Having played this game about 300 times I was excited to revisit it again to see what I could gleam from the experience. I played and completed most of the quests up to repairing the tanker in San Francisco.
Fallout is known for its writing and this one leaves me with some mixed feelings as an adult. At its best the writing is crude, but mostly I found it juvenile. Most youngsters will probably find the number of 90s pop culture references cringe inducing, but having once been a teen when this game came out I found it charming in a strictly nostalgic way. What has aged most poorly is all the offensive content in the game. There's a lot of casual racism and rape jokes - including instances where the female player character can be raped by other characters. I always give the inclusion of controversial material in any thing the benefit of the doubt, but playing this removed from the zenith of my rabid young adult fandom for Black Isle the only reason it's in there is for yucks. And outside of that being tasteless, it's also just poor writing.
While the writing itself I didn't find memorable, the broad strokes of the narrative are quite good. This is especially true in the first half of the game. I loved the section of the game that takes place in Vault City - New Reno - NCR. The way the quests interweave between these locations is still really good, and each of these cities have a nice variety of quests to get into, a cool political struggle to get ensconced in, and lots of fun, random trouble to find yourself in. This is the section of the game where you can instantly recognize where New Vegas came from. This area of the game is so great that it really casts a wide shadow over the other locations in the game that offer very little aside from a few simple quests to score some loot and experience from. Especially disappointing was San Francisco, which is mostly used for some dated Scientology humor and casual Asian American racism.
I still found the combat really good. It would be a dream for Fallout to return to tactical, turn based combat. The nuts and bolts of the game are still really excellent, and you'll have a lot of fun tweaking your characters or thinking up fun or challenging builds to run with. This game is infamous for its challenge, and the early game may feel especially frustrating, but the gradual power curve is still very satisfying. It's also really enjoyable when the game's RNG throws you a bone, like dropping you into the middle of a shootout between slavers and rangers and being able to walk out with a combat shotgun way sooner than you should. It feels good to break the game.
If you're a CRPG student Fallout 2 is required reading. If you're a new Fallout fan you may enjoy the more centered and consistent Fallout 1 better than this one.
Fallout is known for its writing and this one leaves me with some mixed feelings as an adult. At its best the writing is crude, but mostly I found it juvenile. Most youngsters will probably find the number of 90s pop culture references cringe inducing, but having once been a teen when this game came out I found it charming in a strictly nostalgic way. What has aged most poorly is all the offensive content in the game. There's a lot of casual racism and rape jokes - including instances where the female player character can be raped by other characters. I always give the inclusion of controversial material in any thing the benefit of the doubt, but playing this removed from the zenith of my rabid young adult fandom for Black Isle the only reason it's in there is for yucks. And outside of that being tasteless, it's also just poor writing.
While the writing itself I didn't find memorable, the broad strokes of the narrative are quite good. This is especially true in the first half of the game. I loved the section of the game that takes place in Vault City - New Reno - NCR. The way the quests interweave between these locations is still really good, and each of these cities have a nice variety of quests to get into, a cool political struggle to get ensconced in, and lots of fun, random trouble to find yourself in. This is the section of the game where you can instantly recognize where New Vegas came from. This area of the game is so great that it really casts a wide shadow over the other locations in the game that offer very little aside from a few simple quests to score some loot and experience from. Especially disappointing was San Francisco, which is mostly used for some dated Scientology humor and casual Asian American racism.
I still found the combat really good. It would be a dream for Fallout to return to tactical, turn based combat. The nuts and bolts of the game are still really excellent, and you'll have a lot of fun tweaking your characters or thinking up fun or challenging builds to run with. This game is infamous for its challenge, and the early game may feel especially frustrating, but the gradual power curve is still very satisfying. It's also really enjoyable when the game's RNG throws you a bone, like dropping you into the middle of a shootout between slavers and rangers and being able to walk out with a combat shotgun way sooner than you should. It feels good to break the game.
If you're a CRPG student Fallout 2 is required reading. If you're a new Fallout fan you may enjoy the more centered and consistent Fallout 1 better than this one.