It's like Bioshock, Fallout and Mass Effect had a threesome and then raised the mutant progeny inside a Firefly themed HDR filter.
I honestly find it a little problematic for this, it's a very good, solid game, but it actually ends up feeling a little like a mad-libs mashup for it, treading very little new ground from previous "classics". I think there's two ways of looking at the result, you could either say it has a fantastic pedigree or that the creators have just made a list of sci-fi's greatest hits and semi-lazily copied them directly. As it is, i'd err towards the former because they definitely manage to take the very best and none of the worst from what I've mentioned and I think it's fairly understandable that Obsidian wanted to play it safe with their return to 1st person RPGs. I'm willing to forgive a lot of mechanical and thematic similarity just for the fact that it's a brand new, complete, very well executed 1st person RPG which has smooth, engaging gameplay, zero bugs (well I found one in the end) and released with no scummy money grubbing mechanics.
There are some real gems of dialogue snipped in and around, but a lot of the broad strokes are very tropey and I think it's ended up treading a little too heavily on pop culture and reference to the point where there's stuff that feels directly lifted rather than a clever reference. I'd argue that there's some stuff in there that will get old quick once it's done the internet rounds a la "the cake is a lie" and "They asked me if I had a physics degree, I said I had a theoretical degree in physics, they said welcome aboard" again, your mileage may vary though, there's some stuff that starts off feeling like very heavy handed social commentary which I think has the potential to turn people off pretty quick. But there's a lot under the surface to justify and expand on it once you start digging and for that I love it. The game passes "Kitt's patented autismal economic and logistic test" with flying colours, while staying interesting, engaging and managing to not explain anything in too much detail which is a pretty stellar achievment in itself.
It ended up feeling quite short - It took me exactly 25 very leisurely hours to 100% all story and side quests, find plenty of "secrets" and have a good explore of the levels (which are in the mass effect style of multiple maps tied together with a "ship" level rather than a FO style open world, the ship serving as your base and the place where you chat to your companions (of course had my favourites and the ones I didn't utilise as much, but I found them all fairly charming and well written in their own ways, there weren't any i really hated)
Combat ended up getting very easy fairly quickly (I was playing on normal) and i'm a little scared that a higher difficulty will just turn enemies into bullet sponges, but I was playing more for the story than the gun play for the most part after the first level so it wasn't a great loss. There are some fun little companion mechanics which kept things entertaining too, although all sense of danger was very quickly removed.
I guess the tl;dr is If you like the sound of playing "Mass Effect, but you're on Serenity instead of Normandy and it's set in an open world-ish Space Rapture while mining deep from FONV's vein of absurdist gallows humour" you'll probably like it, but it's lacking "something" that would make it an instant classic in it's own right imo
