I have mixed feelings about The Outer Worlds, but in general, would say it is a good game, that fell short of greatness, a B+ to the A+ that I would give F:NV for example. Now in part, that’s inevitable: OW is spending a lot of time establishing it’s own background, style and story while NV jumps in mixing the new elements with a pre-existing background that it doesn’t have to explain in depth.
My biggest peeve though, is that it constantly winking at me about planned DLC and sequels. The planets that are on your map but won’t be able to explore until the DLC or what the heck happened on Earth, etc. This is not a flaw unique to OW, but it’s the one that constantly yanked me out of immersion.
Okay, so like the OP, I’ll do a pro / con list, and please remember, overally, I DO recommend the game, just some things work better than others.
PRO
Skills + Perks - thank god we have this back, and in a way that reflects the names. Skills are what you use all the time, and fundamentally allow you to get things done. Perks accentuate the style of play or give you quality of life improvements.
Amazing character customization - (but see cons for this as well) You have a ton of control over how you look, even more so that in an [unmodded] Fallout 4. Male, female, non-binary, old, young, and in all colors of the rainbow.
Companions - Okay, the combat AI still suffers from the flaws of every companion AI in every game out there so that’s a pass, but otherwise it’s done very well. Since the companions each have a unique skill, you are much more likely to swap out than in Fallout series, and as their skills contribute to your own, you can mix and match to accentuate your strengths or patch over your weakness. While it was a ‘Con’ for some people, I found that NOT being able to romance your companions was a good thing - you weren’t tweaking your playthrough specifically to seduce a mechanical NPC.
Choices have consequences - While not perfectly implemented, this was still a better performance that most Fallout and Mass Effect style games to this point. If you side with X vs Y, then perhaps Y will no longer be available for you. I’m being general of course to avoid more spoilers. In most games of this style, the choices really only matter to the final ending, or maybe a choice of weapon/perk A or B. Sadly, this is strongest towards the beginning, and gets weaker as the story goes towards the ending.
Which brings me to CONS
Endings - okay, ignoring the hilarious option where you skip yourself into the Sun you have only two endings, and the game prior to your final decision makes it quite obvious how bad the consequences of one of them will be. For that matter, even in a game where choices matter, and with an in-game affinity system with factions, they will always let you choose from either until you get to the system warned final point.
Equipment - I strongly disagree with the OP here, the weapon and equipment system is about 2 generations outs of date. You have the now traditional 3 classes of armour: light, medium, heavy but other than for stealth, you will always want the most protective. There isn’t a requirement for the use of any of it, and the options are pretty much the same for all types. The customization of the weapons belies the the paucity of types - figure you’ll find roughly 10 basic weapons, and 10 basic armours, and then higher level versions of the same. That’s it. While you can customize, there are very, very obvious best choices, and the limiting factor tends to be the ammunition available.
This honestly reminded me more of Fallout 4 than NV - in NV, you had tons of local, regional, and ‘modern’ firearms, using widely varied ammo, which you could further customize in terms of performance vs endurance. Sure, you had fewer options to customize the weapons, but that was 10 years ago. In Fallout 4, you also have a paucity of weapons, but you have 10 times the customization.
Which brings me to my Pro point earlier. Why the hell have the character customization if you have no real third person POV. You will never see your character outside of the character screen. You have the same sort of toggle on/off helmet of the Mass Effect series, and you’ll see your companions in detail, but you? You might as well be faceless. /rant off.
Okay, I’ve already written a book, and most of the rest of the issues have been brought up before or are personal issues. For example, yeah, the ‘weird science’ weapons are cool, but are so niche that you’ll likely never use them, or that there are tons of cool NPCs with fun backstory elements that just . . . . stop. Etc. The point is, while the game feels polished, it feels like it polished many of the more traditional open world/side story elements off in order to streamline your path to the end . . . which is one of the games weakest points.
My final judgement will wait until the second DLC is out (I have played the first and it suffers from the ‘all equipment in the dlc has to be better than the stuff in the base game’ issue), but my judgement isn’t likely to change - a good game that falls short of greatness.
ETA - like Fallout 4, this game would hugely benefit from player created Mods, where the shortness, customization, and other flaws could be adjusted to meet the preferences of the player. Sadly, due to structure and interest, this is largely not a possibility. 