone - that's the basics without anything about the role of your character.
Add in around 10-15 perks for specifically building your character (melee, stealth / crit based, whatever), another 5-10 (additional to the crafting) if you'd want to go wild with settlements.
Note that I haven't even touched any of the 5 (Big Leagues, Heavy Gunner, Rifleman, Gunslinger, Commando) weapon perks, nor the explosives or VATS based ones yet...

Yes you'd have to specialize as no longer will it be possible to get 100 in all skills / get all perks as it was the case with F3 and NV (well yes, theoretically - again, at lvl 264).
I agree with the more FPS then RPG part though.

They already put in restrictions on the perks, so that you need a certain lvl to unlock it (which I hate, but is for balancing reasons) in place of a certain skill lvl. If you need more restrictions to play your role, you fail at the roleplaying part.

... and they won't change it. Which is actually good. A completely new engine equals throwing all the knowledge modders have build up over board. The way cells are handled, is practically the same since Morrowind. You simply won't get that level of compatibility with a new engine - that's why they rewrite and adapt the whole thing over and over again.

I'm currently playing on survival difficulty at lvl 27 and sneak not only works, but is what saves my sorry puny ass. At times it's god-like and feels straight up overpowered. Taking down a legendary enemy in power armor that could 2-shot me? Sneak.

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The bad:
- The Interface straight up sucks. Can't say that more nicely, it's worse than on Skyrim.
Press M to bring up the map on your pipboy. You'll gonna close it with M again - wrong, doesn't work. You'll need to close the pipboy with TAB. Same for inventory, quests, you name it. Same by opening the map with M, then wanting to switch over to inventory - TAB, I or use the mouse.
Some keys share more than one purpose and can't be separated.

- Speech is practically useless. As far as I've seen, there was 1 point where I regretted to not have high charisma / persuasion, on all other occasions they worked as minor shortcuts on quests or for more exp.

- Endings. 3 of the 4 possible endings finish with the same mission, the same outcome, just different NPCs standing next to you. The conclusion after any ending remains the same. Not going into effects of your decisions (like NV) at all. Lame

The not fish, not flesh:
- Story is overall meh and could have been easily better. Quickly get's WTF moments (bad ones, I'm looking at you, Mama Murphy), but also has good parts and is still a vast improvement over F3 and yes, I dare to say it, even NV (sry guys, but the Institute is nowhere near as bad as the Legion from a storytelling perspective).
+ a lot more effort went into the story. Different factions with different goals, the possibility of double-crossing... it's just that you see so much potential wasted on what could have been.

- Dialog. Not seeing the complete answer your about to give and the limited options you get, is the standard problem of this adopted Bioware system.
+ On the other hand, I loved the more free-flow feeling it gives. You're not locked into a discussion, which feels more natural.

- Starting location is in a corner of the world. Not in the middle of the map, from where you can go everywhere, which takes away from immersion.
+ This works as a tutorial and against level scaling (the more you head south, the more dangerous it get's).

- More glitches than Skyrim on release...
+ ... but hardly any quest bugs or gamecrashes.
Also some logical faults like an area where you can't survive without Rad-protection, yet your companion walks next to you in a t-shirt....

- AI sucks at times. Dogmeat is the new Lydia, only worse. Enemies running towards you, passing both attacking companion and acompaning questguy, even though you didn't fired one shot.
+ On the plus side they beefed up the attack pattern of the enemies. A deathclaw or radscorp don't just run straight towards you, but actively tries to evade your attacks. Robots also don't just stand in front of you while you melee them, but evade regularly.

- Perk system. Too much emphasis on crafting, which takes away much needed points from fighting skills. Higher levels hardly anything useful, unless you pick a very specific build towards it.
+ More than ever before, you need to specialize.

The good:
+ More interesting places, hardly ever feeling copy paste / seen this before. More places offering insightful snippets from the past / stories.

+ NPCs have more character / personalities than ever before. The discussions you get is also a huge step forward, though nowhere near Bioware / Obsidian / CDRed level.

+ Difficulty. Very easy in F4 is the normal difficulty in Fallout 3.

+ Crafting weapons / (power) armor with a HUGE upgrade.

+ Building house / defenses. Though rather basic and already confusing - modders will go nuts on this one. Almost completely optional though.

+ Enormous amount of content to explore.

Conclusion:
I loved Fallout 3 and Skyrim. At the moment, I like Fallout 4 but didn't fell in love with it, despite having played up to 175 hours.

It is a vast improvement over Fallout 3 across the board (except the interface). More interesting world, better dialog, better level building, more personalities... but 7 years later and with a Witcher 3 out, just not the giant leap forward. Overall it's a great game and I've already gotten my money's worth out of it. But you can't help but wonder, how much better it could have been...

It's not perfect, but it's one of the most fun open world RPGs I've played.
It beats the pants of W3 in every area IMO.
Since it's basically using the same version of Gamebryo that Skyrim uses you know what bugs you can expect, but I haven't encountered a single game breaking one.

I haven't reached that sort of level,but your happy with it then good luck.

I don't particularly care for it, but a steam friend of mine bought it. Since we have shared libraries, I've thought of maybe giving it a try, except he's constantly playing it. 306 hours on record already, according to profile. AFAIK he's not much into masochism, so it's safe to say he liked it.

I think it's a game you'll either love or ignore; and deep down you know which one it will be before even starting it up.

Challenge failed. Not for lack of effort though. You make some solid points. At the end of the day it's yet another example of chocolate vs vanilla. You like the "new" RPGness, I don't. So in your eyes, it's "arguably" even more RPGness than 3 (or previous versions even) and In mine it's not. When you have in one case, Attributes, Skills AND Perks, but now only have Attributes and Perks, that is, by definition, LESS. I suppose whether that LESS equals less RPGness is, as you've proven, debateable. I'm not convinced. Yet.

I just want to address, what I consider, (that is IMO, obviously not yours), is a misnomer.

Just because one can max out every skill in F3, doesn't equal skills don't matter. You don't start the game with all skills at 15 and then two hours in have all at 100. If that were the case, then maybe by being able to max out all skills so easily, one could argue that skills don't matter.

In F3 (and NV, even more so in NV I think.... perhaps I should give full disclosure here as I've played through F3 about 6 times and NV 2 and have yet to max out all of my skills in either) it still mattered where you put your skills because the trip to getting everything maxed (or near maxed) was where those choices mattered. Now if you want to argue that the trip to max was somehow too short in F3 but with 264 levels (or whatever) in F4 it isn't, that's an arguable point, but it's not one I agree with having played F3 (and NV) as many times as I have.

I played the last couple of times using playing cards to randomly pick skills (and perks and attributes at the beginning of the game) and I can absolutely say with experience that your choices matter as those games required me to play a vastly different play style, at least for the first 50 to 75 hours of gameplay. Yes, once all/most of your skills are above say 80, it's a pretty generic character, but that IMO 50 to 75 hours of gameplay where those choices matter sill equals they matter. If you want to make the argument that any game where you can max out all skills ultimately means they don't matter in roleplaying, then by definition F4 fails too, since, as you said, it can be done (it just takes longer than in F3 or FNV.

I just disagree with that assessment. I role played F3 and NV and had a grand time doing so. (As I did in F1 and F2). And I liked very much how the skill system worked in F1, F2, F3, and FNV. Maybe this new perk system, once one gets accustomed to it, will be okay, but it's still my opinion that as players we lost something from the series when they took away this skill system. YMMV

Yes it is as F4 brings different factions and choices / consequences into play. Certainly nowhere near Obsidian's NV level, but way beyond F3's good / bad karma system.

You never will be. Not unless you're willing to widen your personal defintion of what qualifies as RPG. You made that clear in your first post by stating: :p

I'm not arguing that they don't matter. I argue that the same applies to how perks are implemented in F4.
If for example, you want to ignore perks and get every s.p.e.c.i.a.l. attribute to 10 first, you can - this however drastically changes the way you play and your way to lvl 40 something.

I finished my first playthrough after 68 hours at lvl 43. So getting to the point where you can actually max your perks, regardless of the approach you took, certainly isn't achieved any faster than in F3 / NV.

To my surprise, I actually got bored of F4 after a while and stopped playing. Way overrated/hyped. The crafting system and finding necessary supplies is a chore, the whole settlement system is a complete waste of space and time, the story is about as generic and uninteresting as it gets, and the dialog system is just pants. Luckily the gameplay was moderately fun for a time until it got old again. *shrug* Frankly, the whole addition of the power armor is nothing special either.

I also don't get all the love that was heaped onto New Vegas. Sure, it was a decent game, but, frankly, I still had the most fun with F3. Yeah, that one's ending sucked monkey-balls, but otherwise to me it is definitely the most enjoyable one.

Also, Fallout > Fallout 2. Suck it! =P

As said before, Fallout 4 is a good game, but I wouldn't consider it an RPG, and it is merely thinly Fallout themed.

I've had fun with Fallout 4 as a FPS in the same vein as the STALKER series. It's no where near as a hardcore, but it's definitely a FPS at heart now. And it's a good modern Bethesda game. I really did like exporing and going off the beaten path to discover things and figure out what was the deal behind them. Unfortunately, it's not very deep, so you'll get a little tidbit of the background of a place and that's all. Plot Depth Blue Balls are a commn side effect of this game.

I can't consider the game an RPG. Not because of the removal of skills and the abstraction of so much of the character nitty-gritty bits. My reason is this: There's no "game" in the role you play. In most RPGs, the role you choose and the character you design is going to have some consequences associated to them just due to what the character is and how you play them. It can range from not being able to find out about certain points of interest, to major points in the plot where whole sections of the game are locked out to you due to your actions and abilities. The key thing here is consequence.

What Fallout 4 lacks is Consequence. There is none. And the role you play and the actions you do ultimately don't change the game in any sizable fashion. Save for very specific main plot scripted events... Nothing you do in the game makes a mark. The "game" of the game comes from shooting and moving rather than the role you play in it.

But... in an odd sense... Fallout 4 could be considered a JRPG in how it handles itself. Fallout 4 is really just interested in telling a specfic story. You are on the plot railroad, but it gives you some choice in which train car you get to sit down in. But, the plot is going to go where it's going to go and if you try to get off the train... It'll just wait for you. This is something very common to JRPGs.

As for the Fallout aspects of it... It's Fallout themed. But much in the same way someone's birthday party is Fallout themed. Bethesda doesn't really care much for the old lore, and just haphazardly sprinkles it everywhere as they please. So, if you love the old lore... This game will just feel insulting at parts.

So overall... If you want to play a Fallout-themed FPS JRPG? It'll probably be an absolutely awesome experience for you. If you are wanting something similar to the previous Fallouts... I'm sorry. It's probably time to move on because that ship is never coming to that dock again. War never changes, but the Fallout franchise does.

<laugh> Oh, OFG, you really didn't read that well. I had to put down Fallout 4 because the writing and scripting are so bad that it turned me off. I don't like it anywhere near as much as New Vegas or the originals. Personal preference has nothing to do with objective measures, though. I wasn't trying to convince you to like it.

Your argument that taking away skills makes the game less of an RPG isn't supported. Just saying "there's less things to directly control so that's less" makes just as much sense as the slogan for Brawndo. Since your initial thesis was that Fallout 4 was, as you put it, "LESS RPGness no matter how one argues it", all I wanted to do was show you that RPGness isn't tied to having skills, or reliant on having the most skills, stats, or perks. If that were the case, Fallout 3 would be more of an RPG than Planescape: Torment or Deus Ex, and I doubt that would be a position that would be easy to argue.
EDIT: typo

As veteran of Fallout 2 through New Vegas, I don't miss skills. Perks always felt more interesting and had a similar function: Expanding and improving your character's abilities.

In my opinion, Fallout 4 is an great improvement over Fallout 3, with only one detriment: Less(er) dialogue options and a canned protagonist. With any luck, we will get an Obsidian spinoff.

F3 had no factions.
F4 has 4 different factions you can join and double-cross them if you'd want so.

F3 had good / bad karma system for choices / consequences (save / blow up Megaton) with the biggest being dropping the nukes on the Enclave or the Brotherhood (last one with literally no reason, build-up or roleplay involved at all - and coming with a DLC).
F4 has choices / consequences, most of them with no impact at all, but those related to factions include completely wiping other factions out - again, potential double-crossing included.

If this doesn't count for your way of "role play" - fine. But then don't ask questions or start a discussion, when you've already deemed your answer as the only one acceptable and cast in stone...

You can watch me play on my youtube channel, and the first one I go over a bit of what I like about the game: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh4oDayJkeqNeJNYJpReSUw


I honestly don't think you can call it a FPS with RPG elements, and any comparison to Borderlands is just stupid.

Yes, the RPG has been toned down and the dialogue wheel sucks, but you really can't judge it's RPG elements (so i've discovered) in the first 15 hours of play. I'm at about 80 hours, and I have happily found lots more RPG elements, but mostly those revolve around Charisma checks. At first I really thought I'd only be able to shoot my way out of all situations, and for the most part that is true, but every once in a while some random occurence will happen and how it plays out (carnage or not) will hinge on your charisma. ANd honestly, chrisma in all the other games used to be kinda worthless b/c you could always wear enough gear and eat enough mentats to get that stat up to pass any checks. THis really isn't the case anymore. I found the game was a lot more challenging with only having two points in charisma, so much so I spent some of my skill points into increasing it.

Further, the Companions, though they don't necessarily do what you want (cough cough dogmeat cough cough ;) ), are way more interactive. YOu can do things to either piss them off or like you and doing so can lead to getting perks through them or even romance. And a few of the companions (nick, maccready, strong) are really well done and have interesting personalities. I honeslty don't want to play with Dogmeat anymore bc he is boring by comparison.

At first I didn't like that they got rid of the karma system, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how broken and worhtless it was. I mean, all the raiders you killed gave you good karma and it was near impossible to stay evil for long. Meh. And now you can piss off your companions (which is much easier to do that in the F:NV) and they will up and leave you. Like some like stealing, some dont. some like killing, others frown on it.

It's a good game. It just doesn't feel like a Fallout game. Fallouts 1 and 2 (as well as Tactics, too) have that certain atmosphere to them. I love it. But three times I've really, really anticipated a new Fallout game and three times have I been somewhat disappointed in the end. Not because the games weren't good and not because I didn't have fun. But because none of them have been able to capture that particular atmosphere. I mostly blame the fact that Fallout is nowadays a 3D sandbox FPS.

Whenever Fallout 5 comes out, I think I'm only going to pick it up once it can be found on the bargain bin.