Fallout 1 was always one of those games that kinda eluded me for the longest time. It was one of those games that I'd try once, get incredibly confused, and put it down never to pick it up again. Idk exactly where I'm going with this but MAN am I glad I finally decided to give it another shot since it really does hold up well for the most part barring the initial learning curve and some minor issues.
(For context, I played this with the Fallout1in2 mod that basically ports the game over to 2's engine with many of it's QoL enhancements, and I highly recommend you do the same if you do have any interest playing this. It's a little finnicky to set up with resolutions but it's very worth it.)
First off, the atmosphere and visuals are top tier imho, even all these years later. Sure, I already had some exposure to Mark Morgan's unnerving compositions thanks to it being featured in future games such as New Vegas but man is it as great as ever here. It effortlessly manages to get me sucked in every time. And the visuals and talking heads, while obviously dated by today's standards, have this sort of charm to it that persists all these years later I feel, helped even more by basically all of them having probably some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a game of this era next to maybe the original Thief games.
In general this game has this sense of liveliness despite the obvious limitedness when you really look at it from a bigger angle. There's only 12 named locations in total, with only about 7 of those having a good deal of side quests you can take on, but even with that each one just feels alive and believable, honestly I'd debate maybe a bit moreso then the best modern Bethesda entries. A part of that is the mind filling in the blanks a bit sure, but even still idk, everything in this game just feels really well thought out on the worldbuilding and writing end.
The way this game handles its pacing and building up the story period holds up so well. Again, even despite the limited amount of locations, you feel this sense of wonder as you find new named locations, and learn more about this world and what happened to it. I love as well how the children of the cathedral are seen here and there, usually offering free healing, lulling you into a sense of false security, only for the truth to become more and more apparent as you do more quests and build your way up to ending their plans.
What I also liked about a lot of this game's quests is that there was always at least 4 or so ways to complete it, really encouraging players to think outside the box in terms of their skills and also encouraging replay value further. I didn't even realize until I was done with the game that you could activate the warhead in the basement and potentially not even have to deal with The Master, which is just so cool to me. Stuff like that or being able to go to Mariposa early if you decide to let yourself get captured by the Mutant in Necropolis is just such cool details that make me wanna see how they play out another time. I admittedly haven't played a whole lot of CRPGs so this is probably commonplace there, but even then I really enjoyed it.
I will say that some aspects of character building aren't perfect- more specifically this game sort of shares the same issue Deus Ex has where some skills are kind of just pointless and useless (I can only think of maybe 2 whole points in the game where the trap skill would be useful) and that if you aren't building high agility for the extra AP in combat then you are really nerfing yourself for when you DO get in combat encounters, which IS mandatory at certain points.
Speaking of, probably my biggest issue with this game has to be the overworld random encounters. They aren't inherently bad per se, especially since you can just run out of them if you've got high agility but the ones you need to deal with on your way to Mariposa can be AWFUL if you don't have a lot of healing items (which even then probably wouldn't help that much). There were so many points where just one minigun super mutant would get a critical and instantly delete me from existence, EVEN WITH HARDENED POWER ARMOR. And if you somehow stumble upon two at once, or one with a flamer? That's a save reload right there. This part of the game alone I can't imagine it being possible to do in just 1 save or without saving period, since you WILL die at least once here unless you decide to grind beforehand. Doesn't help either that it's so far away from the Brotherhood base, and you're gonna be having to make 2 round trips at least; once to complete the "scout to the north objective" (because there's no way in hell you're gonna take it down with just you and your companions), and again to actually initiate the attack with help from the brotherhood. And the mutants don't go away either once you blow up the vats, so you'll still be seeing patrols on your way back. Again, I'm not against random encounters, but the amount of times I got cheesed because of RNG being in the enemy's favor is just too much to count.
Ironically, what I found was the best way to fast travel, was doing caravan jobs, since they don't show the map overworld screen and just fast-foward you to whatever encounters you see on the road (which aren't much, I think you can only get one random encounter per each trip), are easy to deal with AND you get paid even if you decide not to go back to the Hub. Honest to god, my grinding stat before I decided to go to the cathedral was alternating between Crimson Caravan and the Far Go Traders depending on which one had a leave date that was closer, and repeating until I felt I was good.
I think my only other issues is that the water chip time limit early on can be a bit daunting to newcomers (it really isn't, I think I only bought one shipment from the water merchants to extend the timer) but even then it's not hard to get it if you spend your time wisely and do some side quests to level yourself up here and there, and the game really does open up even more after that. That, and the UI does take some learning (I didn't even realize you could unload weapons for more ammo until halfway through the game), but once you do it becomes second nature.
Either way, this game holds up exceptionally well and I feel is worth a play if you're either already into Fallout, or you just like TTRPGs in general. No shit, with how popular games like BG3 were last year I see no reason why anyone who liked that game or general TTRPG systems couldn't get into this one barring the UI learning curve (entirely the point I'm aware, since the systems were based off of GURPS). And from what I'm aware, Fallout 2 is just this game but better and with more content, so I'm really excited to give that a shot once I can. Overall, a great time and one I'm finally happy I picked up.
(For context, I played this with the Fallout1in2 mod that basically ports the game over to 2's engine with many of it's QoL enhancements, and I highly recommend you do the same if you do have any interest playing this. It's a little finnicky to set up with resolutions but it's very worth it.)
First off, the atmosphere and visuals are top tier imho, even all these years later. Sure, I already had some exposure to Mark Morgan's unnerving compositions thanks to it being featured in future games such as New Vegas but man is it as great as ever here. It effortlessly manages to get me sucked in every time. And the visuals and talking heads, while obviously dated by today's standards, have this sort of charm to it that persists all these years later I feel, helped even more by basically all of them having probably some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a game of this era next to maybe the original Thief games.
In general this game has this sense of liveliness despite the obvious limitedness when you really look at it from a bigger angle. There's only 12 named locations in total, with only about 7 of those having a good deal of side quests you can take on, but even with that each one just feels alive and believable, honestly I'd debate maybe a bit moreso then the best modern Bethesda entries. A part of that is the mind filling in the blanks a bit sure, but even still idk, everything in this game just feels really well thought out on the worldbuilding and writing end.
The way this game handles its pacing and building up the story period holds up so well. Again, even despite the limited amount of locations, you feel this sense of wonder as you find new named locations, and learn more about this world and what happened to it. I love as well how the children of the cathedral are seen here and there, usually offering free healing, lulling you into a sense of false security, only for the truth to become more and more apparent as you do more quests and build your way up to ending their plans.
What I also liked about a lot of this game's quests is that there was always at least 4 or so ways to complete it, really encouraging players to think outside the box in terms of their skills and also encouraging replay value further. I didn't even realize until I was done with the game that you could activate the warhead in the basement and potentially not even have to deal with The Master, which is just so cool to me. Stuff like that or being able to go to Mariposa early if you decide to let yourself get captured by the Mutant in Necropolis is just such cool details that make me wanna see how they play out another time. I admittedly haven't played a whole lot of CRPGs so this is probably commonplace there, but even then I really enjoyed it.
I will say that some aspects of character building aren't perfect- more specifically this game sort of shares the same issue Deus Ex has where some skills are kind of just pointless and useless (I can only think of maybe 2 whole points in the game where the trap skill would be useful) and that if you aren't building high agility for the extra AP in combat then you are really nerfing yourself for when you DO get in combat encounters, which IS mandatory at certain points.
Speaking of, probably my biggest issue with this game has to be the overworld random encounters. They aren't inherently bad per se, especially since you can just run out of them if you've got high agility but the ones you need to deal with on your way to Mariposa can be AWFUL if you don't have a lot of healing items (which even then probably wouldn't help that much). There were so many points where just one minigun super mutant would get a critical and instantly delete me from existence, EVEN WITH HARDENED POWER ARMOR. And if you somehow stumble upon two at once, or one with a flamer? That's a save reload right there. This part of the game alone I can't imagine it being possible to do in just 1 save or without saving period, since you WILL die at least once here unless you decide to grind beforehand. Doesn't help either that it's so far away from the Brotherhood base, and you're gonna be having to make 2 round trips at least; once to complete the "scout to the north objective" (because there's no way in hell you're gonna take it down with just you and your companions), and again to actually initiate the attack with help from the brotherhood. And the mutants don't go away either once you blow up the vats, so you'll still be seeing patrols on your way back. Again, I'm not against random encounters, but the amount of times I got cheesed because of RNG being in the enemy's favor is just too much to count.
Ironically, what I found was the best way to fast travel, was doing caravan jobs, since they don't show the map overworld screen and just fast-foward you to whatever encounters you see on the road (which aren't much, I think you can only get one random encounter per each trip), are easy to deal with AND you get paid even if you decide not to go back to the Hub. Honest to god, my grinding stat before I decided to go to the cathedral was alternating between Crimson Caravan and the Far Go Traders depending on which one had a leave date that was closer, and repeating until I felt I was good.
I think my only other issues is that the water chip time limit early on can be a bit daunting to newcomers (it really isn't, I think I only bought one shipment from the water merchants to extend the timer) but even then it's not hard to get it if you spend your time wisely and do some side quests to level yourself up here and there, and the game really does open up even more after that. That, and the UI does take some learning (I didn't even realize you could unload weapons for more ammo until halfway through the game), but once you do it becomes second nature.
Either way, this game holds up exceptionally well and I feel is worth a play if you're either already into Fallout, or you just like TTRPGs in general. No shit, with how popular games like BG3 were last year I see no reason why anyone who liked that game or general TTRPG systems couldn't get into this one barring the UI learning curve (entirely the point I'm aware, since the systems were based off of GURPS). And from what I'm aware, Fallout 2 is just this game but better and with more content, so I'm really excited to give that a shot once I can. Overall, a great time and one I'm finally happy I picked up.