Quote Originally Posted by Triaxx View Post
I should probably turn in my nerd card for this blasphemy... but I don't enjoy Fallout 1. And it's not even that there's anything wrong with the game, it's just that I was very bad at it. Fallout 2's my preferred entry into the series, if you like the older top down style ones. I did really enjoy Tactics, but it's fairly not canon friendly and if you don't play it, you don't lose much.
I had this feeling when I wanted to replay them, so I started with 2. After your post I went back and did Fallout 1, and I found myself revising my opinion in interesting ways.

Fallout 2 is a much better game. That much is clear. It's bigger, it has better features, and the quests are far superior. Except Fallout 1 has better gameplay.

...yeah. I said it. Fallout 2's gameplay loop is terrible. The game has tons of random encounters, and those random encounters are fatal to 99% of characters who run into them. I stepped outside Arroyo and was attacked by 8 Large Mole Rats. You know, the ones the size of a bear? First encounter. As a melee-focused monster (in other words, the single best class to do that fight so early) I died on turn 1. Fallout 2 cranks up the danger of enemies at every turn while vastly decreasing the availability of loot, particularly in the early game. In Fallout 1, I was able to use my starting pistol to great effect in the early game and had solid weapons and armor after cleaning out the raider camp near Shady Sands. I didn't see equivalent equipment in Fallout 2 until Vault City, and I was hard pressed to hang onto ammo for it. Meanwhile, the enemies around Vault City were carrying Uzis that could one-shot me.

Random encounters in Fallout 1 were usually pretty manageable. A few radscorpions here, a few bandits there. Fallout 2 would drop groups of 8-10 gun-wielding raiders on you while you were still level 3. Later in the game it drops enemy groups that would wipe the floor with endgame Fallout 1 enemies, long before you have the possibility of getting equivalent gear.

Fallout 2 is an exercise in running around the map, trying a quest, dying horribly, then going and searching for an easier quest and praying you get two groups of enemies fighting so you can steal some high-end loot. Once you get past that, the game is amazing. But I think Fallout 1 holds together as a cohesive game much better than 2 does.

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On Brotherhood on the east coast? Meh. The Brotherhood were established to have airships long before Bethesda got near the series. Fallout Tactics takes place in Chicago, and the only reason they didn't go further east is that their airship crashed. Since 3 and 4 are supposed to take place a long time after that, it's hardly out of line with previously established Brotherhood capability. Heck, given Tactics' dubious canoninity it could even be the same ship.