I think it’s a matter of expectations. When people were referring to The Outer Worlds as “Fallout but in space” in the lead up to the games release I think that set the bar quiet high and don’t feel as if some of the themes you’d see in Fallout were there or at least weren’t presented in a similar way.
I don’t think many people hate the game. I spent over 50 hours playing it and beat the DLCs. I just don’t think it’s a game that I would go out of my way to recommend.
It’s like people hate it because it’s not the massive open world of fallout new Vegas, but people tend to not realize or I guess forget, there was a stupid amount of just walking from point a to point b in that game only to get to a super linear quest line. The outer worlds does a great job of simplifying the world in a meaningful way.
It’s been about three years since I played The Outer Worlds but I feel I feel like I recall the quests being broken up into regional chunks. There weren’t a ton of loading screens which was nice but I felt like it cut back on the amount of depth the world had.