Fallout 2 is considerably more bloated than the first Fallout entry. The game is filled with unnecessarily large settlements/dungeons and even more unnecessarily big fights that take ages to resolve in this turn-based combat system. The razor-sharp design focus of Fallout 1 is replaced with a more wishy-washy sandbox with an extremely unbalanced economy. It's also way buggier and jankier compared to Fallout 1, almost certainly a consequence of this massive CRPG being made on a shockingly-rushed 9 month schedule. For example at the end of my first playthrough with an unarmed-focused character aptly named "The Punch", I discovered that targeted unarmed attacks on Frank Horrigan have a 60%~ chance of crashing the game and a 10%~ chance of corrupting the save file. Feeling defeated, I decided to go back and use the presidential-key to reprogram the automated security into attacking Horrigan, and letting the turrets and my buddy Marcus do most of the work.
Yet somehow, in spite of all this, I ever, ever so slightly prefer Fallout 2 over Fallout 1. This is because Fallout 2 is an attempt at being more than just a mostly-linear narrative like the first entry - it's a full-on post-apocalyptic world that exists as a canvas for telling the story of your character. It's the same thing that keeps me so hooked to the base game of Fallout: New Vegas (which achieves the same goal much more elegantly than Fallout 2, albeit having its owned rushed dev schedule and resultant shortcomings), and it makes Fallout 2 much more replayable than its predecessor.
Fallout 2 is often criticised for its overly-zany writing, and while I think this is true to an extent it's extremely overblown, typically by people who haven't actually played the classic Fallout games. It is absolutely true that Fallout 2 has a more comical tone on the whole than the bleak wasteland of Fallout 1, and that in particular there are a lot of PAINFULLY outdated pop-culture references (that probably weren't even funny in the first place!), but 2 is still serious when it needs to be, and conversely Fallout 1 also had its fair share of pastiche pop culture references and silly moments. After all, the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series is also beloved, and those games have way more tonal dissonance between quirky sidequests and the dire main plotline than there is here, it's a similar principle. Admittedly the comedy in Like a Dragon is actually funny but hopefully you get my point.
P.S, fuck you Chris Avellone, talking Deathclaws are pretty cool actually and I will die on this hill. Double fuck you to Todd Howard for retconning them, now the continuation of Vault 13's story makes no sense.
Yet somehow, in spite of all this, I ever, ever so slightly prefer Fallout 2 over Fallout 1. This is because Fallout 2 is an attempt at being more than just a mostly-linear narrative like the first entry - it's a full-on post-apocalyptic world that exists as a canvas for telling the story of your character. It's the same thing that keeps me so hooked to the base game of Fallout: New Vegas (which achieves the same goal much more elegantly than Fallout 2, albeit having its owned rushed dev schedule and resultant shortcomings), and it makes Fallout 2 much more replayable than its predecessor.
Fallout 2 is often criticised for its overly-zany writing, and while I think this is true to an extent it's extremely overblown, typically by people who haven't actually played the classic Fallout games. It is absolutely true that Fallout 2 has a more comical tone on the whole than the bleak wasteland of Fallout 1, and that in particular there are a lot of PAINFULLY outdated pop-culture references (that probably weren't even funny in the first place!), but 2 is still serious when it needs to be, and conversely Fallout 1 also had its fair share of pastiche pop culture references and silly moments. After all, the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series is also beloved, and those games have way more tonal dissonance between quirky sidequests and the dire main plotline than there is here, it's a similar principle. Admittedly the comedy in Like a Dragon is actually funny but hopefully you get my point.
P.S, fuck you Chris Avellone, talking Deathclaws are pretty cool actually and I will die on this hill. Double fuck you to Todd Howard for retconning them, now the continuation of Vault 13's story makes no sense.