So to anyone deeply engrossed in FO4... what is the point of building settlements/bases? I've watched about five or so hours of streams and my hunch is they put so much time designing this crappy E-Larp house building they didn't bother to add any interesting content. So far the only enemies I've seen are mole rats, feral ghouls, and raiders.
Settlement building is there mostly as a game-length padder. It's excruciatingly tedious to hump all that loot back and then have to split it among all the new crafting avenues. I built myself a small homebase and probably will skip the rest of the settlement stuff, i'm already finding myself getting locked into the GOTTA LOOT 'EM ALL mentality, need to squash that before it gets out of control and I just play Wasteland Trailer Park Tycoon.
Still not sold on the main questline (or, at least, the main characters motivations...miraculously I have yet to be spoiled on the ending). Fortunately, by the time you get to the first hub the sidequestitis is already in full swing and flinging you off in all directions.
As much fun as i'm having with it, I would not recommend Fallout 4 to anyone but the most fervent fans. It is just another Bethesda Open World game, after all. Companions are insanely buggy, the character creator is greatly improved but still spits out the traditional fugly mutants, tons of wasted space in the form of boarded-up inaccessible buildings, bland (albeit wonderfully voiced) dialogue, horrible UI as usual (especially in the crafting menus).
It's a great world to explore, and in my 10 hours I have seen a couple stunning vistas along with dozens of stereotypical "fallout moments." Shootery is satisfying and fun both in and out of VATS, weapon/armor/food/chems crafting is fine. If you can distill your experience down to those points, you'll have a blast. If you have any tendency to nit-pick at flaws, stay far the

away. You'll get the same amount of enjoyment and frustration out of any of the previous Fallout games.