How come this game is from 1998, and yet it is better than the vast majority of all games that were produced after it?

A Great, But Flawed Game

To be clear, I had suffered a corrupted save file halfway through my first game, so that may affect my review. But these are thoughts I was having on Fallout 2 on my first run before the issues, so take that how you will. Even with my complaints, I'd consider this the second best Fallout game in the series. It's just that good.

Fallout 2, at it's best, is everything Fallout 1 did but bigger, more ambitious, and just as well-made. The game is quite literally far longer, with more locations, more quests, and a lot more stories and events going on in its world. While Fallout 1's masterful pacing made every location feel essential to your adventure, Fallout 2 has a lot of content that just expands on the post apocalyptic West and it's inhabitants, and man are they a blast. You will experience everything from featuring in pornos, to having three-way shootouts between mobsters; prostitutes and their pimps; and your trusty tribal, boomer, and super mutant companions, and to uncovering conspiracies and plots to rule over entire settlements in the game. The world truly feels bigger than you, and it really grounds you in the game world and makes you care about these people. You just want to hug those intelligent death claws, dudes have been through a lot.

Fallout 2, at it's worse, is a buggier, goofier, and unfinished version of Fallout 1. It's no secret that this game suffered from development hell, as anyone who's a fan of Tim Cain's YouTube will know. Not only was this game rushed, but it was handled by an entirely new cast of people throughout a lot of its development. You have to give it credit, for a lot of the writing and worldbuilding still matches the original games. But not all of it. Some of the areas are just too out there. Hubologists are funny at first but really become cringey when you have to just get through their f*cking compound. The long-winded quest chains in New Reno, Modoc, Gecko, and Redding are all great, until your save files corrupt and you have to replay the entirety of the early to mid game all over again. Exploring the map is great, until you are spammed with random encounters that don't just feel challenging but feel like a punishment. And that's something that really keeps Fallout 2 from being a masterpiece like the game that precedes it. When you play the two back to back, you will see how much of a headache certain things in this game can be. A very stuck in late 90s pop culture, buggy, and long-winded headache.

But there's just so much charm to this game that I can't consider it any less than great. From my character's very humble beginnings of fighting lizards in the village's gardens, to destroying slavers with a fellow tribal, to driving our car across the lonely wastes, and to finally having to walk off that ship where I had to leave behind the remains of my fallen companions, some who had been with me from the start and others who I had picked up later along the way, Fallout 2 is just a fun time.

It's a highly rated game on Steam. I only played it for an hour and couldn't get used to the controls. I only have a Steam Deck, and it wasn't really my style to play it that way. Maybe it's better on PC. I recommend it based on what little I played, but I think it's definitely much better on PC.