I finally did it! I finally beat fallout 1! Prior to beating it, this game always felt so……..unapproachable. Most people in my life treated it like this impossible to get into, unfair game and you wouldn’t even be able to exit the cave you start in without dying gruesomely. Meanwhile, I also knew there was a LOT of fallout 1/2 purists and people who considered them to be the best of the series! So I knew SOMETHING had to make them worth playing. I am here to tell you with confidence, fallout 1 is not impossible! I do have some experience with challenging turn-based RPGs but this is quite literally my first CRPG I have invested real time into (I think????) so like…..the bar really isn’t that high I promise. It’s not as intimidating as you think. The game has aged in some ways, but considerably less than I expected. The areas can feel a bit repetitive, and the world can feel a bit small, but it’s truly insane to go back to the beginning of this franchise and see how much lore/worldbuilding/backstory existed from the start. This is something I did not want to take for granted during my playthrough. For some context on me pre-classic fallout playthroughs; I started with fallout NV, then 3, and then really didn’t enjoy 4 very much and never got far or beat it. I have not touched 76. I have since played NV like 3 more times and 3 like 1 more time. I strongly dislike Bethesda as a company! If you align with this in any way, I think fallout 1 is worth experiencing. Even if you don’t. Try something new! The character interactions are at the core of this game for me. There’s so many unique places and factions, and while the story keeps things pretty basic from the start, it’s always a treat when you find a talking head. The voice acting in this game is like ASMR to your ears. It truly is just really cool to see the people and situations that created the NCR, the followers, the brotherhood, the khans, etc etc etc. Also, the scavenging for weapons/healing items/ANYTHING is so gratifying, and traversing the overworld REALLY isn’t that bad if you aren’t ashamed of savescumming. You have to adopt patience for the mechanics of this game, and if you aren’t used to older games that might be a big ask, but it’s extremely worth it in my opinion. I had a great time with the combat too. It’s simple enough, the hit rates can be annoying early on but I think it teaches you to value when they improve over time. I was so stupid though and I never learned how to use VATS. I never even thought to look for it until I was watching someone else play it later and remembered. Right click your weapon to activate it. Oops! My one gripe is that there’s an unnecessary difficulty spike in the last hour or 2 of the game that was really hard to come to terms with. I’ll be real, in order to traverse the final area I just downloaded a mod and set my health to like x100 and my strength to x10. I probably missed out on some part of this experience but I had completed every quest i was interested in and wasn’t going to waste my time grinding for the damn alien blaster/leveling up 10 times just to increase my HP. The endgame enemy weapons are bullshit. I am an adult who works full time and has other hobbies/a sizeable backlog of other games to get through. But anyways. A lot of thought and care was put into this world and its gameplay, and it’s worth it alone in order to experience fallout 2 afterwards and also be able to gloat to your peers that you’ve beat the original fallout and they haven’t! also it’s a pretty damn quick game, like 15 hours max, more if you want to do EVERYTHING or you grind but even so it’s a nice authentic and bite-sized experience. Play fallout 1! Minus 1 star because sometimes your companions trap you in corners