I found this game much more enjoyable WITHOUT companions

[brfritos]

Even though they said they'll rebalance the companions with the latest patch, imo they are even stronger now. I'm playing on hardcore/very hard in my second playthrough and I can't even get close to my enemies before Raul blasts the fiends heads off with ease (and just a crappy Revolver). So yeah, as much as I like the companions, I think this time I'll scrap them.

Some companions were made stronger, Sawyer said so himself. I think, pretty much the only one made weaker was Boone. Plus he's apparently bugged too now.

Regarding companions, I didn't experienced this, some became weaker for me. Perhaps this happened because my actual build is less reliant on them, heavy energy weapons courrier (plasma caster, gatling laser, gauss rifle, tri-beam laser, etc).

Boone's was a killing machine and now is more of a burden, the same goes for Cass.
Seriously, Obsidian mess up something because they don't use guns like before, no matter what kind you give to them.
I gave the All-American for Cass and Gobbi for Boone, before the patch they use this weapons proficiently.

Now they don't hit a simple Mole Rat and sometimes don't even use the gun , switching to their defaults.

ED-E and Rex became two beats on the other hand and Arcade was indeed balanced, he don't own the battelfield anymore.
As Raul, even before the patch he crush anything on his path with that simple 44 Magnum, so I didn't notice the difference.
And finally Veronica level right, but she remains the same.

I've liked a lot more if they tuned companions AI, because when wandering the Mojave and seeing a Deathclaw or a group of Cazadors up ahead the first thing you do is charge the motherf****s, right?

[ ]'s

 

[AWildmann]

Melee sucks in New Vegas, as in pretty much all Fallout games. OK, maybe "sucks" is a bit harsh but it's definitely a lot less fun than going ranged. Same with Bloodlines, it took me only one non ranged build to realise I don't want to ever do that again. When you have an RPG with clunky combat (such a rare thing ) you are better off taking out enemies from far away, that seems to be the rule.

I can say for myself, I would ONLY do melee on any vampire that I created on Bloodlines, with the exception being Tremere, I just didn't liked the shooting mechanics, Melee felt way more fun.

 

[FreshOil]

Haven't done melee in FNV yet, but I remember melee being extremely satisfying in Fallout 1 and 2 - especially with Bloody Mess. Punching whole chunks out of dudes wearing power armor is just so awesome.

 

[DForge]

Melee is just satisfying.

Right now top dog is cowboy-based Brush Gun with hollowpoint ammo (ridiculous damage), however, it sucks against 15DT+ targets and ammo is rare as ****. It also is bugged as hell and will miss a couple shots after reloading despite the bullets fired and animation no damage is done.

Not to mention 5 seconds reload time = lol

However melee is great if you don't mind a little AI stupidity abuse and turbo abuse

Otherwise it would suck balls.

As for companions well I never gave Boone guns anyway, he was the strongest oh Baby! user in the game. Yeah, he was better with guns like This Machine, but that required ammo, and I'm lazy to supply NPCs.

I wonder if he still rapes with that hammer post-patch. He was better than Veronica with ballistic fist (with fixed level-uping via mod) in melee actually.

 

[Stanislao Moulinsky]

Right now top dog is cowboy-based Brush Gun with hollowpoint ammo (ridiculous damage), however, it sucks against 15DT+ targets and ammo is rare as ****.

Did you patch the game? With the 1.2 version ammo are regularly sold everywhere.