I was reading a discussion on another website about settlements and how they kinda made the game world feel less alive than FO3 because they took the place of towns and outposts and the like, which FO3 had many of - If you don't really bother with the settlements in FO4 then the world will feel pretty empty. I think it's a reasonable criticism when you think about it.
It is.
There isn't a location similar to Tenpenny Tower, Megaton, Andale, Little Lamplight, Rivet City and Underworld.
All you basically get is Diamond City (which is a pretty cool location).
The small locations are pretty interesting and nice to explore but it didn't really have any memorable places. This sucks because the places I mentioned above in Fallout 3 had some of the better sidequests out there. In Fallout 4, the sidequests felt barren.
I can understand what Bethesda was doing with settlements but it was not done correctly. There was little reason to build up your settlements aside from getting level 4 traders and it was frustrating when you tried to build. Wouldn't it killed them to add a top down display, or creating defenses actually matter aside from a defense rating...
If you were waiting on buying the $30 season pass, you might have no choice but to get it a lot sooner before it's March 1st.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/25/fallout-4-survival-mode-update/
This is all actually pretty neat, hope it makes a decent impact on the game.