I'll def be getting Fallout 2. The first has blown me away. Played it for a few minutes at friends house way back in the 90s, thought it was incredibly cool but had no means to play it myself. Always wanted to give it a go and finally did this past week. It exceeded my hype going in, the game delivers on all levels. Fantastic experience.

There was one fairly minor issue that annoys the hell out of me though. Your companion AI is downright AWFUL at times, with them blocking me into small rooms or not using weapons they should or seemingly intentionally targeting eachother. Was this improved upon in Fallout 2? Is the AI smarter, your companions behave better/more intelligently? Just curious.

Also, is Fallout Tactics essentially just Fallout "combat mode"? Is there any RPG/exploration/story/quest elements or is it just a straight strategy game where you do one mission then another? The combat of Fallout is cool enough to where I might give it a chance no matter what, but I'm sorta on the fence.

Don't worry, Fallout 2 had major improvements in the companion department. You get a push button in your right-click menu to get people out of the way, you don't need to steal anymore as the companion trading has bee vastly improved and theere also are a lot more combat settings for your AI partners.

They are, however, still pretty trigger happy and will burst at every possible moment.

Fallout Tactis is essentially mission after mission with a little bit of exploration. I wouldn't call it quests, but you have mission objectives, an almost non-existing main story and the typical Fallout perks, traits, skills with a few additions here and there and the SPECIAL-system.

The combat system also got revamped, as you are able to choose from three different combat modes. Individual turn-based like in Fallout, continuous turn based, which is sort of like real time, but with regenerating APs and Squad turn based, where not individuals take turns, but whole squads. Additionally you can crouch or prone for better aiming. So it is a like Jagged Alliance/XCom in this regard.

Yeah, the original Fallout is pretty amazing and I had the same reaction when I first played it back in May this year (man, if only I knew what I've been missing out on all these years, guess I owe it to bethsoft for reviving the series which allowed me to discover it in the first place, even though I now prefer the older Fallouts).

Fallout 2 is definitely better, at least gameplay wise. No more NPC characters getting you stuck in places without having to resort to killing them, you can select up to 99,999 gold at a time in barter menus (vs the pathetic 999 limit in FO1), NPCs allow you to select/equip best weapons and ARMOR (yes, this even includes Power Armor so now your NPC allies have a fighting chance against super mutants) plus like the guy above me mentioned, you don't have to steal from allies just to recover items (but the caveat is that now allies don't have the glitch where they can carry infinite amount of weight like they could in FO1)... But none of that even matter s when you get (what I consider to be the biggest improvement over the first game)... THE CAR. Yes ladies and gentlemen, you can get the infamously advertised Highwayman car at a certain point fairly early on in the game, and not only does it allow you to travel faster on the world map, but you can use its trunk to store all of your items (there's more space than you'll need, trust me). The car is why I have a hard time going back to FO1 now, it makes traveling in that game feel so cumbersome by comparison and it single handedly makes having NPCs completely unnecessary (no more muling items around with NPCs, which was very a essential method in the original Fallout).

Oh, and did I mention that you can now SKIP most of the annoying encounters when you get your Outdoorsman skill high enough in FO2 (that's right, there's actually a legitimate reason to feed points into that skill all of a sudden). This is great when your character is still relatively weak and is just trying to get from point A to point B on the world map without having to suffer from being poisoned by annoying Rad Scorpions or Raiders. I am so thankful this feature was included because it was annoying as hell to deal with and having to constantly save/reload in FO1 until your gear and skills get better later on.

So, to put it bluntly OP, if you loved the original Fallout (I've been tracking your gameplay progress topic too BTW, you seem to be really enjoying it) then you owe it to yourself to give Fallout 2 a try. IMO it's better than the first game in almost every way, but I did like the "doom and gloom" apocalyptic setting of the original and overall I enjoyed the story a little more (still a great story in FO2 though). Also, sorry for rambling but in FO2 there are no "timed" segments so you can do all of the main quests at your own leisure and the game encourages you to go off the beaten path (especially once you have the car) than FO1 did, also there are waaaay more towns that are a lot bigger in size, which means more quests and higher levels to be reached by the time you get to the end (my character is already level 10 in FO2 and I haven't even explored half of the places yet). Due to these factors, the cap for each skill has been raised to 300% in FO2, versus the 200% cap in FO1. Not to mention that you can CONTINUE playing after finishing the main game to discover the rest of the game on your own accord (I hear there's even some extra features once you completed the main game, for some more incentive replay).

So yeah, FO2 is essentially a bigger, badder and more refined version of Fallout 1. A lot more weapons to use, more variations of armor (including Power Armor variants with the introduction of the Enclave), and more shit to do in general. I read you have to play through FO2 with different character presets just to discover everything (i.e., there is a specific quest that only a character with >3 INT can access.... How cool is that???)

I think you get the point. While I consider the original Fallout to be a staple amongst RPG games, Fallout 2 takes things to a whole new level, and might just be the greatest computer game of all time IMO.

Don't forget to make up your mind before the end of the year though as it is likely that gog won't be able to sell the games later. You could get the games from steam i guess, depends on your feelings about DRM.