It's funny, having just gotten a new playthrough up to the "would be finished Chapter 2 if the one last Unique Settler I want for my Engineering Department would friggin spawn" point, I've realised as I went back through that I could do about as long a post as that initial split-in-two rant of just the things I don't like about the mod.
But I've learned in my time here that even so much as expressing a negative opinion on these forums will get you shouted at for being wrong unless you shroud it in ball-gargling tier praise, so I'll not.
Damn it yaugie, you just had to be negative at some point x)
Obviously there are unlikeable things, I for once realised I hate recruitment in repeat playthroughs. Hunting unique settlers, 15 HQ staff, allies - all of it. Please please we need The Ron's Office fast travel marker or a permanent recruitment tracker for 5K caps or something.
But I've remembered your thread, and now that I myself finished chapter 3 (hell yeah! Took me long enough) I mostly agree with everything. I'm not sure what I was looking for initially when starting SS2 but I sure didn't expect to nuke anything from orbit. And we went a long way to get there so it feels justified. Like the main quest but done right. A lot of people dead, they left us no chance, etc, etc, but it actually feels like it and not some forced conflict.
The battle of Quincy quest reminded me a lot of the assault on Hoover Dam in New Vegas. Which is probably the highest praise I can give it, as that was fucking epic, and this is arguably.. even better (wait for me to take the rose-tinted glasses off, that might take some time...). All our allies, connections, planning, making friends and enemies, it all led to this one grand moment. Easily in my top 2 favourite quests now.
I'm really glad that I went out of my way to get CPD and NLTC (and ALL other factions except for Diamond City and someone previously dead).
Minutemen were perfect for artillery (who else would you pick) and Institute for tech support. And CPD got beefed up just enough to carry me on the road to Quincy. I did die once to friendly fire from assaultrons (and once to enemy fire from assaultrons...).
If I really was to nitpick, some shifts in tone could probably be avoided, like how we nuke Province Bay and Jake immediately jokes to Magnusson about putting the coffee on. And I wish some really tough gunners spawned on the overpass to fight cause that final sequence was just watching Brotherhood raise hell downstairs (as epic as their entrance was, like holy shit) while I was standing there.. waiting for the comm tower to do its thing. Yep, don't mind me, I'm just chilling here. Also yeah, the "sniper" in the beginning of assault just showed up 5m away on the ground and was obliterated in seconds, it was kinda funny. Worst sniper ever.
Oh and the occasional lack of epic music makes it all feel kinda weird. Not sure if it was meant to be there but it wasn't.
I've noticed what I consider to be some internal lore inconsistencies but it's not a dealbreaker so doesn't really matter.
Also yeah, Madison is clearly lying and vault-tec is evil as shit (took a while but I got fully convinced they were the employer, before the chapter released) but if I as the player didn't know better..
Uh, I ended up pointing out more nitpicks than you did in your posts but still, I was so caught up in it that I stayed up till 4am knowing full well that work is in 4 hours.