Fallout 2: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game

Phyllis: (Explaining why there is no children in Vault City)

The Chosen One:

"Oh well, I thought there weren't any children because this might be the European version of Fallout 2. Goodbye. "

A classic that anyone who is into the world of Fallout needs. The gameplay can be outdated, but with the help of a very dedicated community, there are QoL features that have been added over the years (Restoration Project - the biggest one, HQ music, Inventory management, etc.)
Some may argue F1 has better story telling with its serious and gritty tone, and I agree. But F2 doesn't fall far behind in that aspect, plus it expands on the exploration further with lots more freedom.
10/10 for me in 2003. 10/10 for me (with mods) in 2025

punishing, played 3 hours of the game just to die and not have the game saved.

Not as good as the original, IMO, but still great fun!

New Reno might be one of my favourite cities in the entire franchise, New Vegas before New Vegas.

If one can overlook ancient graphics it is still a solid RPG, way better than F1.

i lied this is gas

Fallout 2 is my first time ever trying to play a Fallout game. I played in unmodded/vanilla on a Windows 11 PC through Steam. This game is showing its age, and I don't just mean in terms of graphics. It's buggy, the interface isn't intuitive, fights are a slog, etc. Maybe I'm just too spoiled/used to modern games to appreciate this.

It's horrendously unforgiving and totally worth the trouble if you like the series. Look up some early game guides and expect to deal with some "you critically missed and shot your own foot" kind of moments. Find the GECK!

you started with fallout 3, and then you moved onto new vegas. instantly it became your favourite game in the world. if this is you, and if you have enough patience to read a book or spend time with your grandparents, this game is for you. it's not action packed or fast pace, you play it entirely with your mouse. what it lacks in fallout 4 esc gunplay, it makes up for in gameplay and world building. this is the definition of an rpg. it was designed and written by obsidian, the people that made bethesda famous. the people bethesda have been hopelessly trying to emulate for decades. you will love this game in time; but you need to hate it first. you will be confused, you will be unable to figure out simple tasks, you will die a countless number of times. there is no tutorial. you will have nothing but respect for those who played this game pre-google. but one time, several weeks from now, you will succeed. it will be bittersweet, but you will be a better man because of it. like a christian who hasn't read the bible. you aren't really a fan of fallout until you've beaten this. good luck.

Definitely one of the most non-coddling beginning 'quests' ever made, it sets the bar for how brutal random encounters in a Post Nuclear War evolved world can be. Throw in more Gen X references that you can shake a radscorpion tail at, and you have a wonderfully addictive game!

It improves on the gameplay from Fallout 1. The story is also good but the game is hard to take seriously with all of the pop culture references and fourth wall breaks in it. It also has a lot more content than Fallout 1 in every aspect. If you want the story to make sense, you should first play Fallout 1 and then 2. Overall, it is worth trying along Fallout 1 and New Vegas.

It took me 30 years, but I finally finished this one. Played this originally too close to completing Fallout 1 and got burned out/discouraged early on. Picked this one back up following the Steam Fall Sale and finished it out. Probably left way too many side quests undone, but it was a great to play the classic Black Isle Studios version of Fallout again.

The Chosen One will steal your wife, take your car(and applicable property). And you'll still be coming back for dat CO dick.

If you think you'll like this game you probably will. Get it for $3 on sale, remember to get a lot of XP early game, max agility, and have fun.

if ull figure out how the game and the world work shit is addictive (first fallout played fallout 4, wont play ever again after this)

Fallout 2 ergänzt im Grunde alles, was einem in Fallout 1 gefehlt hat, verbessert es und ist dann noch einmal doppelt so groß. Als ich angefangen habe, diesen Teil zu spielen, bin ich von ca. 80–100 Spielstunden ausgegangen (hatte ca. 57 in Fallout 1). Nach nun knapp 193 Spielstunden bin ich dann doch etwas darüber hinaus, habe aber trotzdem jede Stunde genießen können.

Der Anfang ist meiner Meinung nach noch härter als in Fallout 1. Das Spiel kommt aber besonders in Schwung, sobald man die ersten Orte entdeckt hat. Besonders gefällt mir, wie dabei auf den ersten Teil aufgebaut wird, aber trotzdem mehr als genug neue Orte und Fraktionen eingeführt werden. Auf der Suche nach dem G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) durchstreift man den Norden Kaliforniens, sammelt Gefährten und besucht unterschiedliche Dörfer und neue Städte in klassischer Fallout-Manier. Dabei schließt der untere Teil der Karte an die Orte aus Fallout 1 an und zeigt, was aus einigen der Orte nun, knapp 80 Jahre später, geworden ist.

Wenn man Spaß an Fallout 1 hatte, kann man sich hier einfach nur verlieben und hat einen Berg an Spiel vor sich. Von Arroyo nach The Den und mit dem Highwayman nach Broken Hills! Hier wird das Fundament des Fallout-Genres vervollständigt, auf welchem alle weiteren Teile aufbauen. Kann ich dringend nur jedem empfehlen, der RPGs schätzt und sich nicht vor älteren Spielen scheut.

If you love pre rendered graphics/visual style from the late 90s to early noughties, and no hand holding crpgs, this is for you. Has amazing music as well.

Remember to download mods like killap restoration project (either the normal one or the expanded version), game is pretty old, need mods like those to make everything play better.

You've gotten a lot farther than you should have, but then you haven't met Frank Horrigan either. Your ride's over, mutie. Time to die.

I don't understand why people seem to love this game, definitively worse than fallout 1 in all aspects of gameplay, felt almost like a chore to even complete most quests and constantly forced into combat even if travelling 2 seconds outside of any named location.

From a gameplay perspective, a total improvement of Fallout 1.
I am, however, conflicted on as to whether I do or do not prefer the story of this game to that one.

It is good and more fun then 1st game which makes this game extra fun.

I played this when it first came out. One of the best fallout games. No real cheat codes and so you will have to build up everything yourself. If you know how to play the casino game craps, the casino you find after you leave the village is a straight casino and you can play craps and win about 50k in caps. You will have no money issues for the entire game. Another rule of thumb-SAVE OFTEN AND IN DIFFERENT PLACES!

Excellent old-timer turn-based RPG. The name speaks for itself. Enjoy!

This game is broken, mainly when it comes to mouse inputs on menus like the map screen,Loading saves or anything really that involves a cursor. at first it stutters then freezes completely and makes the game unplayable. i have tried many fixes and mods to get it to work and it wont.

I have repeated the temple of trials so many times...

A Word coming from a Gen Z person

For The first time playing this game I have to say It was not that bad of a game coming out in 1998. it takes time to learn the game but like the first one it can be enjoy and Tutorials are your Friend jumping in this game. The story and side story are really cool to play and understand for the story it had. It Really Sets more basics then the last game for future installments of Fallout. now it will Never hold up to the new games of this time but it has to be Experience for fallout fans


Rating
5/10

Great classic game. Played it several times now. After saving and playing the end boss fight countless times with different weapons, every other weapon other than pulse rifle or pulse pistol seem to do only minimal damage to Frank Horrigan. Best tactic seems to be aiming for Horrigan's eyes to destroy his bionic eye with pulse pistol (for more attacks), then he won't be able to hit a thing. Arming Cassidy, Vic with pulse pistols, and Marcus with pulse rifle in addition to my pulse pistol seemed the best tactic. Gotta kill Horrigan within a few rounds as he attacks 4 times/round and he will eventually crit you. With advanced power armor mk 2, and 1 toughness perk, 1 dermal implant, and 2 phoenix implants, he can only do like 10-20 damage to you per shot, but he gets so many attacks and occasional knockdowns and crits, he may kill you still in as little as 2 rounds.

Even the bozar and all other miniguns did only mediocre damage vs Horrigan. However playing with small guns and big guns are fun. Only put a fair number of points in small guns and used skill books and chem reduction exploit to increase it further. Eventually ended at about 125. I tagged and maxed out big guns and energy weapons to like 180 each. Last tag was in speech, as every other important skill can be increased with skillbooks. Lockpick skill important, but you can get lockpick item and expanded lockpick to go higher. If you can't pick a lock, then you can wait and come back later when your skills are higher. Repair skill important too but have repair tool and improved tool avail. If I had to do it over again, would possiby max out energy weapons even further but keep big guns at current levels or maybe cut back as Bozar was hella fun and good for everyone else other than Horrigan.

Still a good game and a good way to see where the modern games came from.

I've spent so much time with this game as a kid that it's basically like a third parent to me.

Okay, i really like this game, but the game just randomly decides to crash itself after opening a fucking door.

I loved fallout 1 but after a while I got bored of the map so to play fallout 2 is just like fallout 1 but with a new map and some improved features that I wish fallout 1 had!

This is a great game terribly ported. It suffers frequent problems of slowing down to sometimes as bad as a frame a second and can remain this way for minutes at a time. This problem grows much more frequent, and worse, in larger cities like the Shi and NCR. I also had a bad bug where the game seemed to think one of my companions was both alive and dead at the same time refusing to let him move or me to do anything but loot him outside of combat where he'd spring to life again, at least until he died because I couldn't heal him.

If you haven't completed this story, I can't really consider you a gamer. Bring it on, preferably on hard difficulty setting. If you can't, use save editor. But rather than Fallout being a franchise of its own itself, I want to mention how knowing about a game called Wasteland is important about it's development and perception. Also, check out Atom RPG, cause it has the motives of those exact oldschool fallouts.

And, very important to mention that it actually has multiplayer mods. So technically it should have an "optional co-op" kind of a tag or something.

An excellent CRPG that has thoroughly stood the test of time, and will continue to do so for years onward. It perfectly captures what Fallout is all about (and should be about) in one $10 package. Nothing but props from me.

Íf I had to describe this game using a single sentence then it would go something like this: "Good, really like the game but not as influential as the first game".
First off, the game does improve on many things from the original game. There is a much bigger quantity and variability of content so generally there is much more stuff to explore. The game is also slightly better from a technical aspect, some gameplay issues got ironed out and from that standpoint it's objectively noticeably better, however everything else feels like a miss. Despite me praising the technical aspects of the game, the game is built on the same engine as the originaland therefore many bugs carried over from the original release. The story and the atmosphere is decent but a downgrade from the original. It doesn't sell the concept of a "desperate, dangerous and hostile post apocalyptic wasteland" as well, but still better than modern bethesda Fallout games. The characters and the story of the game doesn't feel thought through at all. For me, that was the whole selling point of the original Fallout. Gameplay-wise, the start of the game is very rough and just painful due to it being heavily RNG-based. The very long and frustrating tutorial situated in the temple at the start of the game is a war crime by itself. It does not get better after that though. This game has a mechanic of "random encounters" just like it's predecessor where you if you travel on the map, you have a chance to run into a random character or event but it's mostly enemies. Because Fallout 2 has a much larger map and also thanks to Fallout 1/2 simply loving RNG as a game mechanic, you can literally move only a centimeter before you are forced tkexchange a few turns in a fight with a "random" enemy, which is just painful. The fact that "random" enemy is also most of the time stronger than you at the start of the game. You are therefore forced into investing skill points into skills that lower a chance of a random encounter happening. You will have to gear up quickly otherwise you are gonna be stuck in an endless loop of just reloading saves. Saving in multiple save slot is heavily recommended due to how the gameplay of the game encourages the practice of save scumming and due to it being prone to corruption.
Overall, I'd say the game could be worth picking up, especially when considering it's low price during steam sales and on third party key resellers.

always liked this game because the style of the game and how evil or good you can be.

Isometric Non-Linear Non-class based tactics and strategy game. Multiple revisits.

very good very nice graphics are on point

If you have a list of games you should play in your life time—Fallout and Fallout 2 should most definitely be on that list. Beautiful isometric graphics, unforgettable characters, unbeatable game-play and an intriguing story to back it all up. Both are a must play!

This might be a very controversial opinion, but I think Fallout 2 is actually a big downgrade compared to Fallout 1. That's mainly because the developers preferred quantity over quality. Bear with me for a moment.

FO1 was a very short experience, sure, but the devs and writers definitely had a precise vision in mind. The story was intriguing and well paced. The antagonist was menacing. The dificulty was often quite high, but fair. The world-building was great and it made post nuclear in the game's title mean something. Survivors struggled for food, water and with constant danger from mutated creatures roaming the wastelands. It felt like a harsh, but belivable reality. It was a masterfully crafted and original approach to CRPGs, which stuck with me for a long time after I finished my playthrough.

Now FO2 scratches tons of this stuff. The very first minutes of the game already suggest that something in the design department changed for the worse. The tutorial is not some seamless 5-minute cave, which pretty much any character build can finish and start the real game (like in FO1). No, here you have a really badly designed temple section. In my first attempt, I created a character focused on small arms with quite low charisma, which made the tutorial impossible to finish, since you don't get any firearms at this stage yet. I had to restart with a more balanced character to pass the charisma check and skip the fight entirely.

Then you arrive at Klamath and get your first firearm, but there's not enough ammo to buy in the whole city to kill all of the geckos nearby. This is when I realized that the struggle will continue far beyond the botched tutorial. In another location (I think it was Redding), there are caves with enemies, which are immune to everything apart from fire. So you need a big arms focused character to handle a flamethrower. Otherwise this location is either impossible or extremely difficult. And there are more such examples throughout the whole game. FO2 is a mess when it comes to balance. At many points I considered quitting because of this.

But the story and world-building are no better either. I can't imagine how the vault dweller from FO1 founded the village, but even with his immense knowledge of the outside world and pre-war technology, it still somehow degraded into tribal community in a matter of few generations. Then there are all the supernatural elements, like telepathy, which in FO2 are not even suggested to be true, they straight up happen before your own eyes. The Monty Python references are awful and randomly break the tone of the whole experience. In FO1 they had this rule that cultural references had to be constructed in such a way, that if the player was not familiar with their topic, they wouldn't notice them. Here the devs just shove them forcefully with no consideration whatsoever.

Another issue is that the locations of FO2 are pulled straight from a theme park. Don't tell me that a wild west Redding, highly futuristic and hermetic Vault City, mafia-riddled New Reno and so on, belong in the same setting of post-apocalyptic west coast. They feel disconnected, because separate teams of devs worked on each location and then they tried putting them all together after, instead of crafting a conscise experience from the beginning, like they did in FO1.

I feel that this might have impacted the plot of the game a lot as well. While in the first game it naturally progressed, here I felt as if I was just randomly strolling from one place to another, while always feeling somehow lost with the actual point of the main story - the search for the GECK. Speaking of which, the GECK, being some kind of a miracoulous device fit into a briefcase, which can basically rebuild a whole civilization is just absurd.

When it comes to the antagonist of the story, the Enclave is not nearly as interesting as the Master and his army. I think Fallout series struggled with trying to live up to his legacy, but most titles in the series failed in this endevour. Here it is no different. Am I seriously going to care about Frank Horrigan, who is seen maybe two times before you face him at the end of the game? He's an imposing force, sure, but that's it. There's no fascinating backstory or motive to his character. Same for the Enclave president. I first meet him at the Oil Rig. Why do I care about him? He's just there to explain some plot elements about the Enclave at the last minute. Compare that to FO1, where there was a lot of buildup to the Master and you slowly discovered bits and pieces of his plan. They didn't tell you too much though and left the rest to the imagiation. They built anticipation before you encoutered the man himself.

Some parts of the game feel really unpolished. In FO1 you often encountered talking heads, even if there were not many of them throughout the whole game. That's due to the fact that they were evenly placed throughout the game. In FO2, on the other hand, there are sometimes hours where you don't see any new face and you just read tons of text. Moreover, most assets are reused from the first game, There's not much more new to see. Even music is mostly from the original, adding only a handful of tracks dedicated to FO2.

While there are good parts about this game, like improved inventory and companion systems, it's just not worth it for me. Even if I get those small improvements, the rest is just not nearly as good as what I experienced in the first game. Balance is awful, including tutorial, which sets you up for disappointment from the very start. Immersion often suffers a lot. FO2 simply loves breaking it over and over for the sake of shoving some dull jukes here and there. And I hate that. The story is not as engaging. There's no intrigue and real sense of urgency when it comes to finishing your main quest. Taking all of this into account I struggle to understand why so many people consider this an improvement over the original. For me Fallout 1 will always be a masterpiece, while Fallout 2 is just a sequel trying to live up to the legend by prefering quantity over quality.

crashes often. cant make 4 moves without it crashing

My favorite classic fallout game! I've played this game for weeks as i just got back into it after getting a new steam account. It's very story-driven and if you don't like games where you have to restart a couple times to get into the groove, maybe play some different fallout games and come back to this one. It's really easy to get stuck, so there's nothing wrong with checking Reddit or any of the fallout wikis. 10/10!

Fun. Takes lot of brain power I would recommended that you read everything at the beginning of the game or you'll end up with a person with a stay or trait you don't like. Also their is no autosave so save frequently before and after a hard figth.

This is so bizzare it makes me wanna jump from a 2 story building onto a trampoline 10/10 peak

Not just the best of the Fallout games but simply the best game ever made!

Just like the original it has spectacular writing, immersive atmosphere, meaningful RPG elements and although the graphics are obviously dated the art direction is still as strong as ever. It does lose some of the coherence of its predecessor but ultimately surpasses it by multiplying the amount of content. Fallout 2 gets all over the place in the best way possible.

Word of advice: save a lot and to different save slots as it WILL crash from time to time. Some bugs and performance issues may occur to a game as old as this but a solution to every issue I've ever encountered has been one google search away. Even with the hiccups this is still the one RPG you must play. (And you remembered to save a lot, right?)

Bonus advice: many will tell you otherwise but I recommend to play without the restored content mod at least for the first playthrough. But I do recommend the NPC armor sprites mod if you can bother to find and get it. Its only a visual change but excellently made and looks uncanny authentic.

Fantastic story, challenging and fun gameplay. I like both classic and modern fallout games, but It would be real cool if we got another title like this.

Only a few hours in but there are already some nice improvements from Fallout 1, which was already pretty good in its own right.

"You've got a lot farther than you should have, but then you haven't met Frank Horrigan either. Your ride's over, mutie. Time to die."

The game is gold, the humor to the story to the RPG mechanics. Just... Beware though, the game is NOT made for humans to ENJOY. The game is so far past it's expiration date...

game is classic, but this version is "fixed"
i mean it is broken, pirate it

I finally played Fallout 2 after finishing the first one, and the first thing I have to say is: don’t become a slaver! I accidentally became one without realizing it, and it locked me out of a lot of content. After 20 hours of being stuck as a slaver—unable to access quests, companions, and more—I decided to use a mod to remove it. That was a frustrating experience, but aside from that, I think Fallout 2 is an amazing game.

The quests, NPCs, lore, and overall depth of the game are fantastic. In many ways, I enjoyed it even more than the first Fallout. The classic Fallout games are a must-play for any fan of the series. Despite the slaver situation, I’d give Fallout 2 an 8.5/10!