tldr; To anyone who doesn't like games that look and feel "vintage" or "retro" (it feels ridiculous calling it that it's from 16 years ago), this game isn't for you; To anyone who doesn't want to mod this game to hell and back just for it to be playable, this game is not for you;
TO ANYONE WHO LIKES FALLOUT AS A FRANCHISE and doesn't mind the dated look/feel or modding the game, this game is a must-try!
For a game that came out in 2010, this game along with its extra content must've been really ahead of its time, unfortunately neither the gameplay nor the story stood the test of time. Everything I'd heard about this game prior to actually playing it made me want to love it so so badly, with promises of incredible gameplay, insanely interactive world, amazing story and very compelling characters -- I ended up being severely disappointed.
Here are the things that irked me and ended up tilting this review to a negative, in roughly the order they happened;
- Issues with the game starting (I'm on a decently new rig, so this might've be an issue with using Win 11, multiple reinstalls and a few solutions I found online fixed it);
- Absolutely JANKY movement on top of it being so... SO painfully slow;
- Couple this ^ with how many quests just force you to go back and forth through load zones, it made most of the game very unenjoyable;
- Crucial NPCs not spawning for main quest progress (Alerio I absolutely despise you and the time you wasted);
- Night time was just a "time-skip segment" that wasted time and the pip boy light was a joke (even at maxed out brightness, barely anything was visible);
- NPC pathing genuinely being the most terrible thing I've ever seen and messing up more than one quest; (this ended up forcing me to re-do the entire Ultra-Luxe Casino segment for the break the bank achievement and yes, I am incredibly salty over this)
Then there are the things I'll put under the personal opinion category;
- Whoever designed the Dead Money DLC, I hope they're living a long happy and healthy life and nothing bad happens to them; that being said, the DLC was filled with pitch black zones, labyrinth-like structures, kill-trigger zones and bugs that can force you to reset the DLC;
- The power struggle between factions while interesting is kind of held back by the fact that neither of the main factions have any interesting characters, most NPCs you interact with kind of make you think a 12 year old wrote them (maybe this is an Obsidian Entertainment special, I had a very similar experience playing Outer Worlds a few years back);
- The gameplay is obviously dated, the shooting feels bad, but when you get used to it, it doesn't really feel "good" or "rewarding" in any way;
- Even on the hardest difficulty, even with hardcore turned on the game was just... too easy? with the exception being the first 5-10 levels (unfortunately this is a standard issue with Bethesda's difficulty scaling and you see this in every single one of their *newer* games);
- Weapon modifications felt incredibly redundant, they feel hard to come by in the early game and by the time you get them... they offer such insignificant boosts that they might as well have not been in the game;
I don't want to be terribly negative, and while the Dead Money DLC was incredibly frustrating to deal with... the story is certainly charming at times, what worldbuilding there is CAN be interesting! The various Vaults you go through, some of the more minor factions you interact with and their questlines I ENJOYED A LOT! That being said... The main story and DLCs fell short for me. It failed to captivate me, and some of the DLCs just felt like the devs had unlimited access to idk LSD? Salvia? Maybe their diet consisted of crayons which they chased down with paint thinner, it certainly made me feel like I was along for the same ride.
At the same time the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system along with VATS, the perk system, AND The Lonesome Road DLC were something I enjoyed a lot; the Elite Riot Gear and the Ranger set made my character look sooo cool; so there are parts that I enjoyed, I promise!
Oh my god the flipping Dead Money DLC, SPOILER WARNING FOR THE FREAKING DEAD MONEY DLC, there's this segment. There is this DUCKING room filling with flammable gas.
Picture me this.
You get locked into a room as soon as you go in, of course, being silly like me, you don't make a billion hard-saves every few seconds and you DON'T know that you get locked in, so you quick-save replacing your most recent quick-save.
Then you hear the beeping, oh the beeping... It's the bomb collar attached to your neck.
Why is it beeping?
There are no speakers, no radios... nothing? Where's the kill trigger??
You try to navigate in the darkness and the voice of Father Elijah screams at you to stop your companion (another person with a bomb collar), a super mutant who for this segment through lore reasons is reduced to the mental capacity of a driveling moron, from touching something that ignites all the flammable gas in this room and kills you both.
Okay great, just turn off the three valves in this room, avoid the invisible enemy with the bomb collar detonator (why does he have that) and then talk to your companion friend dude guy, all good, right?
Wrong
So very wrong
Two steps in... Boom.
Reset.
Sneak, two steps in... Boom.
Reset.
Okay weird... I must be doing something wrong.
(Try again a few more times, 2-3 dozen times... wow this is getting frustrating, I'm not this terrible at games, right?)
You convince yourself that it's your fault, you keep blowing your own head clean off and you don't understand why it's happening.
The kicker?
If you, god forbid, waste enough time, I don't know if in the Casino or just as soon as you enter the DLC in general, the game bugs from this. It bugs from you spending more than an undefined amount of time in an undefined zone and makes it so when you go into that room-- instead of your companions collar beeping, YOURS STARTS BEEPING!
How do you fix this? Reload we all say in unison! Reload before all this madness took place! Reload before entering the room! Then you remember, oh you remember how you just replaced your quick save 30 minutes ago upon first entering this room.
Dear god when is your last hard save?
(3 hours ago, right before you entered the DLC.)
You'll toggle god mode. You can fix this. You can survive the explosion and continue.
(No, no you can't, This is a lie, a lieeeeeee)
The bombs explode, you live, and the quests fail, you restart your game and redo the entire dlc.
Then you proceed to walk into the casino, deep deep into the basement and brutalise father Elijah a few times, you stack the gold bars onto his corpse and squish him under all their weight... So he understands, if it was someone's greed that brought you to the Sierra Madre Casino, it would be the very treasure that takes away his life. You blow him up, you vaporise him, you crush his lungs, and then you walk out, with nothing in your pockets. You can throw away everything you got on your way to completing the DLC and you wouldn't even feel the difference. There was nothing to get here, nothing.
Did I mention this crap pile of a dlc strips you of your equipment and hands you the equivalent of a watergun filled with sand?
Paint thinner. And. Crayons.
