I admit I am cheap and it is only 6 dollars to check out. I know the game gets a lot of hate from fans(Some more than fo3), I was wondering why? I enjoyed 1 and 2 and beet 3(it was not as good as 1 or 2 but still good) and I wanted more fallout.

The problem is two-fold. First of all, it's not the best squad based tactics game out there. It's a good game, but it's not the second coming. Which means that if you're a fan of squad based tactical games, FO:Tactics may fall short of expectations.
Secondly, it's a Fallout game in the same way Galaxy Quest is a Star Trek film. Which means that if you play if for the Fallout fix you'll walk away unsatisfied, because this isn't Fallout as you know it.
The former is a problem because there's better, older squad based tactical games out there. The latter is a problem because most people wanted more Fallout, not Fallout piss-takes. If you're prepared for the latter, however, and you've already played the best 5 squad based tactical games to death and beyond, you very likely will enjoy FO:Tactics.
It's not that the game gets a lot of hatred from Fallout fans. Generally, it doesn't. It's just not the best game ever, and as a homage, it falls apart at times. Thus, it doesn't get a whole lot of praise from Fallout fans. Personally I like it. But apart from this post, not so much it ever inspired me to rant about it online. Gauging reactions in other communities, most people share similar feelings.

Never give up, never surrender!
:)

What re the 5 best SB tactical games? This is what I am thinking they are.
X-Com
X-Com2
X-Com Apopc
Jagged Alliance
Jagged Alliance2
More recent additions would be Silent Storm and UFO: Extraterrestrials.

heh, yeah, pretty much... It IS an entertaining game, neverheless. Just... Don't thik about it. Much :D
The huge difference I loved about Fallout: Tactics was possibility of realtime combat. I'm an action-oriented guy, and this way I can strategise AND shoot things at the same time :D

Just don't think about the differences and/or look at it as a different Fallout universe. Only thing I don't really like is the power armour, rather weird... Though still great in its own way.
Personally I think it is a great game and rather funny at one point..

point two is wrong, in my opinion. in fallout 2 when first going to the navarro base, you have the option to rescue an intelligent deathclaw. i think that tactics takes place after the events of fallout 2, so it's possible that this escapee's descendants (there's no reason he couldn't have mated with the non-intelligent deathclaws and created some kind of hybrid evolutionary line, perhaps even resulting in fur) are what we see in tactics. also, an intelligent deathclaw may have escaped the massacre at vault 13. in fact, we know goris survived because he can be found on level 3 even after the massacre.
also, the point about airships. the enclave was using the vertibirds in fallout 2, and there's a quest where you can steal the blueprints and give a copy to both the brotherhood of steel and the shi government in san francisco (you could have also given the blueprints to the hubologists). so i don't see why this isn't a possibility if tactics takes place after the events of fallout 2.
</derail>
i liked tactics for what it was -- it is still the only satisfying real-time squad based tactics game that i've played. the only drawback is that tactics has zero replayability due to the linearity of the single player campaign.

according to the timeline Fallout Tactics starts in 2197, 9 years after the Vault Dwellers daughter (the elder in Fallout 2) is born.
So, Fallout Tactics actually happens before/during Fallout 2.

ah, thanks for that. i couldn't remember where tactics was supposed to fit in the timeline.

I'll take a shot at this because I got it when it originally came out. Besides the reasons mentioned already, at the time it was released it was full of bugs (crashes and other problems I don't remember) and despite not being especially amazing in the graphics department, it would bring even very nice computers to their knees. So just scrolling around the screen would take a long time. Imagine it takes you a minute to check what's one screen off to the side, and then a minute to get the screen back; watching your characters move in fits and jumps of slow-motion. Not fun.
So for me at least, the bad taste of that remained. It took them a long time to fix it up, and it still killed my machine at the time.
I loved X-COM back in the day, but I think no squad-based combat game has come close to the quality of Silent Storm combat. The last missions were a terrible terrible closing to the game though.

It's decent combat, but that's basically 100% of what it is. You get a mission, you clear out a town. Fallout was fun because you didn't necessarily HAVE to kill everything and you had choice in what you did/where you went/how you did it. It has the fallout universe, but about 1/5 of the fallout depth that the other games have because it focuses on one specific aspect (combat) of the earlier games while forgoing all the others (exploration, dialogue, etc).
As a squad based combat game that is purely focused on that, it's not bad. As a fallout game, its like a Big Mac without with meat (or special sauce).

I did get Tactics just recently and I've really enjoyed the combat aspect of it so far. It is very different from Fallout games, so that is perhaps why 'purists' or 'fanboys' may discount it, because in essence it isn't a Fallout game like 1 and 2 were, so that is most likely another reason why it receives so much flak (heh), but I am going to be honest, I really like tactics as well.

I agree, Silent Storm is excellent and my only complaint is the last missions. I would love to see that developer's take on an X-COM type of game. It might finally be an X-COM clone worthy of playing.

I never would have thought that Real Time and Turn Based systems could have been combined seamlessly before playing Silent Storm, but they nailed it perfectly in the tactical missions.