I'm replaying Fallout 3 for the first time since launch and it is blowing my mind how much I underappreciated this game the first time I played it. Things that felt unforgivably janky on my first playthrough now feel charming, which is pretty surprising to me.

I was definitely a lib when I first played and didn't fully appreciate a lot of the story elements. Not to say that the politics of Fallout are uniformly "good" but they're so much better than most games. It definitely has a lib streak (the way it handles the "sneaky" Chinese etc.) but it also has some incredible moments where it manages to break out of lib brain.

There are so many little things about Fallout 3 I didn't appreciate the first time that now are making me say "holy shit this game is special". Both gameplay and story wise.

I think it was actually playing through Disco Elysium that set the stage for me to finally appreciate how good Fallout 3 really is. I had never really connected with a PC style RPG before that. I was always a JRPG guy where dialog trees and whatnot are not a thing. I guess what I'm saying is that Disco Elysium was so good it made me appreciate an entire genre of games like I never have before.

I could ramble about this Fallout shit forever - I have had so many "WTF THIS IS AWESOME" moments on this playthrough.

Any of y'all have similar experiences where you had to beat your head against a game for a while before it made sense?