What is it?
Fallout 2 came out only a year after the original Fallout. It used the same engine, but with some modifications, especially for better control over NPC party members. In the first game, this control had been practically nil, since the engine wasn't designed to support a party at all. Now, you could tell them to equip better armor, you could set their combat AI within limits, and you could trade inventory without bartering, which also ended the cheat where you could load them with unlimited weight.
Graphics, too, were mainly the same, though new ones were added. Ten years earlier, this behavior would have seemed completely normal. The first five Ultima games more or less looked the same, and the same is true for Wizardry. But in 1998, it raised the eyebrows of many a critic, though the fans were delighted. It was still considered legitimate to release an add-on to an existing game (like Hellfire for Diablo, or Cleopatra for Pharaoh), but a new game with a new version number had to have new graphics as well, for in the late nineties, it was graphics that counted and not gameplay.
Unfortunately, not much has changed since then.
Unfortunately, too, Fallout 2 felt very much like a hasty sequel and sometimes even like a fan-made mod. Quest items from the first game continued a completely pointless existence. In the endgame, map design is sometimes incredibly sloppy. Locations that feature in both games have sometimes incompatible maps. The original, unique approach to linearity was replaced by one more similar to Daggerfall, with a starter dungeon, an end dungeon that you cannot leave before you have finished it, completely open play in between, and the ability to continue playing after you have finished the game. But unlike Daggerfall, Fallout 2 did not have random quests, so at a certain point the game was more or less "used up".
On the good side, the world is far larger, there are loads of new items, and some of the new weapons have become very popular with players, as has the ability to upgrade them, and, of course, there is the car. I already mentioned the better interaction with NPC party members. Less stress on story increases the replay value. There are more options to modify your character during the game. Personally, I found that at first, I preferred it over the first game, but later my interest returned to the original Fallout.
Official requirements are the same as for the first game: A Pentium 90 and 16MB of RAM. Fallout 2 runs only under Windows 95+. You get to choose between four install versions, the smallest requiring little more than 1MB of disk space, the largest more than 600, but you can play it without the CD. Regardless of install type, savegames will take up a lot of space. If you are really pressed for disk space, use few slots only.
In general, there is no problem with fast computers. There is, however, one small, not easily recognized: on a fast computer, movement on the world map will take less (real) time, and you will have fewer random encounters. There are inofficial patches that fix this.
The Macintosh port was released in 2002. It needs a G3 233MHz, 128 MB RAM, 600 MB Disk Space, MacOS X 10.1.4 (yes it's OS X only).
medieval fantasytype of world, many gameplay features are similar to Fallout 2, starting with the concept of starter dungeon, end dungeon, and do-what-you want in-between.
There are a few sites that are especially about the second game, and it seems to have a fan community all of its own, even more so since the release of the editor in April 2003. What I didn't find any more was a site that has the complete weapon stats.
The Fallout games were lauded for their open-endedness, and with good reason. This if far from a linear RPG, and you have much freedom in how you handle quests, or indeed if you handle them at all: you can play certain people against each other or ally yourself with one particular side in many situations; you can become a slaver, a trader, a mercenary, a porn star, or even get married and then pimp your wife out for cash; you can play the goody-two-shoes that helps out everyone in need, or a heartless and soulless ghost of the wastes; you can be a sniper, or a thief, or a diplomat, or a moronic, brutish thug with big guns and meaty punches.
2D sprites wander about using what is obviously the old Fallout 1 engine. Everything is well detailed, but there aren't very many frames of animation and all the humans tend to look the same. The similar isometric graphics in Ultima Online, for example, have much more character differentiation, and Fallout has no online component at all.
But even in its current state, there are numerous little design details that collectively raise Fallout 2 above its competitors, such as the detailed conversations nonplayer characters occasionally have between themselves, the "special" encounters, the comic-relief ghouls who appear in a variety of situations, and some absolutely inspired quest objectives and solutions. It's pretty hard not to have fondness for a game that gives you experience points for activities as diverse as playing chess against a mutated scorpion, suffocating a mob boss, fixing a two-headed cow's leg, and slicing a Tom Cruise doppelganger in half with your trusty laser rifle. The core elements of 1997's best role-playing game are intact and, in several ways, have been improved. Highly recommended.
The main strength of Fallout II is the mood of the game. The whole extrapolation of 50's paranoia into a nightmarish future with an ironic wink, well, if you don't know what I'm talking about, get someone who is a better writer to explain it to you. Ever since I saw the opening cinematic I've been a Louis Armstrong fan. You have to admit that it's great when you walk through the desert and find the bridge of death. (I actually think Monty Python is funny, sue me.) Otherwise, the side quests are pretty impressive. Yeah, you get the "help Torr defend the cows" ones, but you get the "Find the missing watch" quests which involve dynamiting an outhouse. Fallout II actually has characters, too. Yeah, I know that Alkor is a wannabe necro, and Charsi has a thing for barbarians, but they don't really compare to, say, Sulik who talks to the bone in his nose, or Fergus, who had deluded himself into believing that he runs a nuclear power plant single handedly.
