Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

I'm surprised that GOG sells this game that I cannot honestly describe other than a PoS. I bought the game a while back but only tried to play it now - I spent hours getting recommended mods to fix the widely-reported issues with crashing, etc. and initially it worked fine, no problems. I only had maybe 15 mods installed (including the DLCs) and most of them were deemed essential to playing the game by blogs. After playing for a few days, at one point when my character leveled up, the game started crashing. I reverted back to an older save (losing hours of playtime) and it worked for another two hours and then it started crashing again during saving. This garbage is unplayable. I'll say this though: even if the game was technically perfect, it still wouldn't be a great game - most of it is just aimless go-around-and-explore, finding basically the same interiors everywhere, fighting the same enemies and looting the same mostly-pointless objects. There isn't much reward to exploration - some of the quests are decent but the game feels like a pointless walking simulator. It's good for a while, but like New Vegas and Outer Worlds, it becomes boring and repetitive. There is very little in-game motivation to play. I love the original Fallout 1/2 and sort of liked New Vegas and wanted to like this game, too but it's just too much. Not recommended.

Clunky shooter and utterly boring rpg.

Cant kill childrens = bad game. No, seriously, what made Fallout 1 & 2 so special wasnt the brutal options you had in the uncut version but the immense deep gameplay mechanics, story and characters. Bethesda build an somewhat enjoyable sandbox with F3 but not a real connected RPG world. Obsidian showed how its done with New Vegas and it was indeed a great game. So, if you consider playing a Fallout FPS play Fallout NV. The Fallout Series in order of greatness: Fallout 2, Fallout 1, Fallout NV, Fallout 4, Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 is inferior in ervery conceivable way to NV, it lacks morale choices, in-depth rpg mechanics, and good factions. It also isn't nearly as replayable. It also doesn't make any sense within the lore. Play Fallout 1, 2 or New Vegas instead.

The positive, the game actually works, just install and hit play. There is a warning but the game runs fine. In my 50 hours of play I had one crash. If you want the game, GOG is the way to go. Now the bad. Pretty much everything else. I never got into the Fallout games when they released but heard great things about 3 and New Vegas. I decided to give New Vegas a try a while back and loved it. Given that many people think FO3 was comparable or better than FNV I figured playing FO3 was a no brainer. Wrong It is a terrible RPG and a poor game. The gameplay is clunky, the story is boring, the characters paper thin, the choices non existent. There is nothing in this game that holds my interest. I can't even bring myself to finish the game. There are no interesting groups, you have generic evil guys who are evil because they are evil, and good guys who are insufferable because the game wants you to like them. It is so bad that I want to side with the bad guys because the good guys are so annoying. This gets into the next problem, I have no choice, I cannot side with the bad guys, I must side with the good guys. There are no real decisions I can make, only superficial and/or black and white ones. Do I help the nice town, or help the evil people nuke the town. Give free water to the city or poison it so millions die? There is no nuance, just be a good guy or super evil. They also have a minimal impact of the story. Even nuking a town causes no real change in the story. You aren't even locked out of a long quest chain a character in the town gives you! Sure it has stats and quests. But no decisions or ability to influence the world. So, bad gameplay, bad story, bad RPG, bad combat, bad characters, bad everything. There is nothing to recommend this game, maybe it was good when it released, but it is terribe today. TLDR: 1 star for the actual game, +1 because the game runs. Unless you have nostalgia from playing the game years ago, give it a pass.