Lots of people have been checking out Fallout 76 lately – you might be one of them, or are considering becoming one of them, or may have even been one of them in the past but are wondering what changed since you last played. It’s obvious that the success of Amazon Prime’s Fallout series (which has already been renewed for season 2) has put the spotlight back on Bethesda’s online Fallout game in a big way, and as someone who has put 83+ hours into the Fallout 76 over the past few years – among hundreds of hours in the franchise as a whole, all the way from the original Fallout to Brotherhood of Steel – I’m here to tell you that despite the negativity surrounding its release, Fallout 76 is a good game if you like that sort of thing.

It’s not for every Fallout fan, for sure. There’s a big focus on the same base building that was in Fallout 4, and the very existence of its always-online, battle pass-centered structure means that getting the best, most unique items for your base will necessitate either a lot of grinding or some real-world cash payments. The Fallout 1st membership program is absolutely ridiculous, too expensive for most players to even consider making a part of their budget, and if you log into a server where another player has placed their camp in the same location as you then yours just gets packed up into a bag and you have to either try and reload the game and get a different server or build a whole new home somewhere else.

Fallout 76’s Gameplay Loop

If you don’t care about any of that, though, there’s still a prime Fallout experience to be had in 76‘s West Virginia. I love base building, so for me that part is great, but I’m never going to pay extra money for this stuff. Bethesda gives free items ever now and then (a good number are available now, probably to entice all the new players coming in) and, along with the battle pass rewards which drip-feed in without ever having to actually worry about them, that’s enough variety for me. There’s also a bit of an economy shift to get used to, with caps suddenly becoming much more important than they have been in past Bethesda Fallouts.

What else might you not like in Fallout 76? Enemy level scaling that feels more Oblivion than ever, probably. The fact that Daily Quests and Events periodically activate and clog up your screen until you deactivate them manually? That’s frustrating. Occasional server kicks, depending on your internet quality, and the ever-present Bethesda jank. Uhhh…. Super Mutants in West Virginia this soon after the bombs dropped feels incongruous with the lore? C’mon, you’ve been angry about that since Fallout 3.

Look, Fallout 76 has all those things, but if you can ignore or look past or just not care about them, there is a fantastic game here. Sure, some of the earlier story missions are a bit of a connect-the-dots on the map and tiered series of fetch quests, but those have faded into the distance as more and more updates have released. Fallout 76 has the best map out of any of the Bethesda Fallouts, and it’s also the best looking – thanks in no small part to art director Nate Purkeypile, who is currently working on his solo heavy metal hunting open world game The Axis Unseen.

Who Should Play Fallout 76

I’m not going to waste your time and tell you all the reasons why I think Fallout 76 is worth playing. I’m just here to tell you who I think SHOULD give it a chance – people who love the Fallout franchise, people who enjoyed their time with Fallouts 3, New Vegas, and 4, maybe even people who didn’t like 4 because of reasons like not enough skill checks or poor dialog choices. Fallout 76 has excellent dialog, excellent worldbuilding, and excellent storytelling in both its actual stories and its environmental design. Fallout 76 is worth playing if you have never tried a Fallout game before, and Fallout 76 is worth playing if you tried all the others but were turned off by the “always online, multiplayer” aspect of the whole thing.

Personally, I play Fallout 76 in two ways. When I play solo, I treat it like every other Bethesda Fallout game. The most interaction I have with other players is visiting their settlements and checking out what they have for sale, seeing whether they have a cool base or not – otherwise, I’m doing missions, getting sidetracked with stories and side content, or I’m building my own base. When I play with friends, I like to show off my base, let them show off theirs, go do some of the more action-heavy Daily missions or maybe one of the Event things – treat it a little more like the multiplayer game that it is. The important difference here is that I play alone far more than I play with friends (although I enjoy it when I do) and with Fallout 76 I can do both.

I don’t know if Fallout 76 is for you. It wasn’t for me originally, and then it was. It still is. If you are on the fence and some of the things you read here seem interesting, or you are wondering whether Fallout 76’s Prime gaming freebie deal is worth it, give it a shot. I’ve turned the game on and off sporadically for 3 years now, and I still have yet to see everything the West Virginian wasteland has to offer. And don’t just take my word for it – watch the 9-hour Noah Caldwell Gervais Fallout series retrospective embedded below for a far more thorough and in-depth breakdown of what works and what doesn’t in 76. Trust me, all nine hours are worth watching. And if you have a particular reason you do or don’t like Fallout 76, let me know in the comments! I always like hearing people’s opinions on this stuff.