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?
Funny that you should bring up Fallout because it was Fallout 1 & 2 for me. These games are great, but for a zoomer like me, it took some time to get used to how the games actually worked. Similar story for the original Deus Ex as well.
I tried to start with Fallout 1 but I'm so stubborn when it comes to games sometimes I kept getting owned over and over. I'm hoping I'll get to the point where I feel the same about Fallout 1 and 2 as well. I haven't given up on them yet.
I guess a lot of it comes down to character creation and stats. It's totally possible to make a character that's completely inefficient if you do it wrongly enough. There's no shame in watching a guide on how to create a good character, or picking actual builds recommended by other players.
There's also a lot of hidden stuff that often ends up being quite helpful, so my recommendation would be to be extra nosy as well.
This is definitely part of the reason I had a semi-bad impression of Fallout 3. I made 2 horrible characters before I really figured out what made a build good or bad. Fallout 1 seems less forgiving than 3 lol.
I have like an unwritten rule where I try not to use guides unless I'm really boned but the older games really don't care if you wind up dead immediately lol.
So it has been hard for me to get into, but once I do figure it out I will probably like it that much more.
They're not that hard to get used to tbh, but Fallout 2 is a difficult game.
You go to the Den and east to Vault City, you're gonna get attacked by like five groups of bandits unless you waste skill points on outdoorsman and bam you're gonna die in 3 turns
I didn't even make it out the temple with the scorpions or something
The temple is perhaps one of the worst tutorial phases in every game ever. It's nothing short of a chore and not representative of the rest of the game at all.
It punishes all but melee and unarmed builds too... maybe the ill advised throwing run too, but that would need you running into (and dodging) the traps intentionally to pick up sharp sticks to throw
this is a good one lol. I had a mahjongg game on my first PC that I bashed my head into 'til I understood it
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is it for me, really difficult in some parts but I love that you can beat the game as a pacifist.
Crusader Kings is a dynasty simulator. You definitely get the most out of it by treating it like an RPG.
Into The Breach - eventually you figure out positioning in addition to damage-dealing, and then it gets really enjoyable.
Path of Exile just felt like a slower, uglier Diablo, until I progressed to the point where the game drowns you in options for skills/builds.
PoE 2 felt the opposite, for me, like there was such a pile of mechanics to get to grips with that I couldn't get properly invested in all the questing. I've been meaning to give it another go, just haven't had the inclination.
Oh, sorry, I totally subbed in Pillars of Eternity in my mind. I played both and they both have the same initialism, lol, and all of your points about Path of Exile also worked for Pillars of Eternity.
I've bounced off PoE repeatedly. Every time I start to get into high level, I begin to feel like the poor controls are holding me back and this makes me throw up my hands
Most high-end builds involve wiping out entire screens with a single skill. There's not much room for nuance or complexity. Much of the satisfaction comes from taking some bizarre build concept and making it work.
This is true for mapping, but for killing bosses some skills definitely play very differently and have mechanical complexity. Damage over time skills only require you to inflict the DoT once, then keep debuffing the boss occasionally to optimize damage. Other types of builds require different amounts of balancing your DPS versus staying in safe areas to avoid attacks. Ideally in PoE melee skills have very high damage with low uptime, so a melee character should be playing very dynamically, getting close to the boss when it does weak attacks or attacks that are easy to dodge, then quickly avoiding telegraphed moves. In practice though melee tends to be about the same damage (or worse) than ranged playstyles, with extra risk. Then there are spells that take time to cast or ramp up (especially channeled ones), so it offers a risk vs reward scenario where you may want to keep ramping up your damage from Blade Vortex or similar skills by casting them more, or you may just want to run. I think those things make the game much more fun, even if the main appeal is designing character builds and trying to work out how to get them geared up and working.
I agree with all that and I didn't mean to sound like I was ragging on the game. Also, in spite of countless hours invested, I've never quite hit the big time, mostly because I'd rather play what I enjoy than the most mechanically effective FotM builds.
And while bosses are the exclusive source for many items, it can be argued that it's about as profitable in the long term to run a mindless map farming build. That's not the same as fully engaging with the game, but it's a POV which makes up a large part of the discourse on any given build's "effectiveness."
I'm kinda going through this with Project Zomboid. Couldn't really get into it when I tried it at first, but the fact that trying again after my first dude died was so easy lead to me trying it again and again. I'm almost at a hundred hours now and I still suck but something about it absolutely has its hooks in me.
Eventually Dark Souls. I got really far on my first run years ago when I didn't know how to build, moved to a different system, and failed to make good progress the three or four times I've picked it up again. It's so bad I've played through 3, then 2 because I had a friend to play with. Don't know when we will get to DS though now.
I ran into the skeletons in the graveyard like 5 times and then later got owned by one of those big knight guys in a tower. Didn't beat the bridge demon the first 5 times. Didn't play it again for like 6 years.
I started with Demon's Souls but I had like 5 failed characters at least before I really understood the game lmao. Like ones with pretty significant time sunk into them.
its so much better than it was on release - I thought I was taking crazy pills from everyone saying it was good - then I went back and played like half of it recently and they fixed almost all of the stuff I didn't like about it.
Mass Effect 1. In my first play-through, I got stuck in Side Quest Hell and stopped playing for a long time until I remembered the game and started from scratch.
Oh there's a ton of games like this for me. Usually they're more in the vein of open-source roguelikes though. Games like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Elona, etc.
I have and will spend hours learning to play one of these goddamn games. I have nothing but hate for fucking Elona, if only because the Japanese > English translation is not great so you are forced to rely on wiki pages and whatnot detailing what the fuck a skill/spell/build/npc actually does, but you bet your ass I will probably play it tonight given its in my mind now lol
Finally people are actually playing fallout3 again. that's my favorite one.
