I have not finished the game yet, but as a fan of the first game, the second is a disappointment.

First of all, the combat is WAAAAY too difficult. I put in countless hours to the 3D fallout games, and also have around 80 hours in TOW1. I know how to get around in this kind of RPG and typically do stealth builds that allow me to dispatch enemies effectively. Here, silencing your guns cuts damage by 40%, and the second you fire a stealth weapon, it doesnt kill the enemies youre shooting at causing everyone to know you're there. It makes stealth useless. Your weapons typically don't do enough damage to enemies, and enemies can kill you very quickly. Even relatively basic gunfights feel extremely difficult and punishing.

Part of this is due to the points and perks system. Unlike other similar RPGs, it seems to expect you to min-max your builds, where you put most of your points in only a few attributes. While I guess, if you put ALL of your points in stealth and guns, you could probably eventually make a stealth build work, that leaves you horribly unbalanced and unable to do other things, like pock locks, open doors, etc. It just feels like bad game design.

While one can turn the difficulty to "story mode", which trivializes most encounters, one shouldn't have to choose between an easy difficulty that is very easy, and a medium one that is very hard. If anything, it just comes back to feeling like bad game design to me. I don't know how it's possible for them to mess up something so basic. It's not like obsidian hasn't already made an outer worlds game to build off of, let alone be responsible for the masterpiece that is fallout new vegas. This game makes me feel like what new vegas would have felt like if I had to get to vegas by going through quarry junction (okay, it isn't THAT bad, but you get the idea).

Beyond that, the story just...doesn't resonate. The first outer worlds was a masterpiece of political discourse. You had earth colonize this new solar system, with corporations running everything and oppressing people, and then you had these various groups of anarchists who wanted freedom from the corporations. The discourse ran deep by the end of the game. Sure, the capitalists are evil, but don't we kind of need capitalism for society, to, you know, function? Meanwhile the anarchists had a point about capitalism's evils, but their lifestyle may not have been sustainable long term for various reasons, some of which are obvious and some of which are spoilers of the first game. It kind of made you think about both sides critically, and as a political science guy very much into debating various economic ideologies, the game was very thought provoking.

The second one so far just doesn't capture the same vibe. Now it feels closer to the cold war....from the capitalist perspective. The capitalists aren't quite as buffoonishly evil, and actually seem pretty reasonable. Meanwhile the opposing faction on the first planet are these comically evil communist types that have little to no redeeming qualities. While the first game was really thought provoking, this time I'm like "oh yeah, say what you want about the capitalists, they're DEFINITELY the lesser evil here." It just didnt reach that deep level of discourse the first game was known for.

On the second planet, there's a third faction which is this weird religious faction that seems to reward science and probability. They are trying to solve some universal equation that unlocks the universe's secrets, and they seem both really scholarly, but also radically fanatical. They kind of remind me of the brotherhood of steel in a way from fallout.

Anyway, while I have not finished the game, these factions struggles just don't feel like my problem as the main character. You're some sort of secret agent on your own mission, and it feels like dealing with these other factions is just a matter of the end justifying the means. While I felt deeply invested in the plot of the first game and the choices i made, in the second it just feels like a whole lot of "not my problem."

The fact is, the outer worlds 2 kind of just feels like a shallow cash grab. Like a bunch of people in a corporate board room made a second game for the sake of making a second game, but didn't seem to understand what made the first so great in the first place. In a sense, i guess the real capitalist parody is the game itself in this regard, as it shows how late stage capitalism leads to game franchises to become shells of their former selves because rich people decide to put out relatively low quality slop to generate profits, while the art that made the game series' great to begin with is cheapened by people who don't understand it in the first place.

All in all, I'm gonna advise people to wait for a DEEP sale on this one. I paid around $50 for this, it's not worth $50. It's maybe worth $10-20, honestly. It's not an awful game, but it is rather flawed and mediocre.

I may update this review when I finish a full play through, but I'm far enough into it that I think my opinions are pretty valid.

I bought the $100 edition of the game. it was not worth it. this is a 40 dollar game on a great day, 15 dollar game on a bad day. Suffers from bethesda syndrome where the engine is god awful so I have to rely on mods to get the game into a barely optimized state. it's not overhated, it is really just that mediocre. why is it so difficult to just release a functional product. I don't even care about graphic anymore. I just want a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game that works without me needing to fix it for the people I just paid to make a working game. most disappointing game of 2025. maybe it gets better in the future? I would love to care about the story, but if I can't make it ANYWHERE AT ALL even on potato optimization, there is no reason for me to do so. Would love to change it to a yes, but rn, ts is buns

Aggresively average.

I don't know if this is a problem with all of Obsidian's new entries, but, atleast for the Outer Worlds series, it feels like the devs have decided to go down a path of absolute mildness and give this title no real, substantial flavor, deciding instead to make a game without taking any real risks, resulting in a product that is neither good nor bad.

To put it in simple terms, its like barely scratching a wicked itch, leaving you yearning for more.

Since this was my main problem with the first title aswell, I expected that Obsidian would provide us with something MORE resembling their legacy of in-depth and engaging RPGs this time around, and in fact, I do remember them stating that this iteration would be just that, with the first one being more of a testing of the waters. And, since this is Obsidian, I was willing to believe it - and I was sorely mistaken.

Don't get me wrong, the game has many posivites, like the gameplay, as the guns and various unique weapons are extremely fun and somewhat satisfying to use. The general environment and theme are beautiful, the visuals are pretty decent and the breath-taking at times.

But -BUT- the massive elephant in the room is the main story as it basically... just sucks? Yes, if you follow the story as presented by the various characters and some of the in-game logs, it doesn't make sense. At the start you are intrigued by the mystery of it all but once you have all the pieces in your hands it just looks like some rushed poodle of various ideas forced together, climaxing in one of the most disappointing endings I've witnessed in a while. Even the motivations of some of the enemies make no sense and are unsubstantiated, and are there just for you to have an antagonist to seek out.

There is much else I could say, both for the negatives and positives of this product, but I will limit myself to NOT recommending this game as it is the same deal as the first one, which was just a mild and disappointing, but, I'm not going to lie, the first title atleast had more charm to it being the first one to come and having a more faction-rich world with much more intriguing options as fair as I remember.

And for Law's sake, add the ability to manipulate objects and bodies in the game, I swear it takes away so much from the experience.