- The three main factions are basically Capitalism vs Communism vs Religion, all with their stereotypical positive and negative traits dialed up to 1000.
- The level of snark fluctuates depending on the area you're in but I still think the game needed multiple editing passes. It's the kind of writing where if you'd ask the character about the weather rather than the NPC saying something like, "Looks like it might rain, I think." you'll instead get "Ah, you're asking about the weather, stranger? Well, I'm glad you've put fourth such a query to I! For you see, stranger, I consider myself something of an amateur weatherologist! Now, then, to answer your query, I do believe those dark clouds over yonder mean we're in for a touch of rain! My grandmother loved the rain because she was a farmer and she'd always say that good rain meant good crops!" Well, okay, that may be a touch hyperbolic but, still, it feels like the writers are being paid by the word.
- The companions are fine, though largely unremarkable. I do think they intended for some of them to be romanceable but cut that content out very late in development. Both Niles and Inez seem to get very attached to the protagonist depending on how you treat them. Aza, too, feels like she wants to jump your bones if you pick the more violent options in dialogue while she's in the party. I'm not sure why they keep cutting out romances from their games; it's not like they're making serious RPGs for mature gamers, they're making Reddit RPGs and redditors love their romances. It seems especially stupid after BG3.
- Just about the only downgrade I can think of from Outer Worlds 1 is party interjections and commentary. In the first game, your companions constantly spoke up during conversations with other NPCs, sometimes even talking to each other and changing the course of the conversation. In OW2, your party members rarely speak outside of the bigger story events, unless it's something they're directly involved with. Instead, your companions are now usually completely silent during the majority of the side quests. The game also does that really stupid thing Obsidian loves doing wherein if you have two companions that both have a comment about something it'll randomly select one instead of just letting you hear both. You'd think their first two Pillars of Eternity games having popular mods that force all the comments to play would've clued Obsidian in that people hate this.
- The game has a day & night cycle but the only effect it has on the game is making it so that enemies sometimes sleep, but only out in the open world, and regular NPCs don't appear to have schedules. I mostly just find it annoying since exploring during the night time is tedious.
- You eventually find pulse thrusters for your boots that allow you to jump higher. You might think this adds verticality to the game but not really. It's basically a very weak double jump. Most ledges and stuff you'd think to try to jump up onto are still out of reach (or you slide right off of) and there's often nothing worth finding up high. It feels like something that was added in very late in development.
- Itemization is a mixed bag. On one hand, unlike the first game this one has really nice uniques, with their own unique models and effects, and a pretty good amount of them, too. On the other hand, much like the Witcher 3, unique items render 99% of the loot meaningless, and even ignoring uniques most of the loot you find is literal trash that exists just to be broken down into crafting components or to be sold.
- Quests are fine mechanically, in that you often have multiple ways of solving them, and if you find pertinent info from a NPC or off a note somewhere you can often use that information during the quest. The dull or otherwise unremarkable writing makes the quests and NPCs forgettable, however.