Recent reviews by Dragonforce Changed My Life

Two years in and still no actual diplomacy. No espionage or sabotage. Culture is meaningless. Alien empires have no personality and are just portraits that either will or won't trade with you based on binary presets. Playing pacifist or even just a friendly democracy is basically pointless. Instead of fixing that they pump out DLC that is just more blowing ♥♥♥♥ up.

Then, hilariously, they went and made war an absolute slog as well with a ton of restrictions on achieving anything. With some of the wargoals like Subjugation and Vassalization being functionally impossible to achieve because you can destroy every one of their ships and control every one of their systems and they'll still refuse to surrender despite being 100% conquered and will eventually manage to force an end to the war without surrendering.

The shooting isn't terrible and it looks alright, but Bethesda ripped the guts out of the series to the point that almost no decision you makes matter. Hardly any quests have meaninful choices, or any choices at all: the only choice you often have is whether or not to do the quest. Can't be evil, and hardly ever neutral, you are frequently forced to be the bland, heroic protagonist.

SPECIAL stats and perks no longer matter, so a 1 intelligence brawler will have the exact same experience as a 10 intelligence scientist. This isn't like the old Fallouts, where you'd wonder "What else could have happened?" Nothing else could have happened, quests resolve the same way regardless of what you do most of the time. The small number of quests which have multiple endings are a ruse, as the characters involved are functionally removed from the map and never revisited, so your choice has no effect on the world.

The worst part is that that the game tricks you into thinking you have a choice, but ultimately saying "No" or being "Evil" simply leads you back to the "Yes" dialogue. The exact dialogue will play as if you said yes, with the NPCs not even acknowledging your choice. It's baffling.

OK shooter. Bad fallout.