Trying to replay Fallout 4 pissed me off enough to finally go back and actually finish this game. For the longest time, I found it borderline impenetrable due to its clunky and dated UI, but after actually taking the time to learn how things work, it's really not that bad.

The game is ultimately still very flawed. Some skills are basically worthless to the point where you have to wonder why they're even in the game. Certain weapons and armor are just straight up superior to others. Getting the Brotherhood of Steel power armor seems basically necessary to survive the end game battles. Once you've obtained the Plasma Rifle and leveled up your Energy Weapons skill, you've pretty much won the game. On top of that, the game is filled with various bugs, including the ending slides where somehow the Super Mutants destroyed multiple locations despite the fact that I both blew up the military base they were spawning from and the cathedral where The Master was controlling them from. Good to know that this series was a technical mess held together via Elmer's Glue and scotch tape even before Bethesda got their hands on it.

With that being said, it is extremely addicting once you start making some progress. Each location feels unique with their own quests that have to be solved. The characters feel real and the voice acting is definitely significantly better than the voice acting that would show up in the later Fallouts. Granted, there are very few NPCs that actually have voice acting. There's a very dark atmosphere and general feel of dread and looming destruction that you don't quite feel with the modern Fallouts either. The devs really put a lot of effort into making this feel like a truly fucked world.

Combat can be a little annoying, but you can just save scum pretty easily if you don't want to deal with dumb RNG. Companions are cool, and I like that Charisma affects how many can follow you at a time. Probably the only thing it's good for. You definitely do feel like you're progressing and getting stronger over the course of the game. There's nothing more satisfying than landing a crit that violently blows off a chunk of an enemy raider's torso. Death animations in general are great in this game. The silly dismemberment stuff can can happen in Fallout 3 and NV can be fun, but there's something about the animations in this that are way more cool.

Fallout 1 is a bit of a mess and has a lot of issues, but it certainly does leave an impression. It's very simple and feels pretty small, however the writing and replayability make up for it. I can see why Todd Howard, being the big CRPG guy he used to be back in the day, would be so heavily influenced by this and want to try his own hand at it. Kind of a shame how that eventually turned out. I guess becoming a massively popular franchise with some mediocre entries is still better than it dying on Brotherhood of Steel, a bad console exclusive that nobody played nor should ever want to play. Still, it would be nice to see another developer get the opportunity to step up to the plate and give us their own take on Fallout. Maybe something a bit closer to the first one.