- Lame dialogues
- SPECIAL is not so important anymore
- Fckd up quests. Here's example: A guy i lying infront of a city. He said he is dying out of thirsty. I gave him like 20 bottles of clear water and he was still lying there asking for some water. It's an shitty MMORPG-like fetch quest, not real rpg stuff! And such lazy asshats were lying infront of most cities! WTF?!
- Lame story
- Boring locations to explore - seriously, I was excited to explore postnuclear city... but it turned out I CAN'T explore it and have to go through repetitive and boring metro tunnels.
- TERRIBLE GUI! - seriously, alphabetical list instead of nice graphic inventory? Such shit were in early 90s/late 80s games
- Levelling up - its too easy to have skill maxed out, there is not many skills to choose from, watered down perks.
- Bloody mess - first time I used it I bursed laughing, thinking it was some kind of bug... But no! Bodies explode to the moon on purpose, while shooting with lame pistol!
- Game is TOO MUCH themed with 50's! Yes, original Fallouts were taking some themes from 50's (computer looks, cars etc), but they also took style of 80's!
- Boooooring and repetitive locations...
- Less weapons to choose than in F2
So yeah. F3 sucks so bad I don't even want to play it ever again.
As someone who first played FO3, then NV... and only very recently beat FO1, and is therefore not touched by nostalgia (for both good and for bad), I thought I'd offer counter points in FO3's defense.
Keep in mind I loved FO1, but to some extent, also didn't understand what all the hype was about (please don't throw a can at me!) Also, I've not played FO2 yet, so all of these counter points are in regards to FO1.
There were some lame dialogues in FO1 as well. Like in Shady Sands, the (literally) copied/pasted dialogues from numerous guys with knives who yell at you that they don't take kindly to strangers, and that you better watch it and not make trouble. It was short, generic, and worst of all, identical for three NPCs.
SPECIAL is not so important anymore
What about (in FO3) an energy weapons build that depends on a high Luck? Or (in terms of RP), a high INT that allows you to shut down John Henry Eden? Just a couple of examples where SPECIAL comes into play.
Fckd up quests. Here's example: A guy i lying infront of a city. He said he is dying out of thirsty. I gave him like 20 bottles of clear water and he was still lying there asking for some water. It's an shitty MMORPG-like fetch quest, not real rpg stuff! And such lazy asshats were lying infront of most cities! WTF?!
- I don't see how the quest you mentioned is unrealistic. Beggars tend to beg every day on account of being poor. There's a beggar in the city I live in - and he's there, without fail, every day on the same street asking for money. Is it a lazy karma-boosting gimmick? Yeah. Is it unrealistic? I don't think so.
Kinda vague, so we could narrow it down to lame quests - in which case, I'm sorry, but the generic "our town is plagued by monster X, go kill them all at cave Y to save us" quest takes the cake for me. Thats FO1 (again Shady Sands) - killing the radscorpians.
- Boring locations to explore - seriously, I was excited to explore postnuclear city... but it turned out I CAN'T explore it and have to go through repetitive and boring metro tunnels.
This I do agree on, about 100 percent. I'm ok with rubble blocking certain roads... but to the extent they did it, so that I was forced to take -their- chosen path, was annoying. And why can't I climb over the rubble? But again, to be analogous...FO1 does the same thing. Want to skip Shady Sands and head straight to Vault 15? Nope... you need a rope! Any option to say, use a high STR/high AGI to climb down the shaft without one? Or find some other way? Nope. Its their way or the highway. Same crap in both games.
- TERRIBLE GUI! - seriously, alphabetical list instead of nice graphic inventory? Such shit were in early 90s/late 80s games
Alphabetical names meant I could quickly get to the item I wanted, so long as I knew what it was called. If its pictures instead, and I have a huge enough inventory, then there's no pattern that lets me quickly get to the item I want, and so I have to scroll down more. This didn't happen much in FO1 though, and honestly, I could go either way. Just mentioning one 'good' thing about using names instead of pics.
- Levelling up - its too easy to have skill maxed out, there is not many skills to choose from, watered down perks.
Totally agree that maxing a skill is too easy in FO3, and also that you can end up being good at 'too many skills' by max lvl - as one person put it, "less character in the character". However, FO1 did some things that really pissed me off too. For example, skills can reach 200 %, which is great...means super specialization. Yet, I found that with a science skill as low as like...28 friggin' %, I was almost always fine. Is there an example where I would need science at 200 %? (I'm asking vets, I've only played it once). Or even >150 %? Maybe there is and I just haven't found it. IF its the case where, technically you can go all the way to 200 %, but for some skills you'll never want to - then whats the point?
- Bloody mess - first time I used it I bursed laughing, thinking it was some kind of bug... But no! Bodies explode to the moon on purpose, while shooting with lame pistol!
Bloody Mess is stupid. And in fact, even without it, lets face it - the physics in FO3 in general are really screwy. You shoot someone in the head with a pistol...and their head 'falls' off? Wtf...FO1 definitely wins in realism here, though again, with poorer graphics and more left up to the imagination, its arguably easier. But yeah, I head the whole limbs just 'falling off' when they get shot in FO3.
Game is TOO MUCH themed with 50's! Yes, original Fallouts were taking some themes from 50's (computer looks, cars etc), but they also took style of 80's!
As someone who loves the 50's era with profoundness, and doesn't care that much about the 80's (I'm a 90's kid), I can't comment on this one without obvious bias. I would say its personal taste though.
- Boooooring and repetitive locations...
- No two areas looked the same to me in FO3. Well, except for those damn tunnels beneath DC. God those sucked. But for the most part, both FO1 and FO3 did not make the DA 2 (dragon age 2) mistake of re-visting the same locations, or the ME 1 (Mass effect 1) mistake of copy/pasting environments due to rushed development.
- Less weapons to choose than in F2
Granted, but since they're having to program in 3-space with better graphics, each individual weapon costs more (as opposed to just a picture)
Now I still wouldn't say FO3 is better than FO1 necessarily (though I think I enjoyed it more). To a large extent, it really is an apples-to-oranges comparison. But I feel like a lot of the things people complain about in FO3 are also there in FO1. I say FO3 is marginally better than 1, but its hard, and I like them for different reasons.