The attempt to adapt Fallout to a modern audience was commendable at the time, but for me it fails at capturing the spirit of the original game. Bad writing and often clunky gameplay hurts the experience of exploring the often very atmospheric 3D wasteland of DC.
After the very disappointing Fallout 3, New Vegas manages to tell a compelling story with meaningful choices in a world that is a joy to explore. You can really feel the passion that went into this game. One of the (if not THE) best rpgs of the decade.
I feel like Fallout 2 is pretty overrated. It's still a good rpg, but aside from the amount of content and some quality-of-life gameplay improvements, it is worse than Fallout 1 in every way. The story especially, which is basically the same as it's predecessor, just less good. It can also feels somewhat tonally deaf at times. That said, it's still worth playing if you liked Fallout or any of it's other sequels.
Not only the best Fallout game, but a milestone for the rpg genre and a timeless classic. From todays perspective the gameplay may feel a little basic and clunky, but that does little to hurt the story and atmosphere. It is the shortest game in the series, but I prefer quality over quantity.
When I saved my game at a choice and picked the obvious bad option to see what will happen, my character died and the game deleted my save file. This just exists to waste my time. Also the writing ranges from mediocre to cringeworthy. Not ideal for a game that's 100% about reading text.
The story and writing style are rather poor, even embarrassing at times. Same as it's predecessor. You can really tell what kind of a hipster the writer is by their style and how limited their life experiences are. This is something that it has in common with the newest edition of Vampire the Masquerade however, so maybe it's intentional. Unfortunately a visual novel that fails at story and writing doesn't really have anything else to offer.
