It's a small world after all.

Nuka World has some great level design: the theme park concept makes for some excellently-varied and borderline-fantastical environments. That's the good news about this Fallout 4 expansion -- the only good news. (Unless you really like raiders, I guess.)

Everything else about Nuka World is insubstantial.

The narrative framing of the expansion is that part of the park is occupied by raiders, and you, uh ... help them take the rest of it. There is a promising "hook" in how the former Overboss was overthrown by his lieutenants, but the backstory there is that said former Overboss was lazy and complacent. End of story! No intrigue or color here.

Each of the park's three raider factions is alleged to have a distinct personality and motivation, but other than the initial allegation, they're just raiders. The faction leaders do have some interesting dialog, for the 2-3 minutes you talk with each of them; but after that, none of the gangs demonstrate any defining characteristics.

The theme park is a great excuse for diverse dungeons - space-themed, jungle-themed, wild-west-themed, et al - and these environments had great potential to introduce unique characters, intriguing backstory, and immersive quests. But none of that actually happens. The safari park has a Tarzan-like NPC who gives you directions, in stilted English; the bottling plant has a convincingly-annoying tour guide voiceover with no plot relevance; various console logs describe pre-apocalyptic events but have no bearing on the present day.

Ultimately, the function of each park section is to supply you with a specific type of enemy to kill a lot of. In one park it's robots, in another it's ghouls, in another it's bugs. And, if that wasn't disappointing enough, almost all of these enemies are reskins of foes that you've already faced in the main game.

Aside from the nondescript raider factions, and the underwhelming parks, there's exactly one side-quest in this DLC. And it's ... okay. The hubologists' adventure is a fun diversion, but it's over fairly quickly.

If there's a strength, a "selling point," to Nuka World, it's that your allegiance with the raider factions can unlock conquering Commonwealth settlements -- replacing your settlers with raiders. But that's so stupid! Not just because it's such an unexpectedly narrow option, considering the comparatively-ambiguous moral choices in the main game, but also because it's so transparently inconsequential. Settlements were already an afterthought in the main game; why would I care if raiders took them instead?

Unlike Far Harbor, which had some legitimately interesting ideas but lazy and lackluster execution, Nuka World doesn't feel like it has any ideas at all. I mean, I'll give credit to the level designers for crafting thematically and visually interesting environments -- but everything else in this DLC feels completely phoned-in.

Better than: Fallout 4: Automatron
Not as good as: Fallout 4: Far Harbor
At this point: I'm so thoroughly sick of Fallout 4 that I'm glad to be done with it.