12 Reasons why F2 Is the worst Fallout Game

[Road to A+]

TL;DR: Play Fallout 1 instead. Game is unfinished/rushed. The intro and PC background are disgustingly bad. The story and main quest are awful. The combat is broken. 90% of quests are fetch/fedex and offer ZERO moral ambiguity (check the wikis if you dont believe me). NPC dialogue is bare bone. Exploration value is non existant. Skill check system is broken. Karma system is broken. Talking heads are dull. Companions are boring. Overwhelming amount of parodic and immersion breaking content....

As much as I despise New Vegas and F4 for being completely bland and dumbed down I cant help but feel that F2 is actually the worst Fallout game. For those who dont know there is a huge buzz around F2 due to the fact that Fallout 1 is a timeless masterpiece and F2 being it's sequel and pretending to live up to it. I know some of you have played modern Fallouts (3-NV-4) and are thinking of doing a retro gaming trip and are going to pick up either F1 or F2. Well you can do yourself a favor and stick with F1, and skip F2 even if you like F1.

The difference between F1 and F2 is like day and night even though they look exactly the same.

First thing people should know is that the game still contains major bugs that are NOT fixed by the unofficial patches. The combat in that game is completely broken and makes the game almost unplayable. It is a fact that the game is unfinished and rushed into an early release, patches dont fix that. You can critically hit someone in the eyes for a pathetic 3 dmg because you are using armor piercing bullets against unarmored foes.... DUH!!!!

1- Awful introduction and PC background. The introduction and starting area are cringeworthy to say the least. Your character is the grandson of Fallout 1's vault dweller, basically someone with a lot of knowledge on the outside world and technology. The village was even founded by the vault dweller and built with the help of his knowledge. Yet the whole place is filled with bone-in-nose shamans and ???????? people who live in a completely different world. Some even have special shaman powers, and the game features A LOT of dumb stuff like people believing in ghosts. Your village also built a fricken temple and for some reason doesnt even live in it. Basically F2 devs completely misunderstood what makes a proper post-apocalyptic setting.

2- Terrible MQ with bad pacing & scaling. The MQ is the same as F1 which isnt a bad thing, aside from the execution. You are looking for a GECK to save your village but the game is designed so 99% of the NPCs will answer "Uhh idk" when asked where you might find it (Unlike F1 which had a proper pacing and scaling that slowly guided your search). This basically turns the game into a cryptic point & click game. The game quickly starts feeling more like a chore than a game, expecially considering the fedex nature of the quests. As you progress in the game you realize that of all towns/factions your village is the least qualified and worthy of holding a GECK, literally every other settlement could make a better use of it. The main path is also padded with filler like a 1k caps requirement to free a key NPC from slavers in order to progress. The other options are to reroll a female character and have sex with the slaver boss or somehow manage to cheese the fight enough to kill 10 slavers armed with guns while you only have a spear... The 1k caps will have to be earned by grinding fedex quests. Overall the game feels like one of those early age MMORPGs where the game doesnt offer enough quests to naturally level up so you need to grind just to progress.

3- Broken combat system. Aside from being broken the combat has some more serious flaws. The encounter design is the worst ever. Mark my words when I say that there isnt a single memorable combat encounter in the whole game, aside from the last boss which requires tremendous amounts of grinding to defeat. The non-premade fights are all dull and follow a similar design pattern. Its always 1 named NPC with a character model slightly different from the rest of his copy pasted guards. The amount of guards is just too damn high, you simply cannot enjoy killing a certain NPC the way you want, you have to cheese the fights to be able to take out the mob of guards. For those who played Fallout 3, imagine if Mr. Tenpenny was surrounded by 10 guards with miniguns, would you still be able to enjoy decapitating him and tossing his remains off the balcony?

4- Unbalanced random encounters. The random encounters met when traveling the world map are arguably the worst aspect of the game. None of them are enjoyable or contributes anything to the game other than xp and loot. Combat somehow feels slower than F1 and is extremely tedious even on fastest speed. Note that it isnt rare to stumble upon virtually unwinnable fights that require a reload. Many times you will get 1 shot on the first round before you can even act. Even when you manage to escape its still very tedious since you often need 2+ turns to reach the exit and you face multiple enemies that all have enough APs for 2-3 actions. Typical encounter : a bunch of farmers (3-5+) getting attacked by a bunch of raiders (3-5+), so lets say 10 units acting 2-3 times and triggering 20-30 animations for 2 turns, thats an average of 40-60 NPC actions that you need to slog through just to reach the exit tile. And those encounters are very frequent. The game teaches you to save scum in order to travel.

5- Terrible quest design. The quest design is where F2 crashes and burns. It simply is the worst of the series. The game is filled with uninteresting fedex quests offering no moral ambiguity. It is always a matter of 'yes or no' rather than 'right or wrong'. More often than not both the player and the character dont give 2 craps about the outcome of these quests because they lack relevant consequences. If you read the wiki, and I am not joking, the large majority of quests begin with words like 'get', 'deliver', 'retrieve', 'collect', 'kill', etc... Very often the quest giver straight up tells you exactly where you need to go and what to do and leaves little to no room for the player's intelligence to be useful. The quests lack the interesting alternative solutions that F1 had, it very often boils down to doing exactly what you were told with no relevant consequences, or you get an out of place evil option.

6- NPC dialogue is bare-bone and unfinished. People feel more like zombies than wastelanders trying to survive. The only memorables NPCs are remembered for the wrong reasons, that is because their dialogue was particularly cringeworthy and/or immersion breaking. The world is filled with generic NPCs and the named ones arent interesting because they only offer some typical fedex quests. There are plenty of areas where named NPCs offer nothing but services and offer copy pasted answers, like at one certain marketplace in a very large end game settlement is filled with NPCs that reply "I sell junk, not info" when asked for rumors or info. NPCs feel like tools more than anything. Even Skyrim had more and better dialogue, and we all know how bad it is.

7- Lack of exploration value / bland world design. Over 99% of the art assets are recycled from F1 and are misused. The famous 'Blades' sign that served to mark the Blade's hideout is not cut n paste around every corner. If you enjoy exploring every nook and cranny in the games you play then F2 will be a utter disappointment. Towns are small and empty filled with generic NPCs. World design like building placement is dull and feels copy pasted. Houses are lined up on grids like a game of sim city. Towns offer no memorable architecture, lore or layouts. There are a few magazines

8- Skill check system is flawed. The way it currently works if your character meets the requirement to unlock a certain dialogue option, the game will STILL roll a dice just to know if that option is VISIBLE to you. That means you can talk to certain NPCs who should be offering certain options but they dont, you need to exit and re-enter dialogue until it shows up. How's that for breaking the immersion? It also means you can accidently skip on content that will block you from progressing/finishing a quest. Your playstyle is also largely dictated by your initial build and tagged skills. You cannot become good at speech if you didnt tag it because most speech skill checks require you to tag speech.

9- Karma system is broken. Just for grinding fedex quests and not selecting the obvious psychopath option each time your character slowly becomes a goody two shoe. The game forces you into some ridiculous C&C, you often have the option of just doing what you were told or pick an unjustified evil option. Like the quest that turns you into a messenger boy/ambassador between 2 towns. You get the option of playing the fedex role or turning the 2 towns against each other for no RP reason. There is no neutral ground (Ignoring the quest triggers the war). Worst part is that I only did those quests for the rewards because I needed caps to progress the MQ and never really cared about them, yet they defined my character as 'good'. As a result you get locked out of content given by evil NPCs in a game already very limited in content.

10- Talking heads are dull , most of them use copy pasted assets like 4 out of the whopping 13 total heads are simply metal helmets. Fallout 1 had 21 talking heads and there simply isnt a single talking head in F2 that can compare to those in F1. These NPCs mostly speak with a bored and monotoneous voice.

11- Companions are boring. They share the same dialogue lines which makes them lose all their personality and uniqueness. "Im going to beat you like a red headed step-child" was funny the first time I saw it, then other companions started spewing out the same line over and over... They mostly serve as packing mules and do not offer much interaction beyond that. Most of the companion who were supposed to get their own quests didnt because of cut content. Most of the companions are earned by simply spending caps to pay them off.

12- Overwhelming amount of parodic and immersion breaking content. You simply cant avoid it, its all over the place. Where do I start? In random encounters you meet parodized homeless people walking toward you like zombies, just like a South Park episode (which came out after F2, but still). A dog causing bad luck stalking you with more HP than 10 super mutants (can possibly require a reroll if met at low levels because he is virtually unkillable). The only doctor of the one settlement of the waste that represents law and order, a doctor that heals the mayor, is parodized as a mad scientist/incompetent doctor. A guy in the same settlement is living too much stress, so he blows himself up like a terrorist and leave you with a huge pile of loot. People living the big life doing drugs and gambling all day and still being able to survive. A town that specializes in gold digging in a post-apocalyptic world. A town with a PORN STUDIO, do I need to say more? The jokes are the meat of this 'game' and the pieces of serious content are hidden like easter eggs.


So if you are new to this and deciding which Fallout game to buy, do yourself a favor and skip it to play F1 instead.

If you grew up on F2 then please do the whole world a favor, take off your nostalgia glasses and stop praising this poor excuse of a game.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Well, the OP has a bit of a point with #4. If you're exploring the map, you probably don't know the game well enough to be prepared for an enclave patrol / masters of the remnants army, which will almost certainly result in game-ending consequences. If reloading from RNG induced game loss doesn't bother you, then you may as well just save scum your way to navarro right out of arroyo.

I've played the game through a few different ways and found enjoyment in it, but yeah, the there's a lot to be frustrated with in Fallout 2.

[danconnors]

point 1: Free the slave. You paid the 1k caps to free the guy? Wimp. I massacred the dealer who was tring to talk like a wise guy. He had a load of stuff--guns, bullets, armor. Dealt with 2nd dealer to either get the hunting rifle or the ammo for it. I took the rifle across the street from the slavers, and, after having some of Mom's sphaghetti, went to the window nearest the slavers, and wiped them out. Sometimes I would have to retreat for a couple of hours to let them settle back in place, but I NEVER paid 1,000 caps.

You need some balls to win this game.

[d_son]

I pray to god that this is a sh*tpost

[climbingeastofwinter]

Цитата допису danconnors:

point 1: Free the slave. You paid the 1k caps to free the guy? Wimp. I massacred the dealer who was tring to talk like a wise guy. He had a load of stuff--guns, bullets, armor. Dealt with 2nd dealer to either get the hunting rifle or the ammo for it. I took the rifle across the street from the slavers, and, after having some of Mom's sphaghetti, went to the window nearest the slavers, and wiped them out. Sometimes I would have to retreat for a couple of hours to let them settle back in place, but I NEVER paid 1,000 caps.

You need some balls to win this game.

Huh. I bought 20 jet, got all the slavers high on jet, waited 10 minutes and then killed all 14 of them bare-handed while they were debuffed.

[ben]

this is funny, happy to bump comedy of this quality

[The Commendatore]

Цитата допису 2012HondaAccordCoupe:

This thread will never ever stop being relevant. This thread has saw me through thick and thin, i'm not even heated over it anymore. I'm proud to say I was part of this relic, and the thread before it if anyone remembers that one. Road to A+, come back!

Two year old thread isn't a relic in the slightest.

[FedEx Noelle]

Цитата допису The Commendatore:

Цитата допису 2012HondaAccordCoupe:

This thread will never ever stop being relevant. This thread has saw me through thick and thin, i'm not even heated over it anymore. I'm proud to say I was part of this relic, and the thread before it if anyone remembers that one. Road to A+, come back!

Two year old thread isn't a relic in the slightest.

It's a relic for literally all the controversy surrounding it. It's been the front page for 2 years.

[Disgruntled Cuttlefish]

Yeah, OP got the biggest best thread eva. Omg it's been on the front page so long. They wrote out so much wall of ♥♥♥♥, they must know about the game also or maybe they just looked at the wiki for it.

A lot of it is mainly just scrutinizing content that is lacking in 1 I guess while omitting much.

Fallout 1 better cuz, more serious, less parody. Omg I don't like how my character starts out primitively. Omg the game doesn't hold my ♥♥♥♥ for me like Fallout 1 did, the classic.

The cool old Fallout fans with Harold as their avatars who told them 1 is better are the cool kids. The other old fallout fans are not I guess.

Didn't you hear, all the coolest Fallout kids like 1 more.

Omg I died in so many encounters, I need to save my game. Not in Fallout 1. Where you stomp around almost immediately after doing a few quests barely, all of a sudden you have power armor turbo plasma and kill everything in the game easily. But 2 is worse, I forgot. hahahahahaha

Omg I need to level up and do ♥♥♥♥ maybe a little and get better before I can run out and beat the game right away. Omg there is more to do in this than in 1, I keep dying like a ♥♥♥♥♥.

Цитата допису 2012HondaAccordCoupe:

Цитата допису The Commendatore:

Two year old thread isn't a relic in the slightest.

It's a relic for literally all the controversy surrounding it. It's been the front page for 2 years.

No controversy, just attention seeking.

[Din mamma]

How dare you call fallout 2 bad,its a Hood game!

[Din mamma]

Good*

[Rusty]

They hated him because he told the truth.

[FedEx Noelle]

Цитата допису Rusty:

They hated him because he told the truth.

Not really. People will enjoy the game for what it is.

[Hat8]

Play Fallout 1 because it's necessary to appreciate Fallout 2's story.

Fallout 2 holds up, especially with Killaps Patch - something that is free and requires no tedious effort to install.

Цитата допису mfkndggrfll:

F4 has better world design and exploration value than F2.

Cursed opinion.

[Elite Magikarp]

OP either has INT so low that even Mentats can't help him or a CHR so high that he could convince you to eat The Onion.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Цитата допису D Wrecks:

OP either has INT so low that even Mentats can't help him or a CHR so high that he could convince you to eat The Onion.

OP probably wrote this while high on Jet.