Does Fallout 2's combat get better later on?

[Ronald Nand]

I decided to try Fallout 2, after hearing that the story was good and open ended, however I find the combat to be slow, boring and annoying so far. I've just left Arroyo and I'm making a small guns character and I haven't found any guns yet, but I don't like the basic combat.

Its incredibly annoying and tedious when my character is missing a scorpion 6 times in a row when its right in front of me, so far all I've been doing is hitting an enemy hoping I actually hit it, then backing away enough so it only has enough AP to move towards me.

Does this change later on when I actually get a gun, will I be able to consistently hit enemies later on?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's a very traditional RPG. Your combat skills will accrue over time, and you will get significantly more competent, yes. You'll also face increasingly more dangerous enemies.

So, the mechanics won't change, but you'll eventually be hitting things with regularity (and significantly more lethality).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Once you've gotten your small guns skill up to a decent level (80+) and found a decent gun you will see that hitting becomes more the rule than the exception, as long as you remain within effective range. By the end game you should be having a consistent 95% chance to hit no matter what the enemy and you should be able to one or two shot just about anything if you've been building right.

But yeah, unless your character is melee or unarmed focused the first few hours of Fallout 2 is a test in patience and frustration tolerance.

 

[scorptatious]

Yeah, Fallout 2's initial start kinda sucks unless you decide to make a character who specializes in melee or unarmed. That's one aspect I kinda prefer in Fallout 1. They actually give you a gun initially.

Still, once you do get a gun, (You can get one early if you lockpick the shed in Klammath) things become somewhat more manageable so long as you have been building right. (DO NOT put points into things like gambling or throwing. Pretty useless if you ask me) Also, if your Charisma is high enough, you can bring a bunch of NPC's along to help you out.

Just remember to save a lot as no matter how prepared you are, the game has a tendency to have the enemy one shot you via critical hits. -_-

Even then though, the game as a whole is definitely worth the initial hurdles.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

If you want to speed up the process of getting some firearms, there's a couple things you can do. I'm gonna spoiler tag it though, just in case.

Spoiler

In Klammath you have fairly easy access to two Small Guns, the Pipe Rifle and the 10mm Pistol. The Pipe Rifle is a fairly craptastic one-shot weapon that uses 10mm handgun cartridges, but it's also pretty easy to acquire. You can find it in Vic's place. The 10mm Pistol is a definite step up from the Pipe Rifle, but you need to venture into the molerat tunnels on the western side of town. You also need to have a pretty good eye, because it's an item that's placed on the ground rather than in a container or an enemy's inventory.

Your next best option is to travel to the Den (it's south-east of Arroyo). On the west side of town there are two shops, Tubby's and Flick's. Both shops sell firearms and ammunition. Now, you have three options here. Your first is to buy your items legitimately. This might be difficult this early in the game, unless you went around pickpocketing everyone in Klammath and selling off every single non-essential item you found. Your second option is to pickpocket the store owners themselves. This is also going to be difficult if you don't have a high enough skill level to pass the checks, so saving first is probably a good idea since it's likely going to take a few tries to get what you want. Your last, and probably easiest option, is to kill them and loot their corpses. Both of them are scumbags, and no one in town will really care if you dispose of them, so it's an easy way to potentially walk off with a 10mm SMG, a .44 Desert Eagle, a 12-Gauge Shotgun, and/or a .223 Hunting Rifle for free.

Lastly, and this one is admittedly pretty cheesy, there's an Easter Egg in the Den that can score you a free 10mm SMG, a suit of Metal Armor, and some other goodies. The catch is that you need to start a female character with the name Buffy, then speak to Rebecca Dyer, the owner of Becky's bar and casino. The first time you initiate conversation with her she'll hand over the loot.

There are some other ways to get easy early-game access to even more advanced firearms, but they either break the game's pacing pretty badly or abuse the hell out of various glitches.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Just wander into the den and kill the shopkeeper in the shop on the left...hey presto an smg and a desert eagle or just sell his goods to the other trader just down and right from it and you get the same result. It's the only shopkeeper in the game that isn't worth keeping alive for later trading. Also, there is a melee/unarmed trainer in Arroyo and Klamath making it easy to get to reasonable levels without spending skills at the start.

One little addition...try and take your core skills upto around 120% as soon as possible to avoid missing all the time

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

You get a gun soon, but the combat doesn't change too much.

My advice? Play Fallout 1 instead. It's heresy to say so, but I find it to be the far stronger of the two games.

Though if the uber-traditional style of the play isn't your brand of Nuka Cola, you won't enjoy 1 any more than two as they have the same engine.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Its incredibly annoying and tedious when my character is missing a scorpion 6 times in a row when its right in front of me, so far all I've been doing is hitting an enemy hoping I actually hit it, then backing away enough so it only has enough AP to move towards me.

Does this change later on when I actually get a gun, will I be able to consistently hit enemies later on?

That's RPG combat, either you like it or you don't.

But yeah, not blaming you for not enjoying the tutorial/opeing temple part of 2; that's a bit of a misstep.

 

[Cerebrawl]

break the games pacing? *cough* getting power armour near the start *cough*

Yeah I remember that you can just travel down to the enclave base(navarro) right off the bat, grab some mk 2 power armor and high end energy weapons, and go on your merry way.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

break the games pacing? *cough* getting power armour near the start *cough*

Yeah I remember that you can just travel down to the enclave base(navarro) right off the bat, grab some mk 2 power armor and high end energy weapons, and go on your merry way.

Why use Energy Weapons when you can swipe a Bozar from the inventory of the weapon shop guards in the first NCR zone? The Bozar is beastly as hell and the ammunition for it is dirt cheap, fairly lightweight, and incredibly common. Combine Power Armor Mk.2 and a Bozar, and you've effectively destroyed any semblance of challenge in the game's combat.

 

[Doom972]

First of all, go to the Options screen and change Combat Speed to maximum - there's no reason to have it slower.

Second, just get a gun in any of the ways mentioned in this thread. Once you get a 10mm SMG you are set for most of the game, as it uses the most common ammo and it can do insane amounts of damage when used up close in burst mode.

 

[Reduced_Silver]

I decided to try Fallout 2, after hearing that the story was good and open ended, however I find the combat to be slow, boring and annoying so far. I've just left Arroyo and I'm making a small guns character and I haven't found any guns yet, but I don't like the basic combat.

Its incredibly annoying and tedious when my character is missing a scorpion 6 times in a row when its right in front of me, so far all I've been doing is hitting an enemy hoping I actually hit it, then backing away enough so it only has enough AP to move towards me.

Does this change later on when I actually get a gun, will I be able to consistently hit enemies later on?

For all the love that Fallout 2 gets, from me included (it's my all time favourite), lots of people would agree that the very beginning is pretty bad, and where you are at things haven't warmed up yet still.

The combat is never very deep, but, yes, you will hit a lot more often and the kill animations are some of the best ever created.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I would say that it really doesn't get better later. Eventually, you'll be proficient enough in your weapon(s) of choice that you rarely miss and the shots that do land become incredibly powerful and you have enough health to shrug off just about anything and enough armor that anything short of anti-tank weaponry is a theoretical threat at best. In that regard, it gets easier but the game loses most of it's depth (and there wasn't a lot to it) in the process.

To explain, the game has harsh penalties for swapping out weapons. Early on, swapping guns or reloading is a substantial decision given how few rounds of combat your character can survive. Movement is equally risky at a the start as you are giving up any ability to fight any time you move. As you develop your character, you don't ever really gain new ways to play and your most complex decision is basically "Do I shoot burst and kill everyone or single shot and kill this one guy". By giving you better accuracy and far deadlier weaponry, choosing to do something other than fight becomes very low risk as it doesn't take many AP to kill your average foe when you're slinging plasma and have 120% energy weapons skill. Similarly, the risks to your person greatly decrease over time as only a tiny minority of enemies are armed with anything approaching heavy weaponry. Basically, as the game goes on, making the right choice from a very limited set of actions becomes fairly irrelevant as victory is all but assured from the outset.

This was, as far as I'm concerned, the fundamental weakness Fallout had in the first two games. It was greatly mitigated in the rarely-mentioned-favorably Fallout Tactics. Though that game didn't really give you more things you could do, vastly increased enemy counts, scaling lethality and giving the player an entire team to play with did a great deal to give the game tactical depth that the series always lacked. If you're going to play Fallout 2, the draw isn't the mechanics - they weren't even great at the time (compared to the contemporary Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate) but rather the story and world building. You can truly play Fallout 2 however you want and beat the game without much trouble. Sure, violence is always a solution but never (that I can recall) is it your only solution.