I played it when it released about two years ago, wasn't free back then , so didn't have funny restrictions. Anyway, i enjoyed it, the initial combat/animation impression is pretty poor though, so you got to stick with it at least into the first town . Also , yes, the crafting is what is the primary thing with this game, if you don't like the idea of scavenging parts in a world that looks and feels like Fallout and turning it into armor, weapons, motorbikes,cars and ammo, then you'll probably not enjoy it.
I did like the driving around in cars and such. The combat wasn't that great imho, it's semi shooter , semi MMO-stats based . In other words, you can have a sniper rifle and target perfectly, but still miss because of some stat. However you can level in this game simply by crafting and harvesting.
The crafting does take long though, so you need to plan carefully, especially when it comes to Ammo and consumables. I suppose it's similar to EVE Online in that regards.
The game was pretty small even back when it launched, i expect it to be even smaller now in terms of population. So while the world is huge , taking alot of travel time (hence needing a car or bike) , you most likely won't see alot of people. It might feel alot like a single player game, so expect it to feel kinda desolate. I'm not sure if they added "fast travel" yet, but it was a big fight back in the day, because it took like aaaages to travel between the bigger zones (although it only becomes an issue when you're higher level and are starting to farm for specific material in lower zones etc).
EDIT: Just some trivia, the game's zones are actually based on real areas in the USA. It's areas around the Grand Canyon/Las Vegas , i believe they even used the same scaling, hence why travel time is so long.
The world and the atmosphere in this game is brillaint. They got that post-apocalypse thing down perfectly and i loved exploring the world. The crafting was pretty cool, i enjoyed making all my own stuff. The "class" system is cool too, you don't really pick a class, you can learn any skill with skillpoints, so you kinda decide what weapons and abilities you want to focus on and go down those skilltrees.
The added the ability to create buildings/camp sites just when i left. Basically you could create a little camp site in the middle of nowhere and then do your scavenging/farming from there. Like a little base of operations. This alone should tell you kinda how the world is and the the towns can be too far to constantly travel back and forth to sell/buy stuff.
The PvP, meh, i never got much into it, the faction stuff never quite worked. There were specific dedicated PvP areas which was free for all. The faction controlling the area gain access to the town/services in the area, including the resources to harvest there. Most of the game however is non-PvP , i suppose the idea is similar to EVE Online's "High Sec", "Low Sec" and "nullsec" space. The zones with alot of rare resources for your crafting is usually within the PvP Zones .
I did like the whole idea of the reputation system, everything you kill in the game will gain rep with a primary faction, less rep with secondary "allied" factions and lose reputation with their opposing factions. Each faction have towns and services/abilities , so if you don't focus you can be locked out of certain towns. You can "grind" yourself back in favor with factions, so it's not something set in stone. You just need to do the right quests and kill the right mobs. It is pretty cool how a certain type of mob, say Pirates, can become "friendly" if you kill enough of their enemies and vice versa.
The questing is typical MMO, you go to a town, find the quest persons and do them quests, rince repeat.
Overall, the world,atmosphere and crafting is where the game shines the most. The rest is not that great. It does feel alot like a sandbox though, but not quite.




