izigame.me

Update:
While I can still wholeheartedly recommend this game, it should come with several asterisks. This game is a series of incredibly missed opportunities. If one were to describe this game in its entirety, the statement, "It's a playable three-way between the TV show Firefly, and the games Fallout: New Vegas and Mass Effect, but doesn't manage to get any of those things perfectly right". It attempts to strike that balance decently in a lot of ways, but it is held back, by its total lack of innovation in any real capacity.
The game's Traits & Perks are terrible. None of them are notable or interesting in any way and it makes the process of leveling up feel completely lateral and unrewarding.
The game has some great writing and can really strike a chord for anyone who's ever had a job that they hated, but that great writing doesn't support the game's lackluster overall story. I can genuinely say that this game's plot is so completely uncompelling that I do not think the main campaign is worth completing a second time. The game's companion quests, faction missions, odd jobs and side-quests, however, are typically quite engaging and I do enjoy many of them.
There are systems in the game that are clearly only in it because 'that is the way it was done in a previous game'. Genuinely, the systems for item weight, item condition, crafting and leveled loot are completely meaningless and utterly at odds with one another, when experienced as a full package. There are other games that manage to successfully balance some of these systems, but The Outer Worlds cannot meet that standard.
Tactical Time Dilation is complete garbage. Games like this will typically be lifted up by their "This ability makes me special" button and TTD is absolutely the least interesting, least worth using "unique ability" I've ever touched. Compared to V.A.T.S or Shouts or Tech/Biotic abilities or The Darkness or even that whip from Bulletstorm, TTD is the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to the super ability button.
The area designs go from being "charming and thought provoking" Edgewater to, "I have seen this same building many, many times" Monarch. There are no locations as fascinating as Omega/Illium or the Citadel from Mass Effect or with as much visual personality as Boston from Fallout 4. By the time I got to Byzantium, I was over all of it.
The characters and core combat loop are the big saving grace for the game. Again, the writing shines through in the form of companions and NPCs and shooting enemies is a fun time, but this needed way more than that to stand on.
The DLC locations are markedly better than the base game's and they are very weighty expansions of the initial experience.
In conclusion: While I recommend it, this had so much more potential and I hope to see it shine in the sequel. Also, as stated in my initial impression below, I have had no performance issues, but have experienced a couple of bugs that required me to reload saves, including doors that should not be locked or NPCs not activating when they are the next step of the quest.

Initial Impression:
Diving back into The Outer Worlds, having played the initial release, I was unsure of what changes to expect for this updated version. So far, it has exceeded my expectations on all fronts. I have experienced no issues with performance on my rig. The gameplay is smooth and it is a joy to experience.