Aand that's Nevada down!
Overall I think I liked it more than Resurrection. It might lack some polish of the original Fallouts, but it's a great game nonetheless. The translation is solid - I did get some WTF moments, but other than a few non-critical cases where it was difficult to grasp what the author had in mind, it was entirely playable.
A few loose thoughts:
- The main story was fairly meh, but Fallouts were ever about their main storylines. Exploration is fun, there's a bunch of side-quests, all in all - good stuff. I think my personal high-point was the initial exploration of the Hawthorne base.
- Some side quests went a bit too hard into adventure game territory. Guessing you need to put a specific barrel on fire (and needing a one-use lighter in your inventory) to sabotage a ranch, or having to walk around using steal on NPCs to solve a fairly big quest in LV are examples of the lack of polish I mentioned.
- I went with an unarmed/ speech/ repair built, with some points put into science once I realized it's fairly useful here. There seems to be a lot to do for doctors and a bunch of doors to open for high-lockpick characters. Funnily enough, the few times I wanted to plant a bomb into someone's pants or steal a quest item, I succeeded every time despite not putting a single point in steal. Frankly, I have no idea how characters without repair would fare, this was probably one of my most often used non-combat skills.
- Unarmed was... OK, but lacked the necessary oomph until I grabbed a power fist from Machete which I quickly upgraded. The turrets at the end gave me a bunch of problems, I ended up savescum-popamoling EMP grenades. Good thing there was a way to temporarily deactivate a bunch of those in the ending location.
- Frankly, it feels as though the game was developed with energy gun users in mind. There is a bunch of those around, with some sensible early grabs. Energy guns/ speech/ repair, with some points put into lockpick, science, and doctor seem to be the way to go for the game.
- I have no idea what the infection stuff was about, I ended up hitting up a doctor or the NR autodoc to remove it now and then.
- I assembled the power armor at the end but ended up using a guide to identify necessary parts. Garage-made power armor gets me hard. It still felt less protective than I'd like it to, more like an armored environmental suit than a walking tank. I guess this could've been by design?
- The combat felt a bit odd. It managed to hit the sweet spot at the beginning, then became a bit too difficult until I grabbed the power fist/ slayer/ martial arts combo and was then a complete joke almost until the very end. Still, once the turrets showed up I was getting massacred anyway, there seemed to be no real way to withstand this sort of firepower, even while having PA, toughness, and being high on Psycho.
- I'm not sure how I felt about the way armor was doled out here. I liked the fact that you could put together an initial leather jacket and what ultimately was an improved leather armor but found little to switch to until I hit Salt Lake. The Nuka Cola repairman let me upgrade the metal armor to mk2, then reinforce and teslify it. Made me wonder, though - was there any combat armor available before the end-game dungeon?
- The Big Louis character was odd. Not sure what the author had in mind while writing him up. I ended up needing to dickpunch him to death on our first meeting, as my karma was too high, despite him being shown as a sort of antihero character that ultimately aims for peace and stability. Or this might be just the translation fucking with me.
- I'm not sure how I feel about the three-fold ending. Finishing the dungeon and then pulping the Reaper (what the fuck was that thing with his once-used Jedi powers?) felt like enough, following VC scenes felt unnecessary.
I feel like I have enough in me for one F2 mod. I guess I might take a shot at Sonora, then, AFAIK it's by the same author, right?
