And I must say I understand what the fuss was all about. It's short, clunky, ugly and.. freaking awesome! It has however, the worst ' tutorial' stage ever. A cave with rats?! I almost gave up on it in the first minute. They should have introduced the game with witty conversation, funny fallout-ish things. Not the initially-extremely-horrible combat system (which grows on you, by the way. I had a lot of fun with it eventually).
Does fallout 2 start out equally underwhelming? Though I suppose it would be pretty funny in a way if it was another cave full of rats =P
Anyway. I'm very happy I endured its shortcomings. There is so much memorable stuff in the game, I think it'll stay with me for a long time. Glad I bought and played it!
Hmm. This post inspired me. I think I'll write up a nice review when I have more time.
Ok, I'm done now >_>

Personally i found the start of fallout 2 more annoying then fallout 1.
You start in you village and can talk to some people etc you hear you have to complete a trial in a temple.
And the temple as you expect is full with traps, critters, yep rats aswell.
But after that fallout 2 is great game, if you love 1 you definately love 2 aswell.

It's not a tutorial, it's... a cave with rats.

Fallout 2 has a tutorial, Fallout 1 gives you a gun and places you in a cave full of rats, leaving you to figure it all out. And that's one of my biggest problems with Fallout 2.

Heh. If that's the biggest problem with Fallout 2, I think I'll enjoy it. But I understand what you mean. And well, I don't think there should have been a tutorial, actually, but I do believe the beginning could have been a little bit more fun than.. a cave full of rats. I actually died there the first time. That was pretty depressing.
Now if it would have been a cave full of clowns..
Everyone likes clowns, right?
...
<shudders>

I actually think the rats are kinda funny. It's like the developers were thinking of the greatest way to humiliate the player and the decided to have the player get their ass kicked against rats.

Good to know that I'm not the only one who thought the beginning was lame, I still have yet to get past it, which I'll probably do right after I post this :)

I started and quit because of that cave. Now that I know it gets better I'll give it another shot. I've always heard this was a good series.

Be prepared to be frustrated now and then, it's part of what makes it so great. :)
First time for me, I wanted to find an RPG I liked and got it as a cover disc and thought I'd try it, I got into the cave and thought "what is this, it's crap", somehow I just wanted to see a bit more every time I got frustrated though. (cursing about how bad it was, "but I'm going to play a bit more" and fell in love with it along the way)
I didn't bother with the manual either, it was on the disc, so I played through the game with the "level" sign down the left of the screen without ever using the points to level up, I just thought "yeah, I know I've levelled up, now go away you silly sign"... :) (still managed to beat the game, it was a "tad" harder than it'd have to be though)
You're doing the right thing when you give it another shot, it's a great game, hopefully you'll notice that too, maybe you'll become one of us "zealots" of the NMA crowd too? :p
Edit:
One thing you might want to do is to speed up combat in the settings, it'll save some time since the turns go a bit faster, especially useful with a bunch of enemies around. (with it set to normal the waiting for everyone to do their thing might get a bit tedious, especially for a new player who's already in doubt about the game and why it's considered a classic)

Heh. Glad you guys are giving it another shot. If you're scared/not prepared to be frustrated, you might want to check a walkthrough for the first area or so. Not that there is anything particulary frustrating about that area, but it might give you a smoother introduction in the way the game works. Some of the mechaniscs and logic of the game are not all that obvious. After that, just try to find your way =)
At least, that's how I did it, and I enjoyed the game a lot. Also, just reading some short (relatively) spoiler-free general advise (like the gamebanshee <span class="podkreslenie">introduction</span> and <span class="podkreslenie">some frequently asked questions</span> ) can help.

While the opening cave is perhaps a tad underwhelming, it is a useful opening to give you an easy opening bit of combat (or running away), before you go out into the wilderness. It also makes sense that the entrance would be hidden in a cave system.
The start for Fallout 2 is in some ways better (in that its a proper tutorial) but in many ways worse (too long, very annoying for multiple restarts). It's also two tutorials in one, since you have the Temple of Trials first (which as far as I'm aware was added later much to the displeasure of some team members), and then you have the minor quests in Arroyo (starting village).
If there had been no Temple of Trials, the tutorial section would have been endlessly better because all the Arroyo quests are optional.
The rest of both games are awesome though. Personal highlights being Junktown in FO1, and Vault City/Gecko in FO2.

Hardly any rats. Just ants and radscorpions. But, god it's so boring. Comparing to sequel Fallout 1 has superb begining

IMO, there's nothing wrong with the Fallout 2 Temple of Trials, EXCEPT:
1. Getting through it without a significant amount of skill in Hand to Hand or Melee weapons and/or a whole lotta aciton points is arbitrarily hard. I'm a small guns man, for pete's sake! I shouldn't have to use my fists against giant scorpions!
2. If you ever want to replay the game, you'll have to go through the same bloody temple in the same bloody manner every bloody time. At least the rat cave was short...