Recent reviews by Kaialb

Then: I bought this on release with the Power Armor Edition, which in hindsight was quite a fail on my part due to all the issues that FO76 had at launch, both with the game and the service aspect of it (go watch Internet Historian's Fall of 76 video for a great summary on what happened). It's been about 4 years since the game came out, with my experience being off and on throughout. I tried to pick it up again every few months or so but I could not deal with crashing multiple times per session, either from entering my power armor or entering a building/instance. The base building aspect pretty much replicated Fallout 4's, but most often you could not have a big base you can just move around anywhere or you would just not have it spawn in on login, so you either made a stationary base or something small enough to move easily.

Now: I would say that most of the issues FO76 had are fixed, and I've been playing it quite a bit lately because of it. I don't crash anymore from anything I do, the Atomic Shop is more or less there but doesn't intrude at all to my experience. I usually like to play more solo, like a singleplayer Fallout game, but the community has been quite friendly and have been generous with power armor cores and gear, and I feel like they're trying to make it as welcoming as possible. There's a lot of content to do now, things I haven't even touched yet, and it feels like a lot of it was fixed when they added NPCs back to the game (as before it had felt quite empty just listening to holotapes of people that were supposedly there but weren't, or just talking to robots and terminals). The base building is more or less the same but it feels like they've added a bit more customization to it; you can just make a shack with a vault/hatch now and just have your base in that instance instead.

TL;DR: Game was really bad at launch but after 4 years of further development and support it's gotten much better. No more crashing issues, community is very welcoming, and NPCs make it feel like a more proper Fallout game. I would still recommend the game even if you're looking for a singleplayer Fallout experience, because if you're not bothered with people having bases around and just giving people a hello every now and then, then most everyone will just leave you alone and you can do your own thing. Base building is nice to have, but there's plenty of locations around where you can go to modify weapons/armor or scrap stuff so it's not required.