Lots of games combine elements of several genres. Like rts with rpg elements. Some there the best games I played and that thinking out of the box is what creates new ideas.
Combining isn't the biggest problem. It's combining by morons, that do a crappy job of it. They Bethesda'd it up.
Take the
Looter Shooter elements, likely inspired by the success of Borderlands.
Borderlands does the
RNG Legendary tier weapon drop thing. Except in Borderlands you are ALWAYS finding better guns. It's a progression system.
FO4, there is no progression or tiers to the Legendary drops. There is maybe a one in hundreds of hours of play that you will find a good Legendary gun you want to use. I've played over 100 hours now. Haven't found a single decent Legendary weapon. I mostly find garbage like "Junkies Rolling Pin". Pure
RNG garbage with no thought behind it. It's a TERRIBLE system. Look online and you will see people detailing how to spend your day farming to get a decent Legendary combo, and even if you do, well then you are done because their are no tiers. You could farm that explosive shotgun at level 10, and even at level 99 you can't farm a better one. This is just a thoughtless
RNG system, done by incompetents that completely missed the point of Looter shooter elements they were attempting to emulate.
Look at the
settlement building elements. I've enjoyed games where you build bases/settlements like RTS games, but they have UIs that it easy to do. The UI for settlement building in FO4 is so bad it literally made me sick. I got nauseous fighting it, trying place, orient items. It's hot garbage. Worse still your carefully crafted
base defenses are useless, because
unless you are actually in your base, they don't work. If you don't show up it's pure
RNG again. The game does NOT factor in your walls, funneling everyone into kill zones. Because they don't actually place enemies and run them through your defenses. It's just a pure off screen
RNG roll unless you show up in time.
I only cared about Sanctuary, I built tons of defenses because that's where my stuff was. Then much later, I noticed my Stuff was mostly gone. 70+ hours a tedious gathering of screws and duct tape, wiped out by off screen
RNG. I narrowed it down to two saves. One where I still had my stuff and another
1 Minute later when my stuff was lost. First save I'm at Sanctuary. Have my stuff. Save one minute later had fast travelled far across the map, if immediately return, my stuff is already gone... Though I only noticed my stuff was gone 10 play hours later, because I don't build/craft very often, so reverting saves was not an option. Again, thoughtless design letting
RNG just destroy game play.
Next up:
Radiant Quests. This seems kind of
MMO inspired to let you grind forever. While the Minutemen quests are most immediately and tediously obvious, all the factions have endless hamster wheel of empty meaningless
RNG quests.
Notice that all over the place there is one major change in FO4:
RNG (Random Number Generation). Instead of designing meaningful gameplay, they just put in place a bunch a poorly designed
RNG systems to grind on.
All of this seems like a very half baked first step toward what they really want to do. Fallout online. AKA Fallout 76. Then you can spend your time grinding, but apparently more tolerable since you do it with other people. I'm not a fan of that, but apparently a lot of people are, and it's a big money maker.
But I really fail to see the point of a hollow RNG grind in single player.
So a whole bunch of grindy, poorly conceived and implemented RNG systems.
Even when you look at the scripted content, it's mostly bad, and lacking in fun/humor of past fallouts. Every faction rolls out the red carpet. Preston literally makes you General about 10 minutes after meeting him, you become the Railroads best agent, the BoS rising star and are offered the keys to the Institute Kingdom at the drop of a hat, and all at the same time.
All the companions seem to have the same script, about how you are the best dude/gal ever, that they never met anyone like that before and they can share all their hopes/fears. It's amateur hour cut and paste writing.
Oh and the visuals suck. I think FONV looks better. Here it's all mush and haze.
Not everything sucks. The gunplay is so much smoother now, and Nick Valentine is a great character, and ... well there isn't that much else. I'll finish this, but this won't make my top ten RPG list, but FO3 and FONV do.
I wish the could have spent their time making a traditional scripted story RPG, instead of an RNG grind infested, MMO stepping stone.