More than anything, just the start of a lot of the series' bad habits and an absolutely bloated game sitting precariously on top of Fallout 1's great base.

Both easier and harder than the first in different places, but it mostly gets credit for being the only one in the series to get charisma actually right. Play with stat modifiers for long enough and you can get an army of up to 5 companions (6 if you use an exploit). The companions are given a lot more characterization this time around some having unique scenes and endings but again, like the first it's entirely uneven. The world in general is entirely uneven, but unlike the first instead of blank spaces theres gags. Lots and lots of gags. I know 90s PC nerds ate up pop culture references and 4th wall breaks like candy but this is just so fucking obnoxious. Look we had a character acknowledge how little sprites we have instead of scaling down the to focus on making existing locations interesting. Look at the star trek reference you dumb fucking rube.

Storywise its like if you tried to make the worst possible sequel to the first. Your character from the first went off to establish his own civilization with a bunch of his other vault dwellers who left, but over the course of literally one generation they regressed to tribalism??? Everyone in the starting village speaks as though they are from a different era despite their parents being some of the most educated people in the world, but your character can opt out of this and choose to instead speak in detached sarcasm. Its so wimpy. We made our world really obnoxious and nonsensical, but don't worry, we gave you the ability to show how cool you are by not engaging with any of it.

The cool bits everyone uses to show you how cool the game is are few and far between and almost never relevant to how you'll play the actual game. The enclave are fun villains but you don't really get to do anything with them until the end of the game. The master in the first comes a bit out of left field but theres plenty of clues about what hes doing before you actually uncover him, the enclave just sort of show up and gun down some people occassionally and then the brotherhood finally decides to tell you what they're up to at the end before disappearing entirely. The final act is decided by a conflict between a scientology riff and a giant reference to chinese kung fu movies. Why should I care about anything when so much time is dedicated to joke characters whose schtick can barely survive one dialogue but dramatic moments like Goris' entire family getting killed get one or two lines max.

Going back to this, I don't really see how anyone could see a distinction between this and Bethesda Fallout. If anything, Bethesda has been markedly more reserved with it's tone!

Beautifully written, incredibly dense and thought provoking but overall a bit limited. A medieval murder mystery about different points in a small country town's history that is ultimately more about the impact and the history surrounding the murders than the mystery.

Timeskips are whats needed to be even remotely accurate to a medieval setting like this, but the lack of interludes between them hurts even when the suggested emotional impact can hit hard anyway. Getting to decide how the main character Andreas feels about his estranged wife is a fun concept, but it's ultimately a veil for an emotional beat that will happen regardless of what you pick. There's a lot of moments like this, and it's not like previous obsidian games or games like this one were totally transformative with their choices, but for an entirely narrative experience theres just very little difference in anything. What's left feels more like a visual novel with all the most annoying parts of a 90s adventure game tacked on.

Regardless the plot is very, very engaging. The mystery and the uncomfortable guilt of probably knowing you're going to finger the wrong person is sort of thrilling. The main problem, again, is that half of Andreas journey happens offscreen and as more and more information is recalled it feels less and less "focused on the town" and more "budget." I feel like even just one scene in any of the provinces you picked or even at home would've connected the story a little better, because otherwise you're left with these disjointed and sudden "mind palace" scenes where different characters explain Andreas' emotional state to him. It's a fun play on medieval theater at first, but as time goes it just feels confused.

Again, an absolutely fantastic story that's gotten me very interested in a lot of the history surrounding it (kudos to the devs for including a reading list) but not one I can imagine going back to.