Released in 1998, when the franchise was about roleplaying, and shooting was determined by percentages instead of wonky aiming mechanics, you play as the grandson of the protagonist of the first Fallout game, 80 years after their adventure that began with a broken water chip.

The gameplay is pretty similar to the first game: You move in hexagons, your stats determine your skills, and the plot is barebones, so the real fun is doing all the sidequests you can find. On this occasion, you are a tribal of a village Arroyo, and a recent drought is endangering the lives of everybody here, so you have to find a G.E.C.K (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) to save them.

Most NPCs will treat you as a savage that don't know anything about life in the Wastelands, which is pretty realistic and makes your backstory actually relevant, and you can ask about the GECK plenty of times, so the plot has a presence throughout your adventure, which is appreciated. However, most of the sidequests you do are just random NPCs asking for help, sometimes in exchange for items and information about important places you have to visit (mainly the location of Vault 13, the starting place of Fallout 1), but most of the time they just give you money and experience.

The good thing is that they are actually interesting! Discovering the story of all the cities you visit, like the whole family feud of New Reno, hearing the tragic backstory of the few NPCs with names and unique portraits, recruiting the few companions you can find, and learning what happened in the 80 years between games makes the Wasteland feel alive and complex, where things happen all the time even if the player isn't there to move things forward.

Even the main plot is a small-scale event, which is evident when a character tells you they don't care about your tribe and have their own troubles to solve. But you have a huge advantage they don't: While the average Wasterlander never leaves their native place (which is understandable, as the wilderness is full of animals and thieves that can kill you in a single hit), you are traveling all around the world, so your arsenal and experience are a lot bigger than theirs.

Want to kill everybody, including important NPCs? You can do it without problems. Want to help everybody and improve the situation of all the cities you find? Also possible. Want to be a slaver, sell your companions and help raiders to invade innocent populations? Be my guest. The roleplaying aspect is incredible, and you can arrive at the endgame by any means necessary. Sadly, you can't complete the story without killing anybody like in the first game, where you could even convince the final boss of killing himself, so you will need competent combat abilities to win. A downgrade, for sure, but at least you can do a pacifist run in New Vegas!

However, you have to be careful with your character and its stats: If your agility is too low you will have awful movement in combat, and trying to attack an enemy will be a miserable experience, having low strength means you won't be able to carry equipment and will depend on companions and random lockers to store weapons and key items, having low intelligence means most of the conversations and sidequests aren't available because you are barely able to speak and most people don't take you seriously, and so on. So you can ruin your whole playthrough from the moment you create your character.

Also, I recommend using Fallout 2 Restoration Project, which adds lots of cut content and even recreates concepts that were never programmed for many reasons, not only because the new content is pretty entertaining and complements the experience very well, but because it adds bug fixes that you will need if you want the best Fallout 2 experience possible. It's not a secret that the franchise has always been a buggy mess, full of crashes, flawed scripts, half-made quests, and the list goes on, so not even the Fallout 2 Unofficial Patch, included in the base game, can fix everything, and the extra patch can do wonders to reduce potential headaches. Expect some crashers from time to time though, so save often and in multiple files.

And, of course, this is a 90's computer RPG, so expect lots of trial and error, uncomfortable UI, old mechanics that you won't find in modern video games, outdated jokes, quests that don't make any sense unless you read a walkthrough, and lots of text.

But if you enjoy classic RPGs and don't mind some old-school jank, you definitely need to play Fallout 2: It's fun, unique, a worthy sequel to Fallout 1 (which is also great), full of content, and even lets you drive a car, act in porn movies, marry, be a slaver, and kill children, all in the same run! Don't expect anything like 3/New Vegas/4/76, though, V.A.T.S. didn't exist yet, and fast traveling was just a distant dream.

I hesitate to even call this a review. Perhaps it's just a clarification and defense of my score. 3 stars might seem like I'm pegging Fallout 2 as mediocre, and that isn't the truth at all. It's beloved for a reason, though for me there are things that bog it down to the point where I only had 3 stars of fun with it. So even though this will be a list of things I didn't like about it, note that there were things I did like about it. You can read any of the many, many Fallout 2 reviews to see what's good about the game.

First, the combat I found to be wildly out of tune. From the moment you start I felt as though I missed something. "Did I miss a weapon or something? Did I miss a starting zone you're supposed to level up in?" No, I didn't. The game is punishing, to the point where I murdered a shopkeeper and stole the best gun in the game in order to make the game fair (something my character wouldn't have done, but it was nearly unplayable for me.) Thankfully, I did this later in the game, so I didn't "ruin" my playthrough my being overpowered. Even up to the final boss, who is full-stop unbeatable for a casual player unless you do some fiddling with the area's defenses.

Fallout 1 and 2 share this next issue. These are "choices and consequences" games. However, those choices are almost always one obviously morally correct thing to do, and one completely reprehensible thing. There is very little grey area. This might be a deliberate choice, but the contrarian option often results in everyone in the vicinity turning hostile and, given the game's combat difficulty, that's often a death sentence. You can't really play a role in this game. You can make a character, but they are generally railroaded into capital GOOD or BAD. Similarly, I had to dump points into weapon stats I didn't intend to be able to use weapons I found. There are several great guns I never found until the end simply due to the order in which I explored and played. Now, all that said, this isn't necessarily all negative for me. But you have to realize that Fallout 1 and 2 are very "gamey". It's not about building your character's story. It's about building yours as the player. Killing the shopkeep didn't feel right for my character, but it's part of my "player's story."

About it being "gamey," the pop culture references also make it feel less immersive and hokey to me. There are many, and almost always I would prefer them to not be there. The Hubologists, who are an obvious stand-in for real-life Scientologist, were the worst for me. It was a bit too goofy, super on the nose, and pulled me out of things. This is something that a lot of people go back and forth on. Plenty of people love it. I don't. I love atmosphere and immersion. These hurt it for me.

Finally, I just want to briefly mention how I had to use a save editor twice to fix my game. First time, I slept with someone's wife, and then woke up in a scenario which was unbeatable. I had to battle through 3 floors of enemies, and I couldn't even live past the first couple enemies. I used a save editor to place myself outside the zone. Why not just go back and reload a save? Because I want to pay for my actions. I fucked that dude's wife, I deserve the consequences. But they were so great as to be soft-locking. (I later went back with my party and had a proper battle with them, since they were all hostile from my actions.) The next time I used the editor was because an NPC got stuck in a doorway and couldn't be moved (no nudge, he was an NPC that wasn't supposed to move but got moved anyway due to combat).

There's some more things, like how the last boss required me to do a very specific thing that I accidentally locked myself out of, so I had to go reload a save and do everything again, being careful not to lock myself out. And then, when I did it, it didn't work as intended to I had to go back and reload AGAIN and then do it the right way. I would be happy to find a creative solution past him, but I would die before even taking a turn without using the nearby terminal to turn the guns on him instead of me. I think that's a cool idea, but the fact that it was A) completely necessary and B) had a lockout that wasn't communicated was annoying. The game is full of things like this. I don't want to have my hand held, and I'm fine playing the cards as they fall (I dealt with losing some companions and didnt reload to get them back, for example). But if my only path forward is locked out because of a choice I made earlier, then that's an issue.

Finally, finally, the game has some of that early adventure game "oooh, I had to use the peanut butter on the daffodil, let the peanut butter melt in the sun, and then use THAT to open the door!" By this I mean a series of things need to occur to trigger something that, I believe, a normal person would never think of. You're stuck wondering if you did something wrong, maybe broke the sequence, or are missing something. But really, you have to click a tiny 2 pixel button while using a crowbar, etc.

That's it. I was dismayed by the frustration I felt. It felt like the game was fighting me to play it. I understand why others love it, and things I didn't like might be things you like. But I just wanted to explain myself.

I just finished Fallout 2 after about 43 hours of playtime, after trying (and failing) to finish Fallout 1 a while ago. Why?

So, Fallout 1 has a fantastic opening - your vault is dying, get the water chip, good luck. Fallout 2's opening is just fairly bad.

The main character of the first game, the Vault Dweller, formed a tribe of people in the middle of the wasteland. The protagonist of FO2--The Chosen One--is from this tribe, the grandchild of the Dweller themself. In my opinion, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Of course, the Dweller was exiled, but why did he form a tribe full of people, with weirdly unique spiritual culture? Additionally, the tribe has a full temple built that's pretty old looking - how does this tribe have all of this, after 80 (more likely to be a bit less) years of existing? It just felt kind of off.

Additionally, some quests in this game are impossible to do on a first playthrough, unless you know what you're doing. I get doing this for replayability, but come on.

An additional drawback to Fallout 2's opening compared to 1 is the lack of starting equipment. You get a 10mm pistol immediately when starting Fallout 1 - your first gun in Fallout 2 takes around 1-3 hours to get, depending on how you play. I personally looked up the fastest way to get a gun and booked it there, as my unarmed and melee stats were abysmal. Getting a firearm early on could work exceptionally well - what if it's an artifact from the Vault Dweller?

Beyond the beginning, Fallout 2 is actually pretty amazing. The game doesn't hold your hand super well: travelling from one location to another will case you to run into baddies, including mutated creatures of slave traders. I didn't actually fight in any random encounter until around the 5-8 hour mark, as getting good weapons takes time. But that struggle to run away, to scavenge enough guns, ammo and stimpacks in order to survive a simple trip to a neighboring town... It's great. To put it lightly.

The progression is fairly perfect, in my opinion. I played a small guns build, eventually trying to switch over to energy weapons (and kind of disliking them). First, you have enough weapons to put up a fight but mostly run away. After grabbing a few companions and jet, you become stronger and it feels fantastic. Once your guns skill is high enough and you grab enough assault rifle ammo, holy shit you are powerful. Add some power armor on top of that and you are essentially invincible to most enemies, aside from crowds. Despite essentially being a tank, I never felt bored from the combat. Shooting enemies and landing criticals had me smiling as enclave soldiers got their torsos shot out. You feel like a fucking badass.

Overall, this game starts off slow but really picks up the pace and ends up becoming a fantastic experience. I would recommend this over Fallout 1 for beginners, as it feels somewhat easier to get into. Additionally, I had a great time reading into the lore of this game, which really shows how lacking Fallout 3/4 are compared to these earlier titles and New Vegas. 9-10/10 I can't decided don't sue me

What an experience! It is definitely one of the best games I have ever played. I still prefer Fallout 1 to its sequel, mainly because of the better-sustained plot, the greater rendering of the post - apocalyptic atmosphere, the novelty of the world and the gaming system, lesser frequency of bugs, and the overall epicness of the game. Moreover, I found the main quest of Fallout 2 to be trivial; and its end-game boss seemed to be a bit disconnected from the main storyline (though its dying animation was mindblowing). But, the greater variety of weapons, the improved companion system, and the openness of the world made it memorable. Fallout 2 reminded me again why I strongly prefer RPG games over FPS games. It also reminded me how annoyingly frustrating it is to run old games on newer operating systems. My saved games got corrupted at least thrice and I was about to give up on the game a few times due to obscure bugs, though those may have occurred due to the game itself. One shitty bug even made me loathe myself for a few minutes when it forced me to check a walkthrough towards the end of the game. Later, I found out that I had hit a bug which prevented a computer terminal from working properly. So, I had to approach the quest in a different manner. After playing Fallout 2, my love for Fallout 3 has decreased substantially. According to me, Bethesda couldn't fully emulate the soul of the fallout universe. I hope a new fallout game comes out which is more than an Oblivion with guns (Fallout: New Vegas was quite close, in spite of the prevalence of bugs in it).

Actual Score: 4.5/5

Fallout 2 is a 1998 role-playing game.The game's producer, Black Isle Studios, and the game's distributor, Interplay Productions, have done a great job.The story of the game is as follows.in 2241, the primitive town of Arroyo suffers the worst drought on record. Faced with disaster, the village elder asks the direct descendant of the Vault Dweller, named as the chosen one, to carry out his quest to get a Garden of Eden creation Kit (GECK) for Arroyo. The GECK is a device that can create thriving communities out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.The player who assumes the role of the chosen one is given the Vault Dweller's jumpsuit, a RobCo PİPBoy 2000, a Vault 13 water bottle, a spear and some money to start their quest. The chosen one eventually finds Vault 13, the supposed location of a GECK, devoid of the majority of ancient human inhabitants and inhabited instead by intelligent Deathclaws. The chosen one then returns to find their village captured by the deep state remnants of the United States government, known as the "enclave". The enclave terrorizes the inhabitants of the continental United States with the highest arsenal of advanced technology. The chosen one, by various means, activates an old oil tanker and activates its autopilot, thereby allowing them to reach the Enclave's home base on an offshore oil platform. It is revealed that Vault 13 residents were also used as test subjects for the forced evolutionary virus (FEV). Vault 13 was supposed to be closed for 200 years as part of a government experiment,making them perfect test subjects. The Enclave has transformed the obligate evolutionary virus into an airborne disease, designed to attack any living creature with mutated DNA. When all genetic impurities are removed, the residential area (protected from radiation) can be captured. Selected, both the villagers and the Vault 13 dweller control Arroyo recovers from their enclave, and then destroys the enclave oil rig, the president of the United States (President Richardson) named Frank Horrigan is a secret service practitioners and genetically modified kills. Eventually, the residents of Vault 13 and the villagers of Arroyo create a new prosperous community with the help of GECK.The gameplay is as follows.in this game consisting of 40 sections, you are trying to complete the tasks and pass the section.The music of the game is beautiful.The graphics of the game are not bad.My rating for the game: 10/10 (y) Good games to everyone 🙂