I started playing on December 16th and played until December 30th. I played at least a couple hours every day.

I died 16 times and never reloaded a save-game to correct a mistake. I only reloaded if I died.

I was level 15 when I finished it.

How would I rate this game?

At first, the game was fairly impressive. There were lots of new places to visit and people to talk to. But as you play you'll inevitably experience your first death and then your second and so on. Frankly, it's very hard to cope with the deaths because in most cases you can't escape them. In my case, it was either too many enemies without a means to escape or a critical hit you can't survive. In the last game I played, Eschalon Book I, I think I died 4 or 5 times completing it. In this game it was more than 3 times that. Yes, it got very frustrating.

I think one of the things which made it harder for me to compete against the enemy is I lost my membership with the Brotherhood. I think the Brotherhood is where you get Power armor. In my case, I asked one of the members about rumors too much and I was kicked out. It made me mad because I lost my membership to something I think is trivial. It removed me from the game and felt cheap.

The next biggest thing you experience as you play longer lengths of time is the scarcity of new places to visit. I was at a stretch in the game where I could not reliably kill the mutants without dying. My goal was to gain some levels to better compete with them. However, there was just not enough content to enjoy it. I ended up getting most of my experience by roaming around in the wilderness to invoke the random encounters. It was slow and repetitive. The game designers for this didn't plan well for someone like me.

So to sum it up, the biggest problems I had were the random inescapable deaths and the scarcity of content late-game. I could probably - although I cannot guarantee - ignore the rest and give the game a fair shake, otherwise.

Here're a few other flaws I did not like:
* The inventory system was clunky and cumbersome
* The text display was similarly clunky and slow to use
* HIrelings not much use because they're too dumb and uncontrollable
* Skills/items which are almost useless
* Not enough exit points leading to the overhead map - leads to repetitive travel

The underlying flaw with this game is a flaw common to most of the classic games. They almost all encourage you to save scum. What I mean is they make you save often and they encourage you to correct your mistakes by reloading save-games. This is something I see as an endemic flaw and is difficult for me to enjoy.

All of this paints a grim picture of the game, but I was impressed with the large amounts of potential conversation and ways of handling things. In fact, this game is more replayable than Eschalon Book I - the last game I finished from GoG. Even though it lacks content near the end of the game, it has plenty beforehand. You can probably finish this game with minimal violence, if you set your character up right. There were probably dozens of quests I didn't do and multiple paths I didn't explore when I played. Your choices limit what you can do, though.

I gave Eschalon Book I a 7.5. Even though Fallout 1 has more content and feels more epic and is more replayable, I'd have to give it a 7.0 or 6.5 because of the large amounts of deaths and scarce content late-game. It hurts to say this because Fallout 1 has so much going for it and it's NOT the same kind of game as Eschalon Book I. You do a lot more talking in Fallout 1 than in Eschalon Book I. The characters in Fallout 1 give you more information about themselves, whereas characters in EB1 are virtually empty.

One more thing... In terms of tactics, I'd say Jagged Alliance 2 is a far better game.

I kept a journal while playing this game. I'd love to post it here as a spoiler, but there're no tags for that?

EDIT: I didn't mention it, but I liked the large number of perks you can get. Made building a character interesting. I'm sure there're other things I liked too, but as it stands, the other things above stood out in my mind.

Thanks for the review. The most important thing about Fallout is its post-apocalyptic setting. If it grabbed you and kept you immersed, don't let a few clunky design decisions discourage you from playing Fallout 2. Most things you listed are fixed and improved in the sequel. For starters, there's much more content: small towns have as many quests as the Hub, and large towns have double that number. There are also more NPCs you can talk to, along with more recruitable NPCs instead of just four. As a comparison, in FO1 I was level 13 at the very end, whereas in FO2 I went beyond level 20. This was only from quests and with minimum fighting (I played a diplomat/infiltrator), which indicates how much more content there is. However, you can still die from a freak critical hit; there's no escaping that.

FO1 broke new ground, but FO2 gave the developers an opportunity to focus on content when they had an already functioning engine. Yes, combat is much more advanced in JA2, but that's because JA2 had minimal story and was more focused on fighting, and Fallout features more quests and dialogue.

Come back when you've played it ten times. I've played Fallout 1 and 2 through approximately once every 2-3 years since they first came out, and I still occasionally find new things in them, and my appreciation has grown over time.

Charon121 is right. Most of the things you didn't like were adjusted in Fallout 2 (even though I'm one of the people who still considers 1 the superior game, overall).

Your criteria for the negative judgments you've made seem pretty arbitrary. You appear to be saying that having to reload because your character got killed 12-15 times throughout the course of an entire playthrough = bad, while reloading 3-4 times = good. That's you trying to force the game to be what you think it should be, rather than accepting it on it's own terms. To me, reloading is such an insignificant part of it that I've never even thought of it as either good or bad. You get killed, you reload and continue. End of story. It's not like the process is at all burdensome.

I am conflicted about your review. Given the fact Eschalon Book 1 was released in 2006 while Fallout 1 was 1997 nearly a decade apart. Also I don't see how you can compare JA1 and FO1 too different IMO. The NPCs need micro management(looking over their tactics) but keeping no more than three was not hard to manage(two melee and one sniper). The no late game content is puzzling neg. to me. The game is short and not many places to visit. Which helps if you want to replay it again. Also I don't see how you can blame devs for not making the game for your play-style. The Brotherhood is always on hand and needles with you. You are a recruit bottom of the barrel plus an outsider. If you piss people off you need to live with your mistakes(I learned that lesson with Ian). You list reason but you need to explain them. Maybe its just how we play that is different. At least half of my exp came from story/missions and not many random encounters(getting to the lvl. cap was too easy I would say)

I was level 15 when I completed Fallout 1. I used these traits:
2 Bonus Move
1 Rad Resistance
1 Strong Back
1 Swift Learner

My three tag skills on creation were Small Guns and First Aid and Lockpicking.

Anyway, the freak critical hits are a big negative in my view. They're just too big and/or without recourse. Maybe it would have been easier if I had found some Power armor, but as it was, I switched between Combat and Tesla armor and they couldn't stop the freak crits.

Well even if I had to pay the $5 to play Fallout 2, I probably would. It's free, so I'll try it. I have it downloaded.

Honestly, I look forward to trying FO2.

The comment about Jagged Alliance 2 stems from the my many years of playing it off and on. I must have bought it 10 years ago or something. I've deeply enjoyed it as a tactical-type game. However, I've loved the details inserted into the various mercenaries you can hire, so I'd have to say I like that too. It's in fact a diverse game, some people going as far as saying it's an rpg and a tactical and strategy game all in one. In many ways, it's one of the best games I've ever played, although it's time consuming on higher difficulty.

Jagged Alliance 2 can kill you in random ways too, but not exactly the same ways as FO1. For example, there's a pack of cats you can stumble on and they'll slaughter you and there's no way to escape. Sometimes you'll enter a sector and not be sure of the force you're facing. You'll end up digging deep into a sector with enemies only to find much more than you thought would be there. So you either end up losing everybody and reloading or maybe escaping with one or two guys. It's very frustrating when these sorts of things happen. In fact, I quit playing one time because of it. I'm not in anyway saying Jagged Alliance 2 is a better game overall, just that I like its tactical gameplay more. I'm definitely not comparing other things, like the greater numbers of quests and conversations in FO1.

One thing about JA2 is you could control the other mercenaries to great extent. This allowed you to implement all sorts of ideas in your tactics and is why I think JA2 was/is so fun. In FO1, by contrast, you have no control over your hireling and they're too dumb to be effective. It was so bad I didn't even use a hireling when I could have, since all they did up that point is get in the way and get killed. Maybe if they were smarter it'd work, but I'm not too sure. Maybe the game could be simpler so that dumb hirelings don't wreck your plans, but that's not the kind of game I want. It might be hard to understand, but I like the rules of engagement to be complicated and like riding the knife's edge. Maybe it's an adrenaline thing. It's like Hannibal in A-Team when he says he loves when a plan comes together.

Having said that JA2 allows you to control squads of mercenaries, it DOESN'T allow you to control the town militia. Now, in an odd stort of way, it's a very fun portion of the game when you get to fight alongside the militia, even though you cannot control them. The reason this is the case is because the militia does most of the work and they can essentially afford to be dumb through sheer numbers, but most importantly, they're easily replaced and just a side-game. Because you're not dumb you can still have an appreciable impact on the outcome. Generally speaking, i've never had many mercenaries in the towns when they're attacked, and they're usually low skilled lackeys, so usually it was a relaxed yet still fun part of the game to play alongside militia, despite their handicaps.

As far as the not wanting to reload games for anything other than dying, I think I'm that way because I've been a longtime mmo gamer. I've grown used to respawning and so forth. Save scumming and reloading is not fun to me. Most of the time these older games are made with the explicit expectation that the player will save and reload constantly, and this just doesn't agree with me.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Fallout Tactics, which is a lot more similar to JA2. It's still not quite as deep, but you do have your more typical tactical turn based squad game setup: Full control over each soldier, Crouching, ducking, crawling, etc. It's pretty cool. Definitely try out Tactics, if you got it for free along with the others.

But the original 2 Fallouts weren't designed to be hard-core tactical simulators. JA2 is a lot closer to one. I don't know that I'd say JA2 has "better" tactics, since I prefer a less extreme abundance of tactics on games focused more as RPGs. Just like I wouldn't call FO: Tactics better or worse that way, I'd simply call it more tactical based.

As far as save scumming goes, you really don't have to do it that often. I have one save for when I achieve milestones (new locations, finished quests, etc), and one for saving just before jumping into something treacherous. Expect to die and reload, for sure. Hopefully not too much. It's just the nature of the single player.

I have not downloaded Fallout Tactics yet. Maybe I should.

I am eager to get into FO2. Despite all the criticism of FO1, there was a lot I liked about it.

One last thing I want to say today.

Believe it or not, i died once essentially because I accidentally dropped a backpack that had my stimpaks and other miscellaneous pills and utility loots. Somehow, I wasn't able to pick it up and had moved away. When I came back to get it I was one step away and stupidly next to the wall. The robots surrounded me (and trapped me) and killed me.

I also learned after this ordeal how to bring up the menu with the mouse and open my inventory and use a stimpak. Apparently there're two inventory systems: one gives access to the equipment slots and the other is just the inventory. What's so confusing is they operate somewhat differently. In the normal one you have to change the cursor to an arrow to use a pill, but in the other one you have to use the hand to use a pill. I'm not even sure this all works in combat, since I discovered all this when I was almost finished. The whole feeling from this is clunky and confusing.

I hope hte inventory system in FO2 is better than the one in FO1. I will find out.

EDIT: I just started up FO1 and saw that in-combat the alternative inventory uses 3 ap if you swallow a pill, not 4. The normal inventory is 4 ap, but you can swallow multiple pills and of course access the equipment slots.

Same kind of setup, but now you can hit Pagedown to scroll through the inventory. Also, companions can be armored and told what to generally do in combat, so that shouldn't prove as irritating. Ah, inventory abuse. Yeah, that's a pretty big flaw with using healing items in combat. The only way I can think I would ever use a healing item in combat from the belt would be a super stimppack.

Looks like you did pretty good for a first run. Better than I did, because the way I found to shut off the force fields in the Military Base didn't work because of a bug. I figured out a different one on my second try. I can understand why you tagged First Aid, but it's really a waste. First Aid, Science, Repair, and Outdoorsman can all be raised up to 91% by buying and reading books in the Hub, so tagging or spending points on any of those skills is unnecessary. (Actually, you can get them up to around 120% by abusing drugs and the difficulty setting) Yes, there are books that can raise your Small Guns, but it's still worth a tag unless you are going specialize in melee combat in the early game. Lockpicking is useful, and Speech is a good choice for third tag as it opens up more dialogue options.

As far as perks go, Awareness is more useful than you might think. Swift Learner is almost useless, even if you take all three levels of it you'll gain at most one extra level by the end of the game. Rad resistance is not really needed so long as you keep a stock of RadX and RadAway on hand. Bonus Move is good, mainly for melee combat but it has some uses in ranged combat, especially if you have cover to duck behind. And I'd take Bonus HtH or Bonus Rate of Fire, whichever is applicable, as soon as it's offered. Same thing with Slayer or Sniper.

You probably missed a few quests that would have helped you level up. In fact, if you got booted out of the Brotherhood, you almost certainly missed out on the Rescue Initiate quest, which would have gotten a nice chunk of XP and the Power Armor as a reward. If you want to check for things you might have missed, I recommend Per Jorner's Nearly Ultimate Fallout Guide. He also has an equally thorough walkthrough for Fallout 2, for which I contributed a few tidbits to the latest edition.

In Fallout 2, these are improved or fixed, to some extent at least.
Companions and their handling is much improved, particularly. But this is still a problem.

For me save scumming was a problem for me the first time I played FO2 not FO1. These older games dont hand hold. I do agree that not being able to control your people is a problem at first(for me Ian from FO1 and Marcus from FO2 were the worst) but as before once I knew their pos and neg it became a joy to roam with them. I can see why you don't like it but it just challenges me to do better( big fan of Dark Souls and System Shock2) and when I do it draws me in

One of hte troubles I had with mutants was whether to switch to Tesla or Combat armor. Many of the times there'd be multiple mutants and they'd be using different guns. I'd use Combat armor for miniguns and flamers and close combat, but the problem is there're laser gatling guns that looks just like the miniguns. I also had a problem seeing the difference between flamers and plasma or laser rifles. I did all this to reduce the freak crits and because I didn't have power armor, but I'm not sure if it really helped much. I also got confused about whether Psycho helped for laser or plasma or fire or explosive attacks. I eventually decided it only helped against normal attacks.

One of the tactics was to put mutants between me and mutants with the gatling or minigun. They'd end up shooting each other. It reminded me of when I'd maneuver enemies onto traps in Eschalon Book I to kill them.

And yer right the Move Bonus perks helped me to put distance between me and the mutant so I can use cover. However, it ends up being very time consuming to kite mutants. Dying is that much more painful because you have to repeat.

At one point I didn't know if I could use plasma grenades without the energy weapons skill, but they worked. On that issue, I actually put more points into throwing because I found grenades to be useful against the mutants.

The military base weird... disabling some of the emitters took me a while and I'm still confused how it works. I also feel guilty I killed Sarah's lover. I almost shot her to see if she had a key or something, but I figured something else out.

If I played again, I'd probably tag the Energy Weapons skill instead of First Aid and I'd put more points into throwing and speech. I'd probably also change my perks. There're so many perks, but I like that.

First Aid just seems to be a way to reduce the amount of stimpaks you use by a small amount. It does also allow you to heal your hireling, but you can give them stimpaks too. I just think its effectiveness was too low or something becaues it seemed bleh.

I only injured a limb once and was able to cure it without even putting any points in Doctor or tagging it. I didn't find out whether there're any doctors in the game to heal a limb. All I tried was the preacher near the water merchants and he wouldn't heal it.

Maybe you should try a non-combat\stealth approach next time through? Random encounters are not really an issue if you have high Outdoorsman.