Simple, short, and sweet. Fallout is one of those games I've kept in the back of my mind for years. I've been a fan of the series since I played 3 and New Vegas as a child, but up until yesterday I had only given 1 and 2 a few chances, with me giving up on 2 for being confusing and 1 for getting screwed over by bad random encounters. A friend of mine played through the game recently and he wanted to watch me play so I decided to pop it on and I had a fantastic time. I really like how brief the game is, I was under the impression I would be spending 30+ hours just lost but the game felt a lot more intuitive than I expected (on top of my friend giving me pointers here and there as well).
The combat is really satisfying as the progression of gear felt nearly perfectly balanced with my crit build, plus getting access to the Alien Blaster made most of the late game fights comically quick. This gear progression was tied in very well with area progression as well as each of the locations had a nice gradual increase in enemy difficulty and quest rewards. I liked the quests a lot as well, they're all simple in an enjoyable way where you don't have to deal with any convoluted solutions (hell, by the end of the game I just shot or exploded my way through any problems). The stories surrounding these quests were nice and simple too and they did a good job at developing the people and the world around them.
My only gripes come from the game's age. Pixel hunting for items is obnoxious and eye-straining, some of the skills, while potentially nice from a roleplaying perspective, were completely useless, the companion AI was borderline disabled at times, and a lot of the UI was either not intuitive or not convenient to use. None of those issues really took me out of the game so I can't hold them against it that much.
Overall, I'm shocked at how much fun I had with Fallout. I'm FAR from an "old game bad" kind of person but I was expecting the game's age to really damper my experience. All in all, I'm happy I spent time playing this game and I'm excited to play Fallout 2.
The combat is really satisfying as the progression of gear felt nearly perfectly balanced with my crit build, plus getting access to the Alien Blaster made most of the late game fights comically quick. This gear progression was tied in very well with area progression as well as each of the locations had a nice gradual increase in enemy difficulty and quest rewards. I liked the quests a lot as well, they're all simple in an enjoyable way where you don't have to deal with any convoluted solutions (hell, by the end of the game I just shot or exploded my way through any problems). The stories surrounding these quests were nice and simple too and they did a good job at developing the people and the world around them.
My only gripes come from the game's age. Pixel hunting for items is obnoxious and eye-straining, some of the skills, while potentially nice from a roleplaying perspective, were completely useless, the companion AI was borderline disabled at times, and a lot of the UI was either not intuitive or not convenient to use. None of those issues really took me out of the game so I can't hold them against it that much.
Overall, I'm shocked at how much fun I had with Fallout. I'm FAR from an "old game bad" kind of person but I was expecting the game's age to really damper my experience. All in all, I'm happy I spent time playing this game and I'm excited to play Fallout 2.