/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4813689
Interested.

I keep hearing and seeing nice screencaps of 1, but I really dislike playing games on my computer (emulator).

>>4813689
>>4813692
No. The regular fallout 1 and 2 threads we have are all ironic. Even on /v/, every time someone praises the first games it's just a big joke that you weren't in on.

Don't bother with them.

If you like dungeons and dragons sure

They're very different so there's no guarantee you'll like them. If you love the VATS system then go for it but if isometric tactical games turn you off then you might want to take a pass. They are very mouse-oriented so that may be too "computery" for you

>>4813718
This. The original Fallouts are great, but they're VERY different from the 3D games, and the control setup was dated even for the time they came out.

I'd say you should try grabbing them off some torrent site and giving them a try, but if you get five or ten minutes in and you hate it, feel free to drop them.
Start with Fallout 1, not because it's the better game, but because Fallout 2 has that stupid temple at the start to slog through and it's not really a good indicator of what you're in for. There's a patch to get rid of it, but that might be too much to bother with if you're just trying to see if you'll like the originals.

There's a few pointers about the originals:
>as they're isometric turn-based games with a semblance of tactics, you actually have to pump your weapon skills to hit stuff, unlike in 3/NV where it seemed like increasing gun skill was naught if the player was good at aiming by himself
>the powercurve isn't in any way character scaled
>the combat is satisfying, just turn EVERYTHING to max speed in the settings and fights should go smoothly. There's plenty of weapons, a few viable strategies (melee, sniping, guns blazing with burst damage) and really cool and gory death animations.
>If you liked NV, you might want to check out for all the nods towards the player who knows the first two games; FO1/2/NV all take place on the West Coast and are somewhat coherent together, having been mostly written by the same bunch of people
>plenty of dialogue going on; only a few crucial people are voice-acted and given talking heads.
>the control scheme takes just a little while of getting used to, but it's not some arcane thing and you can handle it entirely with just a mouse button, though preferrably learning the hotkeys for the most commonly used skills (2 - Lockpick, 3 - Steal, 6 - Doctor, 7 - Science, 8 - Repair) is going to make life much easier. After a while it's actually fairly comfy to play. I think there exists a small patch that makes FO1 inventory easier to manage.

cont. >>4813797

>exploration isn't "freeform" per se, as in only some squares on the World Map have locations of interest and between them the desert is empty unless you get a Random Encounter; you can still try to sequence break by walking anywhere you want on the map, there's just not a lot of sightseeing going on while you do so, though sometimes you will be able to blindly wander into some interesting location that no NPC told you about (yet).
FO1/2 is generally praised because it's a fairly interactive and reactive world. There's plenty of ways to solve quests, characters can sometimes note your faction allegiance or even choice of attire in dialogue, and the game has some interesting secrets or nice touches - for example, in 2, there's a small quest you can unlock by going to two different bars and ordering drinks, and noticing that one of the bars serves much cheaper alcohol. I know a lot of players who never find this quest (which has quite a few different ways to proceed about it, too) simply because not a lot of people bother to buy actual food/water for their RPG characters unless there's an actual game mechanic for it, and in Fallout, beer in particular doesn't do anything other than temporarily lowering your Perception.
Fallout is definitely worth playing if you're into RPGs. The games have a satisfying exploration aspect (just checking out what's around each town is engaging), the combat system is crispy and fun when you get used to it (and playing a late-game god of death is quite satisfying) and overall, you have a classic on your hands.
Just don't get discouraged if the early pacing feels a little slow.

bump

>>4813689
Yes and no. The big decider is whether you can stomach GURPS or not.

bump

>>4813697
this but unironically

I was always vaguely interested in trying FO1 but afaik it has a time limit in it and that doesn't seem like it would be conducive to exploring and enjoying an open world.

>>4815058
It's not too strict. You can do everything there is to do and still fuck around a fair bit. What's more, the world isn't really "open" like they are post-Bethesda. You've got a world map, and you've got towns and vaults and caves and things, and you fast travel between those with occasional random encounters interrupting, and everything between the towns is featureless wasteland for miles and miles. There's nothing to explore between map markers. So you go to a town or a cave or whatever and you try to do everything there is to do there and then you move on to the next place that you heard about in the previous town. So it's sortof a disconnected series of adventures, like Samurai Jack but the dark wizard is replaced by a mutant blob.
The time limit, while present, only really becomes a problem if you're purposefully fucking around on the world map or moving back and forth between cities WAY too much.
You can just save before you decide to blow a lot of time looking for shit on the world map and then reload and beeline for it if you're gonna do that. It's not an issue.

Anyway, if it still worries you, play FO2. The "time limit" for that is something like thirteen years in-game, and even if you do fuck all for a long time and purposefully jack around you can still complete the game in two.

FO1-2 are meme games.

>>4815058
Do not worry at all about the time limit. If you go into the game with a perfectionist "must clear all the quests in a given city before venturing to the next one", you will do all of the quests and make it to the waterchip with like good 80 days left on the clock at worst, and that's while resting all the time to restore HP instead of paying for doctors or wasting stimpaks. The time limit is mostly there just to give you a vague sense of urgency, but I don't know anyone who actually managed to fail the game because of it. Furthermore, you can extend the time limit by 100 days. The game also gently nudges you towards certain direction - Town A is on the way to Vault 15, and in Town A they can point to you Town B and C, and in Town B you can learn about Town D, but in Town D they give you a suicide mission that you can't do yet, so you check out Town C, where you learn about Town E and F and like 23 hints all the while telling you that in Town F you will find Doohickey A which can let you extract the waterchip.

So yeah, it's really, *really* not bad. Even going blind the first time into the game I managed to finish the quest without ever really making a fuss.

I don't like turn-based hybrid games (Arcanum is another) because the combat always feels like it's encouraging you to find the cheapest fucking way around everything, but most people love original FO games, so whatever.

>>4815216
Define "cheapest". Optimally using your movement, cover, obstacles on the way to divide enemies piecemeal by piecemeal and knowing action point management doesn't seem particularly cheesy.

Due to limited control it's not a game like Heroes of Might & Magic where you can cast a spell and run in circles around retard AI. At most, there's cookie cutter solutions, like your regular speech-lockpick-sniper.

>>4815202
>>4815213
That makes me feel a bit better about it. I'll give it a swing one of these days. I couldn't get into 3 or NV at all, but I feel like 1 might be a better fit for me either way.

>>4813689
IMO nothing beats modded NV, but 1 and 2 are fun but a completely different experience. They are worth it for the lore and aesthetic alone.

>>4813689
then you've never played fallout

No, they're REALLY bad and boring. Pass on them

>>4813797
>you actually have to pump your weapon skills to hit stuff, unlike in 3/NV where it seemed like increasing gun skill was naught if the player was good at aiming by himself
Sort of, and sort of not.

In 3, there were no true iron sights, and weapon spread was stupidly erratic on most guns, even with higher skill, and even with scopes.
Like the assault rifles are near useless if you try to take single shots, you really just have to fire a burst and hope some of them hit, even with a high Small Guns skill.

NV gave you two options for ironsights, both far better than 3s, and scopes felt far more 'on'.
Guns skill pretty much determined accuracy at longer ranges, and some guns required a certain level of skill to get worthwhile accuracy out of them, some also requiring some Strength.
Like if you had 20 in Guns and 5 Str, then shooting the 5.56 LMG would just scatter shit all over the place anywhere but point blank, it'll still damage what you hit, and it's a weapon with a high DPS, but you'll waste so much of your magazine, and potentially cause a lot collateral damage, it's frequently a wasted effort.
With Guns skill at 100, and Str 10, however, shots go in a pretty tight pattern, you can easily lay down numerous aimed bursts with the LMG at multiple targets and do well, even at somewhat long range.
Also looking at something like the Battlerifle, with 50 Guns and 7 Str, it's a really good weapon to have, good damage and shoots fast, but with 100 Guns and 10 Str, it's a phenomenally good weapon, aimed shots at a distance are no problem, especially with how powerful it is.

Weapons in NV are so much more 'definite' and less floaty feeling, that I find myself very seldom using VATS, outside of point blank.
With good skill, stats, and weapons, you can manually perform really well at medium or long distances, whereas VATS seems to just continuously flub it outside of spitting distance.

If you were hooked on the Fallout back story like I was, it won't take long to adapt to FO1 and 2.

>>4815216
You might like Tactics, then.
Combat can be set to real time, where it both goes much smoother, and gets insanely fucking hectic at the hard parts. The game really makes you plan your encounters and set up ambushes and plans.

For instance, there's a mission where in the corner of the map, there's a chapel.
Guess who's in there? Some very hungry Deathclaws, if you charge in there at your current level and try to fight them, they'll eat you like a rotisserie chicken, that's no good.
What you do instead is set up a mean ambush, put your guys with rifles nearby (subguns and pistols aren't strong enough for Deathclaws, there's some good rifles on the level, like an M1 Garand), get them ready standing or crouching behind cover. I think there was even a ladder to the roof, so if you have someone lay down prone there with an AK47 or M60 (if you have one), to shoot at them from above the doorway, that's golden.
Your player character should be your best gunfighter, with the best Strength, Action Points, and a really good gun (you should be dumpstating Charisma), rush in there, let loose a 12 Gauge flechette shell, then run for your fucking life out of the chapel, and make sure as shit to get out of your team's line of fire, because the space in front of the chapel door is about to be occupied with a whole lot of .30 caliber

Now, while the combat in Tactics can get really fun, the big drawback is that A), the game is really very linear aside from you being able to fight as you see fit, and B), there's almost zero fucking roleplaying involved in the game at all, that's why I say you can just dumpstat Charisma, because you really don't need it at all. Pick the most Charismatic dude with the best bartering and with Good Natured (usually Stitch), then focus on leveling up his bartering as a secondary focus, and give him the money and let him handle bartering whenever that happens.
Karma matters very little at all, except for the very end, where it determines the ending

The thing with the final mission, is that unless you twink the game and use remote explosives to kill some things (technically absolving you of sin, since the bombs killed them), you'll get very bad karma for killing them, thus you get the bad ending.
That's definitely a bit of bad game design.

I have no idea if that's a fuckup on the part of the devs, or if this was seriously intentional, but I have never fucking seen a game ending being selected like that out of pure fucking gameplay technicality.

>>4813797
combat is still slow as shit if there's more than a couple of enemies on the screen, but you're right in saying its super satisfying to blow a huge fuck-off chunk out of your enemies side as they fall to the ground

i've played all mainline games (except 4) but i've never given tactics a chance. is it strategically deep? i know it's light on dialogue which is the best part of any fallout game, but if it plays well i'll probably give it a try just for my fallout fix

>>4816636
It has *some* strategical depth to it, there's a lot of guns, explosives and items, and missions tend to offer various (violent) ways to approach situations.

It is pretty fun, but it is also pretty lackluster in many departments.
It really makes you wish there was more to it, and better thought out.

>>4816359
pretty much this. especially on consoles.

in FO3 gun skills was basically the difference between playing the game like an FPS & just doing everything in VATS

>>4816725
Oh yeah, there's a bunch of drugs, too.
They're worth a decent amount of money, so gathering them for selling alone isn't a bad idea, but another thing you can do is to apply them to targets.

For instance, there's a mission where you go down into an underground bunker to retrieve fusion batteries.
The big problem with this scenario is that there's a tribal village living above this bunker, and there's like three or four dormant turret guns on the surface, and if you use the override in the bunker to get into the deeper areas, those turrets come online, and they'll gun down the entire tribal village in half a minute, later shooting at you when you try to leave.
The turrets however aren't counted as robots, so chemicals will work freely on them, therefore, you can overdose them with Buffout or Voodoo, and with enough, the turrets will burst and die, even though they're dormant and recessed into the ground.
Failing that, you could have one guy be down there at the ready to set off security, while everyone else is up on the surface with their guns trained on them. Alcohol is easy to get in larger quantities than drugs, so you can also just make the turrets drunk as shit on Rotgut to kill their Perception and ruin their accuracy, saving everyone from too much harm.

>>4816987
It's one of those many things which to me reinforces why FO3 such a halfbaked game.

Like I don't hate it, I have fond memories of it, but in retrospect it's VERY flawed and many things could be way better.
Thus, even if New Vegas runs like it's held together by chewing gum (partially Bethesda's fault, partially Obsidian's fault), as a videogame, it's so much stronger, and that's by taking a lot of the fundamental things FO3 actually did right, improving on them, and also fixing a lot of the things it did wrong.

I have yet to play FO4, but a lot of what I hear makes me reluctant, and it seems Bethesda didn't learn nearly enough from FO3s mistakes, nor enough from NVs successes.

>>4813692
What?? Its a straight pc game, no emulator required unless you happen to download the dos version... but thats not neccessary.

>>4817056
>I have yet to play FO4, but a lot of what I hear makes me reluctant, and it seems Bethesda didn't learn nearly enough from FO3s mistakes, nor enough from NVs successes.

It's decent if you like the universe. The worst part is they basically got rid of much choice and made the game pretty linear, at least if felt more so than the others. It's more of a "cinematic" thing even though there's not traditional cutscenes if I'm remembering correctly. There is not as much roleplaying if you're into that, but I'd imagine by now there are mods to fix this issue. The other annoying thing is having to defend settlements all the time. It's not a terrible game, but there are a few parts that make me miss the earlier installments. Great soundtrack and world/aesthetic as in most fallout games.

>>4815328
I second this motion

>>4817056
>as a videogame, it's so much stronger,.
i feel like it doesn't mean much if the game crashes or breaks if you look at it wrong and that is largely the reason why new vegas will never be my favorite fallout game.

sure i could use mods to fix things and i did but it shouldn't be a thing i have to in the first place if bethesda's QA wasn't an empty broom closet of a "department".

>>4817086
I never even knew there was a DOS version, it came out in 1997, most people had Windows 95 by then.

But the fact that it was built to run on DOS does explain things. Namely the rather low color depth and heavy dithering.

>>4816545
Charisma is more relevant to FO:T than the previous games where it dictated almost no dialogue at all (maybe like 1% of the dialogue and nothing relevant to the main plot, EVER) whereas in FO:T high Charisma characters get the Divine Favor perk and better recruits throughout the game.

>>4817056
>it seems Bethesda didn't learn nearly enough from FO3s mistakes, nor enough from NVs successes
That's more generous than my opinion, which is that Bethesda deliberately decided to double-down on 3's fuckups and throw every single one of NV's successes out the window from pure spite.

>>4817180
Honestly, I grit and bear it, and make sure to do a quicksave every 20-40 minutes. The game is so damn fun, that even if crashes and performance problems are genuinely vexxing, I'll just start the game up and continue playing.

It's kind of how I just rolled with Morrowind, great game, but don't trust the engine, save often.
At least there's an unofficial patch that solves all the crash problems now. Wonder if New Vegas will ever see that?

>>4817289
>+1 to highest primary statistic, -1 to perk rate
That's fucking dogshit, my Strength is already either through the roof, or calculated to max out once I get power armor, to then let me reinforce another attribute.

Completely not worth getting less perks overall.

>and better recruits
I never really found any good standout recruits, to me they effectively just support me doing combat, carry my loot, and lay in ambush, effectively being my squires.

>>4817501
>>+1 to highest primary statistic, -1 to perk rate
That's fucking dogshit, my Strength is already either through the roof, or calculated to max out once I get power armor, to then let me reinforce another attribute.
Strength? That isn't exactly the highest priority stat in *any* Fallout game due to how shitty Melee Weapon Damage is and how irrelevant it is to most things.
Divine Favor is basically a Gain Attribute perk mixed with another nifty bonus that, over the course of the game, will net you 1-2 new perks over a Favorless character. It can also be used in high-point multiplayer games with high-level characters to a neat effect. Basically, it's a Gain Attribute perk that gives you more perks in the long run.
More to the point,
>I never really found any good standout recruits
was because you were playing a Charisma dumper. Low Charisma characters don't get advanced through the Brotherhood ranks quickly, and get offered shit companions as a result. It's perfectly viable to play a charisma dump uber pwner character (there's even a perk especially for this playstyle, Loner), but the point of what I wrote is that Charisma is actually useful for *something* in Fallout Tactics, and it's comparatively useless in the previous two games. You get to get married to an useless character or have a somewhat rapey quickie with a butch Water Merchant mercenary that nets you like 2 Buffouts, big fucking whoop. Only FO2 (not FO1) determines how many characters you get to bring along with you through the Charisma stat, and they're a pretty poor excuse for an army, since you can't control them and certainly can't trust them with burst weapons.

>>4817535
Fair enough, the Wiki didn't actually explain the perk.

>>4817535
>Strength
Honestly, I do that so I can carry way more shit; more ammo, carry some explosives, some guns for different purposes, carry more loot before having to meet up with my team to offload stuff, etc.

Also it's near mandatory if you want to carry and shoot the M2HB and its heavy ass ammo, or if you want to carry a whole bunch of grenades with a launcher.

>>4813689
do you like, New Vegas? if so, they are for you. although, you have to stomach their interface and GURPS, which can be a pro or con

Dude, what the actual fuck is the deal with the Yellow Reactor Keycard you get from the Enclave corpse in Arroyo in Fallout 2? It's driving me crazy that I don't know what this worthless thing is actually for.

I have the Restoration Patch installed so i'm hoping that might actually lead to something but man, talk about a really frustrating loose end...

>>4813689
Abso-fucking-lutely
The old Fallout games are legit great rpgs.

>>4817972
>Dude, what the actual fuck is the deal with the Yellow Reactor Keycard you get from the Enclave corpse in Arroyo in Fallout 2? It's driving me crazy that I don't know what this worthless thing is actually for.
Doesn't do absolutely anything in the vanilla game. In the Restoration Patch it can apparently be used to fly to the Enclave.

>>4813689
>Are the older games worth going back to?
If rou want the F3/4 experience, then no.
If you want isometric NV experience with more linear story (and, in case of F1 and F2 without Restoration project, less content), then yes.

>>4813689
They're great games, but they're not action games.
Combat in them is solved via turn-based tactics: if you are okay with games like X-Com, Xenonauts, Shadowrun Returns, you should DEFINITELY give it a go.

As rpgs, they're much better than Fallout 3 and 4, and about on par with New Vegas (they were made by many of the same people who made New Vegas, so expect similar tone). They are written very well, and have a lot of different options to conflicts. Many quests can be solved by stealing items, reverse pickpocketing, or just by talking if you have the right Charisma/Intelligence or high enough Persuasion skill.

If you played Wasteland 2 and liked it, you absolutely MUST play Fallout 1 and 2, you will love them.

>>4813692
>emulator
r u ok raetard?

>>4818043
He probably assumed it was a dos game.
>>4813692
No dude, it's game from 1997, 2 years after Windows 95. It's a 32 bit Windows game. You can easily buy them pre-patched to work on modern computers on gog.com

>>4817972
>I have the Restoration Patch installed
This isn't your first run, is it?

They are fantastic and must-play*

* Lore, writing and aesthetics-wise, coming off the 3D Fallouts the combat might seem very weak, and it wasn't all that even back in the day. Small guns, 10 LK, Messy perk and a crit-based build are basically mandatory to have fun

>>4818097
No.
Tbh, I recommend anyone who is first playing Fallout 2 to have the Restoration Patch installed. Vanilla Fallout 2 is a bad Fallout 1. The patch makes it such a better game.

>>4813697
this, but ironically

Are there any mods to improve Fallout Tactics, like maybe tack on some new missions to the main campaign and stuff?

>>4818379
>Tbh, I recommend anyone who is first playing Fallout 2 to have the Restoration Patch installed. Vanilla Fallout 2 is a bad Fallout 1. The patch makes it such a better game.
I found the RP content to be useless padding, some very questionable shit that I'm glad was cut out, (everything to do with that faggot Kaga) and I've never done any of the RP locations more than once because you can tell why they were cut. Primitive Tribe and that shit location between VC and Gecko are useless. EPA and Abbey are boring.

>>4818576
That's all fair and good BUT the fixes to the content in the main game (Actually being able to solve the Missing Brahmin case and deal with the twins, for example) is what really makes it essential. Padded content being questionable in quality is a fair compromise to fixing actual bugs and unfinished quest in the vanilla game.

I was that kid who played fallout every single day through high school and college so It warms my heart to see so many threads about FO1-2 lately.

But is it worth playing nowadays? Maybe. It depends on the kind of experience you are striving for. Very very few games provide its unique blend of post apocalyptic atmosphere and survival elements which is the main reason most people play them. Its so rare to find a game with its level of dialog depth and player choice with such an interesting backdrop so if you are single and looking for a deep game to literally sink hundreds of hours into then this is your game.

Sure, combat can be painfully tedious and you will find yourself save scumming the whole way through because the crits are fucking bullshit but in the end its a rewarding experience.

FO2 desperately needs a UI overhaul and several quality of life patches but its not a deal breaker by any means.

>>4818581
Dude if you'd shut the fuck up for a minute and knew what the fuck you were talking about, killap did release a bugfix patch without his useless RP additions.

>>4818614
No need to be such a rude motherfucker, my dude. I forgot about that, I'm sorry that, unlike you apparently, I'm a human being with flaws.

>>4813797
>the combat is satisfying
>>4813805
>the combat system is crispy and fun

The combat is even worse than the Gamebryo games.

>>4818843
Go back to /v/ already

>>4813689
>>4813692
Meh. They are cheap enough and fallout 1 is short. They are both buggy and focus on terrible combat and terrible inventory management. But then, that's the very core of the franchise from 1to 4.

>>4818639
Big ones if you're telling Fallout newbies to dive headfirst into shit.
And even still, the bugfix patch breaks way more than it fixes if you want to move on the overworld faster than a snail or engage in melee/unarmed.

>>4817493
unofficial patches pretty much exist for every bethesda game from oblivion to FO4 so you're pretty much fine.

What's the fucking point of this thread? There are endless fallout threads on /vr/ so obviously many of us like them. Just play the fucking thing and make your own decision, if you're not hooked then drop it.

>asking on /vr/ if an extremely popular retro game is worth playing

>>4813797
>>as they're isometric
They are cavalier oblique

What's a good build for a first time playthrough?

>>4819653
Gifted + Small Frame, 10 in PE (affects your hit rate), AG (most important combat stat, affects the number of your action points) and IN (gives you a lot of skill points), 1 in CH (you can level up Speech without investing in CH), mid-ish everything else. Make sure to not get shit LK, as it affects your crit hit rate. Tag Small Guns, Lockpick and Speech. Dump all your points from the first few levels into Small Guns, until you can shoot things in the eyes reliably (that's the best attack in the game).

This is the general idea. Feel free to tweak it a bit according to your personal preferences.

You can get surgery later in the game, which gives you permanent stat buffs, so it might be advisable to not get any 10's at character creations. Also the Power Armor gives +3 ST, so don't put too much into ST. IIRC 5-ish should be enough.

>>4817535
>certainly can't trust them with burst weapons
Stand behind them. Sulik with a G11 wrecks Enclave niggers.

>>4819653
Gifted is better than every other trait and the only reason not to take it is to purposefully challenge yourself.

>>4819663
Alright, thanks for the tips.

>1 in CH
Is Charisma really not used for anything important in the game?