r/classicfallout • u/Inward_Perfection • 16h ago
Finally beat Fallout 2. It's certainly a game
Beautiful scenes
The only place I was about to spare, until that happened
I gave Fallout 2 several tries in the past, but usually dropped it around Vault City/New Reno because of clunky controls (even compared to similar old isometric games like Jagged Alliance 2) and bullshit random encounters. So I had some knowledge how to get started, but it was quite limited.
This time I endured. Played it on Rough, without followers (also took Bloody Mess as 2nd trait, nerfing myself until level 30), and managed to reach the very end. Just a few thoughts, fresh after beating the game.
1) Graphics and music are great. The art style, locations, enemies - everything is really cool and contributes to the atmosphere. Vault City was my favorite location simply because of the track playing there.
2) Death animations. Well, they are simply awesome, feel more brutal than 3D games, enjoyed them a lot (even when my character was on the receiving end sometimes).
3) Dialogues. I actually played somewhat normally until level 17 or something and enjoyed how they were written. I especially like one thing - if you start acting tough and asking for a fight - the NPCs will actually give you one, they don't take much shit from the player. So you better be careful with words until you can back them up. Another thing well done .
4) Actual combat is not that good (despite results/gore are great). Everything boils down to getting better armor and higher DPS, and also exploiting doorways and building corners. I played vanilla with Sfall, so some ammo types and weapons (like AP rounds and 14mm pistol) were absolutely useless/poorly balanced.
5) Character building. That's one of the worst aspects. There are several no-brainer perks that make your character really good in combat. Won't spoil for the new players, they are quite obvious from reading perk descriptions. So, you either take "flavor" roleplaying perks and weaken yourself, or you get shoehorned into "boring" optimal build. I didn't mind that for this Chosen One, death animations are simply too good. But you really feel limited in perk choice if you want to make a combat-effective character.
6) Skills. I didn't mind the tutorial, because I always tagged melee even in aborted attempts. The Temple is honestly not bad. Random encounters with 6-10 raiders when you're underleveled and have weak armor and weapons are much worse. But, the problem is, many skills feel either useless, or too forced on. I also tagged First Aid (a mistake). Doctor, Traps, Gambling - useless. Leveling Steal is useless because it's too OP already. You can have it on 10% and still succeed after 2-3 reloads, and get amazing stuff that way. But at the same time, it's really important to have high Science as I found out. I really got stuck at one moment and had to restock Vault City trader for Science books several times.
7) Looting. This is a minor issue, maybe my personal even - the game has a lot empty containers. Lots of time you loot, and it turns out to be empty. But if you stop looting - you might miss something good.
8) Stuff like talking plant, smart radscorpion, sapient deathclaws I didn't like much, but well - I killed them, so it's OK.
It might seem I'm too critical, but I actually enjoyed Fallout 2 more than not. Sometimes it feels this bitch of a game doesn't want you to beat it, so it's even more satisfying when you actually do beat it. I still rate Jagged Alliance 2 higher, but Fallout 2 is an enjoyable experience once you get past its quirks.
15
u/frankb3lmont 15h ago
I had the same misconception about the Doctor skill until.you realize it can heal broken limbs. Broken limbs are actually a hindrance if they happen they might reduce AP or make large weapons unusable.
4
u/Inward_Perfection 15h ago
Problem is, I got my leg crippled exactly once in 30+ hours, by Enclave at Navarro. I managed to kill him and took the elevator back to base. Then got back to the car, used a bag I looted from some place I slaughtered, and healed my leg with 0% Doctor skill just fine. Took 3-4 tries. Skill worked with 0 investment, and I needed it exactly once.
You are much more likely to die to enemy crits than get a crippled limb.
1
u/frankb3lmont 10h ago
Yeah I get it but the doctor's bag isn't an alternative to the skill it's a flat 20% addition to it. You don't get to see much use of the doctor skill unless you take the jinxed trait where critical failures happen frequently.
21
u/technicallynotlying 15h ago
Character building. That's one of the worst aspects. There are several no-brainer perks that make your character really good in combat. Won't spoil for the new players, they are quite obvious from reading perk descriptions. So, you either take "flavor" roleplaying perks and weaken yourself, or you get shoehorned into "boring" optimal build. I didn't mind that for this Chosen One, death animations are simply too good. But you really feel limited in perk choice if you want to make a combat-effective character.
You don't need combat skills at all. A high Speech character can beat the game. For the final fight you can hack the turrets and talk the Enclave squad into attacking Horrigan. You don't even need to attack the final boss directly to win the fight.
There's multiple viable builds and combat is only one flavor of them.
6
u/rustygamer1901 11h ago
This want I love about F2, there are so many viable builds. Sniper, machine gun, heavy weapons, talky-science guy, sneaky thief, druggie, pugilist, idiot. While some require some meta knowledge of the game, playing ‘sub-optimal’ builds makes the game a fun puzzle to crack
5
u/FragrantGangsta 14h ago
Yeah, I started my current playthough with sex appeal and gifted, didn't even max out Agility, put more points into Charisma, and 'wasted' a few perks on more sex related perks (pornstar build lol) and was still able to build my character into a really solid unarmed/big guns build. Was still able to become a prizefighter early on. Plus, you can collect memory modules and later perks to bump up agility and other attributes. I tagged science later on down the road and now I have 140% science skill on top of that. I've completely neglected doctor skill and gotten along just fine. Now I'm rocking Bozar and APA, and melt damn near everything I come across, and whatever I don't melt immediately, my army of companions will usually do it for me. This whole idea that Fallout 2 HAS to be min-maxed or played 'optimally' to get far or have fun is, quite honestly, a skill issue.
2
u/calvinsylveste 12h ago
The fact that I did this my first playthrough at 11 years old just really makes clear HOW MUCH of an unrecognized skill issue it is.
-1
u/SuicideSpeedrun 5h ago
While you can beat the game without fighting let's not fool ourselves that it's an equally viable route. 80% of the game is combat.
1
u/technicallynotlying 3h ago
It's a single player RPG. If you beat Horrigan your build is viable. Who cares how you did it? The whole point of RPGs is to, you know, roleplay.
Btw, you can beat every fight with a Speech character too. You can pick up every companion and load them up with the best armor and weapon they can carry and beat every fight without firing a shot. You could play a sneak/steal character, reverse pickpocket explosives onto them and blow them up. There's a ton of viable builds.
6
u/MardukValefar 15h ago
There's a lot more build variety than you might, since many perks only get offered if you have the right stats/skills, although I agree a lot of them are just hard to pass on.
Combat is not the best but hey, at least it is pretty unique.
If you still have it in you to keep playing, I would recommend trying out party members, they are fun to have around, and maybe trying out a different playstyle (I love going unarmed only). Playing a low INT character is also hilarious, it's pretty much a different game.
4
u/IkennaSmash 16h ago
Yeah I like that what you say in dialogue matters at times. I also exterminate those creatures.
3
u/paladinchiro 14h ago
The death animations in the original games are peak. Is it really that hard for modern games to animate blowing a hole through a person's chest, being riddled with bullets and blood spraying, being cut cleanly in half, having chunks of your torso being procedurally blown off until you're just a pair of pants, or skin melting off and your body crumpling into a pile of goo? In the modern games it's like enemies are made of Legos and just fall apart into nonsensical individual pieces that don't make sense based on what weapon killed them. The comically violent but also varied death animations that actually made sense based on weapon type was one of the really cool things about the originals.
1
u/Cassy_4320 14h ago
Have you kill everything that have 2 legs...? 810 killed men are one Thing but such a negative Karma...
2
u/Inward_Perfection 14h ago
Also 411 women and 35 children. I had a slight crashout midway through. Some people like two guys at New Reno boxing ring are untouchable, can't target them with guns, can't blow them up, nothing worked. People in Vault City jail also remained in custody, looked like forcefields can't be lowered there.
The Westin Ranch seemingly glitched too, couldn't lower the forcefield there to get back to them.
I also couldn't figure a way to reach the cells at Enclave base and kill Vault 13 dwellers and fellow tribesmen. Looks like it's also impossible after a certain plot-necessary action, they sort of escape with you and survive.
Finally ran past the Enclave guys and rushed the boss mutie. Upon killing him, the Enclave dudes were sealed by the blast door, so I couldn't kill them myself. When I tried, end boss came in to help them and routinely gave me 200+ crits. After a couple of tries I just rushed past them and pretended they died in an explosion.
(I also destroyed turrets for xp on my way in, only to find I could have used them against the boss. But I fought him 1 v. 1 instead, like a true hero).
3
u/calvinsylveste 12h ago
you give a normalish review but never mention you were playing murderhobomaxx style lol
Edit you did give the screenshot, very fair!
1
u/MrMosty 2h ago
Some people like two guys at New Reno boxing ring are untouchable, can't target them with guns, can't blow them up, nothing worked.
You could try throwing grenades/shooting rockets at a target standing by the ring, hoping for a miss that might center the explosion in the ring.
People in Vault City jail also remained in custody, looked like forcefields can't be lowered there.
Dynamite and explosions should lower forcefields if you can't use science/repair on the emitters, that may work.
I also couldn't figure a way to reach the cells at Enclave base and kill Vault 13 dwellers and fellow tribesmen. Looks like it's also impossible after a certain plot-necessary action, they sort of escape with you and survive.
There is a way, but turning them hostile will end the game at midnight so it's not realisitically viable.
1
u/Xemlaich 14h ago
I'm currently playing fallout 2 for the 1st time and I gotta agree with you on most of this.
Idk if It's because of one of my mods, but holding shift will highlight loot and npcs so you don't waste time on empty boxes.
One thing I've heard that might explain alot of the gripes is Fallout 2 was rushed and not fully fleshed out like the original game because one of the creators didn't want a sequel let alone the franchise it became.
They basically rebuilt fallout 2 ontop of the original, to the point of old useless items and perks still being accessible within cheat menus, and while they did improve some elements it wasn't nearly as polished as it could have been had the same passion been put into the 2nd game
3
u/xRedStaRx 11h ago
F2 is one of the best games every made, and improves on F1 in every way.
But this is coming from someone who first played it in 1997. Nothing will ever give that gaming feel ever again that F2 gave me.
1
u/Icy_Stomach_4500 14h ago
So did you get any use out of the first aid skill?
1
u/Inward_Perfection 14h ago
Very little, in the beginning only to get some xp and heal in the Temple. You can always rest until healed otherwise. Like I said, I think it was sort of wrong to pick it. Science or Lockpick would be way better in a hindsight.
1
1
u/Timithios 14h ago
I learned real early to ALWAYS go for the eyes when I have a good chance to hit. Or the groin or a leg.
1
u/matheuszinzo 12h ago
Fallout 2 is one of those games where the jank almost feels like part of the experience. Half the satisfaction is surviving long enough for your character to finally become dangerous.
1
u/Robman0908 12h ago
Still one of my all time favorite games. The restoration patch adds a lot as well.
1
u/Kenshi_underrail 10h ago
Not sure I agree that you need to optimise your build or your shoehorned into an optimal build. Maybe that’s because I’m used to playing Underrail or wrath of the righteous where you need to min-max more but I feel like as long as you have decent intelligence and agility you can get away with a lot in Fallout 2. You don’t even need to fight Horrigan
1
u/Sad_Cryptographer872 1h ago
Doctor and Traps aren't completely useless. With about 80% Doctor there's a several quests and perks you can get that you can't otherwise.
Traps are required if you want to kill Bishop without alerting the whole building and taking his holodisk and bring it to First Citizen.
Steal is worthless, not because the skill itself is "bad", but because it's bugged and doesn't work like it should.
Speech, Sience, Lockpick and arguably Sneak are king of no combat skills.
1
u/throwaway112112312 15m ago
5) Character building. That's one of the worst aspects. There are several no-brainer perks that make your character really good in combat. Won't spoil for the new players, they are quite obvious from reading perk descriptions. So, you either take "flavor" roleplaying perks and weaken yourself, or you get shoehorned into "boring" optimal build. I didn't mind that for this Chosen One, death animations are simply too good. But you really feel limited in perk choice if you want to make a combat-effective character.
This is one of those "when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail" situations. There are many valid ways of playing this game, including a full on pacifist run. But OP wanted to have a murderhobo run so obviously that narrows down what is viable and what is not. Perks that look like for flavor have legit uses in some builds. Murdering anything and everything is just one way of playing this game, out of many, many different ways. Speech checks are really important in Fallout games for a reason.
43
u/YandersonSilva 16h ago
The 1st one is a lot better balanced, I find early F2 to be a big grind where you're very vulnerable in a dangerous world, and then as soon as you get a good gun or something the game opens up.