At the time I'm writing this, I got the GECK and am levelling up in order to fix the tanker and get to the oil rig base, and I'm really torn on whether I enjoy this game more than 1. In essence, this game is everything the debut title was but bigger and better, with a bigger map, more factions, more mechanics, and of course, the Enclave being the coolest looking faction of Fallout to date.
That being said, expanding Fallout also highlights its limitations a bit more. What were annoyances in the first game become bigger gripes in the sequel due to how much more time you spend encountering them. I'll list a few that I have so far:
- The biggest one I have is the encounters. I swear they tripled the rate and arena sizes in this game. If this game has so many skills unrelated to combat and allows me to (initially) tag only 3, why do 90% of random encounters involve combat? Why are the exit bounds so far away from where you spawn every time? WHY CAN I ENCOUNTER LIKE 10 ENCLAVE SOLDIERS SO FREQUENTLY? Why does the car feel like it DOUBLES the encounter rate instead of reducing it?
- Why don't the SPECIAL skills, especially Strength, not highlight the implications that they have on your playthrough? Skills do, the small guns skill tells you exactly what weapons they aid, why can't strength also say something like "this will also affect what weapons you can carry"?
- Why don't speech skills have some sort of indicator during dialogue that it IS a speech skill, instead of guessing if an encounter can be altered or not?
- Very disappointed on how little impact a 10 Luck build has. I built my character with 10 Luck and 10 Agility, and chose Jinxed, thinking that I can make what would essentially be Fortune from MGS 2. But nope, it's almost like I only handicapped myself by making me drop my weapons and having Cassidy pick them up every time...
- Why is the second act (after retrieving the GECK) so cryptic to get going? Getting to Navarro doesn't help at all, especially if, like me, you already went to Navarro. I'm guessing what the devs intended is to listen to the guy at the gas station talking about San Francisco and go there, but if I already visited both places, idk it just felt very "up in the air".

I'll come back to this review when I finish it later this week and summarize my thoughts, and try and make it more positive, because it is a great game! And probably even better with a better built character lmao

EDIT: I have now just beaten the game, and I must note something of importance: I NEVER KNEW THAT THE BOOKS' SKILL BOOSTS WERE PERMANENT!!! I JUST STOCKPILED THEM FOR WHEN I'D NEED THEM FOR ONE SKILL CHECK!

Needless to say, that discovery made my experience with the game much better :)

But yeah, overall a very fun game that even with its quirks, I kept thinking about it when not playing it, and the final arc at the oil rig was great as well, much more interesting than the vault under the Cathedral in the first game. Also even with me missing the deathclaw massacre at Valut 13, Frank Horrigan leaves the same sort of impression as Legate Lanius, where you only have one short encounter with them, but it sticks with you a lot (Frank's definitely due to the voice/sound design).

Will definitely revisit for another playthrough with all I learned throughout, it'll make it a much smoother experience.