why fallout 2 sucks (spoilers) (no I don't like fo3-4)

[zegh8578]

The Grim Fandango manual points out that yes, characters in the game often smoke - but they are also all dead

 

[CerberusGate]

I do miss proper game manuals. Whenever I go to the Extras section of a game in GOG Galaxy and download the manuals, I am often left surprised and intrigued when I open up the manuals. Quite a lot of the game's world and its mechanics are explained in them (like with Arcanum's manual).

It was a mistake to stop making detailed manuals for games.

 

[Lexx]

I like Redding. Or lets say, I like the idea of Redding. It's a nice setup and all that jazz. But then it boils down to endless, boring rat slaying and don't get me started with the wanna-mongols. They could have reduced the amount of all trash mobs by half and it still would be a very annoying combat location. Basically the only fun combat I remember from Redding is taking out the gang at the end. Fo2 does have many such places... it starts with the Temple of Trials, the rats in Klamath, the ants in Broken Hills, the trash mobs in the tanker, etc. All places I consider very unfun. In this category Fo1 was way ahead.

 

[Millim]

Manuals were pretty nice back in the day. I think they stopped as Companies realised it's cheaper to just have a digital manual.

Which from an economical point of view, I kind of get, at the same time, they aren't using that spare money to improve the game.

 

[Risewild]

Manuals were pretty nice back in the day. I think they stopped as Companies realised it's cheaper to just have a digital manual.

Which from an economical point of view, I kind of get, at the same time, they aren't using that spare money to improve the game.

Many games today don't even have a digital manual either makes me sad.

 

[Prone Squanderer]

Manuals were pretty nice back in the day. I think they stopped as Companies realised it's cheaper to just have a digital manual.

Which from an economical point of view, I kind of get, at the same time, they aren't using that spare money to improve the game.

Yeah but it was nice to be able to have a separate manual for the controls that you could look up rather than having to go into the game's pause menu and accessing controls from there.

I also like how they could give you extra information about the game's story that wasn't critical, but interesting at the same time.

 

[PlanHex]

Think it's more about the switch from manuals to in-game tips/hints and tutorials. Digital .pdf manuals are usually a joke, with basically no information other than how to install + some default keymappings or something.
Probably get too many complaints about games being hard/indecipherable, so they put the information in little pop-up tutorials that you have to disable manually if you want to skip them entirely.
But really, if you're putting other stuff to read in the game, like lore/bestiary/journals and such, you might as well make a tutorial section too so players can easily look up anything they forgot while playing. Or at least a good F1 look-up section.
So no one needs manuals any more because no one makes manuals any more because no one reads manuals any more because no one makes manuals etc etc

 

[Millim]

Yeah but it was nice to be able to have a separate manual for the controls that you could look up rather than having to go into the game's pause menu and accessing controls from there.

I also like how they could give you extra information about the game's story that wasn't critical, but interesting at the same time.

Yeah, I used to really enjoy those. Sadly, I've never looked at the fallout 1&2 Manuels (yet I've seen the PoS one, that's some kind of bullshit right there).

I still get happy when I see that Shovel Knight and Wasteland 2 have manuels for them on their PS4 releases.

Many games today don't even have a digital manual either makes me sad.

That's pretty disgusting tbh.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

A lot of games on Steam that have a manual have a link in the "Properties" of each game that leads to it. Most digital retailers probably do have something like that.
Fallout 2's manual is pretty cool, very long and even has cooking recipes lol

 

[valcik]

I'm all for game manuals, some games really don't need it though.
This is how it started btw, I don't remember reading any manuals in 8 bit era and now the circle has been closed again in these 64 bit times!

 

[Hassknecht]

Manuals are awesome. F22 ADF back then came with two manuals, one thick manual for all the shit that happens in the game (and the game was fucking complicated), and a second, equally thick book about all the planes that appear in the game. It also came with a card for the PC Dash, which was factually brilliant.

 

[naossano]

It seems your issue is TB...

 

[jschmo6766]

what the hell are you even talking about... be sure to come back later and explain (?)

there are actually plenty of quests in fo2 that require you to kill. while they might not be necessary for completing the game (some of them actually might be, I don't remember), it's still necessary from a completionist's (my) standpoint.

Random? Yes. Why ridiculous though? Some bullet would slightly scratch your balls without doing any serious damage if you are lucky enough, another one fired from the same weapon would hit your elbow and rip your arm off.

so then you would expect a critical hit "in a forceful blow" that leaves "bruises that would make for good party talk" to actually do more than 0 damage, wouldn't you? ridiculous is the word, yes.

Why not? A hit strong enough to render the dude unconscious may leave any character with low endurance separated from his senses and dying from massive trauma in seconds, whilst another dude with high enough endurance would recover badly injured after a couple of minutes.

b/c he's dead, that's why. "he's unconscious. he's dead" that's stupid. worse than redundant really. it's one message: "tough alien was critically hit in the head for 213 damage and is rendered unconscious. tough alien died." paraphrased b/c I'm not looking it up again.

Yep, shit was designed before level-scaled console ports full of invulnerable heroes flooded the market. Big deal.

it's a pretty big deal that I have to trudge through trash mobs late in the game in a SCRIPTED event, these aren't even random battles - it's 12 fucking wolves and then a gang of rats and molerats and there's no excuse. it's lazy, obnoxious, inconsistent with the next area of the dungeon and sucked so much I had to come here and let off steam for vengeance's sake.

WAT
Your character cannot be surrounded and simultaneously attacked by more than 6 wolves since the hex-based grid won't allow this, i.e. you have to wait until only 6 enemies attack 3 times each before you can kill one of them. The same goes for your companions ofc.

MY char might not be able to be attacked by more than 6 min-range only attackers, but each of my party members can be attacked by 3 of them. I get to act exactly ONCE for each time all of the enemies attack and b/c Sulik and Cassidy refuse to attack the same target, they don't kill one per round. it was excruciating. and b4 anyone says, "you can change how they attack in 'combat control'!" there are pros and cons to every option in there and so I have them attack whoever's closest b/c the only encounter that we don't either lose no matter what or win no matter what is wannamingos and deathclaws. and against those, I found that attacking whoever's closest works best. they don't even always do what I tell them anyway. I tell Sulik to use his best weapon and he changes back to the sword before long anyway. sometimes he'd burst for no reason even though I have him on "be careful not to hit me," even against enemies that can't be damaged by it. the ai can be so stupid and it's part of why combat REALLY sucks in this game.

usually when combat is garbage in a videogame, something else makes up for it. I don't really get why chrono trigger or final fantasy combat systems are praised, they're button mashed through or you go to the same menu and pick the same spell for certain enemies. it's really incredibly simple and impossible to mess up. but the story makes up for it. the story in fo2 is simple: some tribal's trying to save his village with a joke of an item (garden of eden creation kit, really?). it makes a joke of itself at every turn. I don't want funny, easy quests. it's not even a good contrast with the grimy cesspool locations, it's self-contradictory and takes me out of it. how can you get immersed in that when it makes dumb random pop culture references, you can't tell me that they belong in this game. I don't really believe only one person decided on what would be in this game, there were clearly multiple, clashing personalities behind it. elder scrolls arena's combat (with the warrior or w/e was the first option) consisted of holding right click and moving the mouse left/right to "swing." sure, it was basically down to dice rolls and you'd have to constantly save/load, but the riddles made up for it and when you traveled across the world map, it wasn't the equivalent of watching an excruciatingly slow download bar, which is just one of the many reasons FO2 sucks that I haven't even mentioned yet. it's made worse by the fact that if you run into a ton of enclave at most points in the game, you have to load and watch the damn download bar again. it's just not enjoyable to play.

the music in both TES arena and most jrpgs alone can make up for their easy, bland combat (no good music in fallout 2). the fact that combat is short in those games gets it a pass, unlike in fo2. combat takes forever in fo2. I'm going to remember to turn the speed to max for sure, but the point still stands that the game sucks AT LEAST on default settings and that's a shame.

combat was fairly long in final fantasy tactics and come to think of it, was much more like in FO2... except it was really good. each char could be given any job and you controlled your whole party in that game. there was high and low ground in the environment of the battlegrounds of tactics which could be taken advantage of, more so with certain classes. thinking about that game, it's going to be even harder to go back to fo2. I'll force myself to finish the damn thing though.

 

[Hassknecht]

there are actually plenty of quests in fo2 that require you to kill. while they might not be necessary for completing the game (some of them actually might be, I don't remember), it's still necessary from a completionist's (my) standpoint.

The point is that you can finish the game without any kills.
Yeah, from a completionist's standpoint you probably have to kill at some point. Not too many kills absolutely necessary, though, as far as I remember.

so then you would expect a critical hit "in a forceful blow" that leaves "bruises that would make for good party talk" to actually do more than 0 damage, wouldn't you? ridiculous is the word, yes.

b/c he's dead, that's why. "he's unconscious. he's dead" that's stupid. worse than redundant really. it's one message: "tough alien was critically hit in the head for 213 damage and is rendered unconscious. tough alien died." paraphrased b/c I'm not looking it up again.

Sadly, that stuff is hard to avoid without an actually sentient GM. In cRPGs, the computer is the GM, and there's only so much smartness you can program. It's not a single message, btw., but two consecutive messages. It always displays the critical effects first, and sometimes that leads to absurd statements like that.
Zero damage crits are frustrating, but mostly a sign that you're not using the right weapon for that occasion. Try AP ammo...

 

[jschmo6766]

Yeah, so does every other video game.

Also, your complain about waiting for your turn in a game with turn based combat? What were you expecting?

waiting for your turn in turn based combat would take 4 times as long in FF6 if you could only control one party member b/c there's 4 party members in your control in that game. in this game there are 12 enemies, 3 party members, and me. I can only influence the outcome 1/16th of the time b/c I only control narg, and in that situation and b/c my actions can be inconsequential due to RNG, I feel like it's just watching a really long, really boring movie. like citizen kane. if you like citizen kane, fuck you. the world would be better off w/o ppl who like that awful movie. the plot sucks, the dialogue sucks, and the characters suck. I'm ranting, sorry, but camera work doesn't make up for that.

sidenote: I forgot about the graphics of this game, they're atrocious. I'm not a graphics whore, I'll play NES all day over PS4, it's not the technical aspects I'm talking about. a game can look gorgeous with the hardware of the SNES, look at donkey kong country, it's still astounding that they could make something that looks that good with that hardware. fo2 is ugly as fuck to look at and came out in 1998, what excuse does it have? I haven't even mentioned this yet b/c it's kind of nit-picking, sure I'll give you that, BUT if everything else about it is going to suck so hard it could at least be nice to see.

 

[valcik]

Sulik can be stubborn, his floats are pure gold tho! Give him 14mm or .223 pistol, he goes full savage with submachine guns. Some of the recent builds of sfall mod allows you to control your companions directly btw, I think the best way how to play olde Fallouts is solo anyway.

 

[Millim]

I actually do agree with one thing, J do find it annoying that I can't control party members in game. It got kind of tedious when I had 5 guys and was facing a group of 7.

Also, more often than not, they tend to do things which mess up my tactics or so.

 

[mrchaos]

waiting for your turn in turn based combat would take 4 times as long in FF6 if you could only control one party member b/c there's 4 party members in your control in that game. in this game there are 12 enemies, 3 party members, and me. I can only influence the outcome 1/16th of the time b/c I only control narg, and in that situation and b/c my actions can be inconsequential due to RNG, I feel like it's just watching a really long, really boring movie. like citizen kane. if you like citizen kane, fuck you. the world would be better off w/o ppl who like that awful movie. the plot sucks, the dialogue sucks, and the characters suck. I'm ranting, sorry, but camera work doesn't make up for that.

You start ranting about not being able to control part members (which wasn´t the previous topic) in a video game and then move on to rating about a movie you never saw. You can´t even keep yourself on the topic.

sidenote: I forgot about the graphics of this game, they're atrocious. I'm not a graphics whore, I'll play NES all day over PS4, it's not the technical aspects I'm talking about. a game can look gorgeous with the hardware of the SNES, look at donkey kong country, it's still astounding that they could make something that looks that good with that hardware. fo2 is ugly as fuck to look at and came out in 1998, what excuse does it have? I haven't even mentioned this yet b/c it's kind of nit-picking, sure I'll give you that, BUT if everything else about it is going to suck so hard it could at least be nice to see.

You say you don´t care about old games graphics but you still complain about them.

Just stop posting in this forum and go play F4, or Call of duty or Battlefield.

 

[jschmo6766]

Fallout 2 has the arrows... When there are bodies on top of eachother there are two arrows (left and right) that appear on the loot window that we can click to go to the next body that is under the one we clicked. We can loot everyone that just died over eachother very easily like that.
Fallout 1 didn't have the arrow buttons so it was a chore to try and get all the loot.

I noticed you made a lot of assumptions, like how you thought Narg was the obvious choice for a player for the first time, how you don't like to change default settings and then complain about combat being slow, how you complain about attack and damage, how you complain about no level scaled enemies, how you complain about combat being only healing or attacking and many more things (like the looting bodies over each other I mentioned above) but most of these things are because you assumed or refused to change things... Basically its complaining that an Android tablet does not download things from Apple Store.
Fallout 2 is a typical P&P inspired cRPG (it follows the P&P formula since the first RPG was created in the 70's and continued through the 80's and 90's and so on but adapted to computer and had to deal with technology limitations). It follows the P&P systems quite well and if someone is expecting something else (even though anyplace you can buy the game from has a description of the game and what it is) then it is the players fault for not reading what the game is.

Games back in the days had something "mythical" called Manuals, the manual would tell you and explain most things about the game and it's mechanics. It is not like today, back then you needed to read the manual to learn things before you played the game. The manual explains everything about leveling, XP, combat, characters, skills, how to make a character oriented to your playstyle, companions, etc.
Many of your complaints, assumptions and confusion are addressed in the manual and if you had read that you would have had much less problems playing the game. You also seem unexperienced with P&P inspired cRPG although you mention Baldur's Gate games (even in Baldur's Gate games you can only heal and attack enemies in combat so I don't understand your criticism about it in Fallout 2, it was also like that in Fallout 1 too and in pretty much any cRPG from 2 decades ago. You can cast spells but those are usually also just for damage the enemies or healing your party members).
What confuses me is that the game system and ruleset used by Fallout 2 is exactly the same as Fallout 1 and you seem to criticize Fallout 2 for it but not Fallout 1.

this is probably the most useful, enlightening post so far. I'm checking out the manual for sure. I guess there's some reasons that I never complained about mechanics while playing FO1 but I'm complaining about them this time around. it's been a while since I beat FO1, but I'm pretty sure these things must be true:

1. the map is smaller. this reduces the "watching a download bar" effect while traveling across the world map. plus I wouldn't have to load so often and watch the download bar again due to running into enemies that I stood no chance against, exponentially increasing the effect this has on the overall experience in fo2.

2. I tore through enemies as often as I got killed. I seem to remember using a minigun to one shot super mutants. bad combat is just more forgivable when it doesn't take forever.

3. the story wasn't a joke and while it was simple, there was a sense of urgency that isn't here in fo2 that may have helped to make up for the fact that the combat was similar. I'm pretty sure I have all the time in the world to do everything in fo2. the side stories of random npcs are more interesting in fo2 and they'e a very small part of the game.

ppl seem to think that what makes up for fo2's shortcomings is the choice/consequence system but really at the end of the game, it doesn't matter whether you're KOS or idolized in city X. such things are independent of your progress in completing the main quest/game.

would you really love it if they added dlc to FO4 with cities that included the following:

1. quests that had you run back and forth between the cities, some of which are silly/monotonous and provide no challenge, perhaps with talking fish involved.

2. useless items to find whose sole purpose is to make dumb pop culture references

3. npcs in city X that have dialogue referring to problems with city Y and vice versa

4. an item that if given to city X made them sell you things at cheaper prices and say nice things to you while making you KOS in city Y - while you could have given that same item to city Y for the opposite result....

would it really be such a better game? that's kind of a joke to me. add great music to it, interesting cast of characters, and a well written plot, then it'd be worth playing.

You start ranting about not being able to control part members (which wasn´t the previous topic) in a video game and then move on to rating about a movie you never saw. You can´t even keep yourself on the topic.

you don't seem to get my point. the topic was turn based combat. my point is that turn based combat can be passable, but if you only have the stage 7% of the time during turn based combat, it's boring as hell. so boring, that it's comparable to watching citizen fucking kane - the most boring movie I've ever seen. yes, I watched it like 3 times, every 5-10 years at one point, b/c I can't actually believe how bad it is for how much praise it gets. it's been years now, and I feel like I have to watch it again to justify this and make sure I just wasn't in the right frame of mind every time I've seen it. but I doubt it, I really doubt it. the problem is that it's so unmemorable that it's easy to think that maybe I'm wrong. if I remembered it better, I'm sure I'd be able to back the claims that the dialogue, characters, and plot completely suck.

You say you don´t care about old games graphics but you still complain about them.

Just stop posting in this forum and go play F4, or Call of duty or Battlefield.

dude, you REALLY don't get it. the point was that I consider older games than FO2 to be beautiful. with better hardware at their disposal, black isle's failure to create anything worth looking at is on them. Ms Pacman for the atari 2600 is beautiful for what they were working with, the original pacman on the same system is ugly. I know whether a game looks good or not, fo2 looks like shit. I'm sorry if you don't know the difference between good and bad graphics. "it's old" isn't an excuse. I don't think I've mentioned a single game in this whole thread that was released after 1998 actually. and every one of them looks better than fo2. maybe not fo1 actually, MAYBE. they're so close though, but I do remember seeing a cathedral in fo1 and the inside of some military base filled with super mutants that I thought looked pretty good. I was impressed by cutscenes in fo2 but they don't really count.

 

[Jogre]

Ok, i'm going to try and answer your questions. Maybe you had a shred of genuinity about this, and actually wanted discussion, but for the most part this seems like an aggressive rant. I would recommend you tone down your posts in future, and try and be more considerate to people here.

dice rolls are fine. 4-7 damage makes sense. 100-150 damage with another type of weapon against the same enemy makes sense. 0 to infinite damage doesn't make sense, it just feels random and ridiculous. applying status effects to enemies that die simultaneously regardless doesn't make sense.

I think you misunderstand how the game works.

You see, Armour in the game reduces damage, on top of stopping attacks, however powerful hits can pierce through that damage reduction(especially critical hits)

So, the reason they are going from 0 to 20, is because one attack was better than the other attack.

Also, for the status effects that are granted to enemies before they die, unfortunately game developers can't iron out every single crease in the game. If your immersion is really broken by a line of text saying "Enemy is unconcious, Enemy has died", then you have a really strange set of priorities in games.

- at any point in the game, you can randomly run into gangs of radscorpions/wilders/cannibals/golden geckos that do negligible damage... or run into massive amounts of master's army/enclave/fire breathing geckos that will kill a party member in one round before you get a chance to heal them.

Actually no, different areas have different encounter tables.

You can always run in to low-level enemies, but high-level enemies are only in specific places.

And yeah, the fights with low-level creatures are kind of tedious, but you can't just expect rats and wolves to only appear in parts of the world where it's beneficial for them to appear, that would just be bad worldbuilding.

-oh I'm sorry, that's not always a random occurrence, let me update that last point. sometimes this bullshit is actually SCRIPTED: at the military base for example, first you have to fight 12 wolves which entails WAITING for each of them to attack 3 times each (for 0 damage if they don't miss) b4 you can finally kill one of them (assuming your brain hasn't fried from watching and hearing "RAW-RAWF" 36 fucking times by then). then you must wait for the remaining 11 to attack 3 times each b4 killing the 2nd one, and so on.... UGH.

break for singing, sing it with me: 12 mobs of wolves on the screen, 12 mobs of wolves! first you wait, then you kill one, 11 mobs of wolves on the screen! 11 mobs of wolves on the screen, 11 mobs of wolves! first you wait, then you kill one, 10 mobs of wolves on the screen! 10 mobs of wolves on the screen, 10 mobs of wolves! first you wait, then you kill one................................................

As I believe someone mentioned on your Reddit thread, it makes sense to have carrion eating creatures in a place where people have died.

The entire world isn't built around benefiting the player, yes it's tedious in parts, but guess what, wolves and rats aren't all going to appear in sensibly organised dungeons.

then of course you look at the mine cart and "your" observation basically instructs you to do something that you'd have never otherwise done: attach the metal pole to the cart, then attach dynamite to the metal pole, b/c "you" thought that it was a great plan

Games back then didn't hold your hand 24/7. They required you to think of ways to solve problems.

15 super mutants that kill a party member in a single round b4 you can act. even if you get to act, you won't be able to target a party member to heal them b/c they're entirely obscured by the mass of pixels that's supposed to be your enemy - which prevents you from clicking on your ally, which is for some reason the only way that you can target your ally. what a joke. I doubt the devs ever even played this game or that they had anyone playtest it.

Every single gameplay engine has its flaws. Fallout 2s engine was greatly improved over Fallout 1s in many ways.

-the combat is 95% WAITING for others to act, 4% clicking on an enemy to damage or ally to heal, and 1% praying. it's the worst combat system of any game I've ever played. by a lot. yet somehow I remember enjoying FO1. maybe random encounters didn't treat me so poorly or they weren't as random or there were more encounters in between ridiculously easy and statistically impossible.

Have you considered turning the combat speed up through the options menu?

A through D are all "accomplished" by clicking and nothing more, ever.

Congratulations on creating a vague concept that incapsulates every single quest.

Yes every quest is accomplished by clicking, well done, you have described every single game ever.

Has it not occured to you that many of those quests also involve skill checks, choosing dialogue carefully, making choices, ect.

-the weapons are either not necessary or they won't do significant damage b/c the enemies are either lvl 1 or 999999, only aliens and sometimes deathclaws are seemingly anywhere in between. what a shame that 90%+ of the effort that went into making this game was in variety of weapons when only a handful are viable against the only enemies that matter.

Are you sure that you aren't just going to high-level areas too early?

The game does have a progression in enemy level. It's a very steep one, but it's still one.

but what makes up for the worst combat of all time? the fact that by clicking through dialogue you can either make group A friendlier and group B hostile or vice versa, according to a rabid group of diehard fanboys that should be calling their doctors instead of playing this old steaming pile b/c their raging hard ons for it have lasted much longer than is healthy or anywhere close to normal. "consequence" you call it. simple change of text in reality. are you out of your fucking minds or what?

To be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about here. But let me put it this way

Calling us "Diehard fanboys, with hard ons, that should be calling there doctors rather than playing this pile of shit", is the kind of thing that makes people think you are a troll.

Don't call us trolls, when this line was almost certainly intended to be aggressive.

"choice," lol, bunch of dumbass believers in here, aren't you all? enjoy your silly, childish illusion of choice and suffer through this terribly designed game for it, you poor delusional clowns.

Apart from New Vegas, it has more meaningful choices then every other game in the franchise.

I mean, I agree that some of those choices were superficial, and Fallout 1 makes some of the choices you make feel more meaningful, but Fallout 2 does have good choices nonetheless.

it's nothing like picking barbarian and going all magic b/c I simply chose the first option presented to me.

"I pick the first option presented to me, and assume that is going to be catered exactly to my playstyle"

Can you not see the flaws in reasoning there?

This is a roleplaying game, characters are tailored to different types of playthrough. Narg is supposed to be an unarmed/melee type. Don't complain you suck at guns, if you picked a character, without checking what kind of character it is first.