For those who are into story-driven games (e.g., Disco Elysium), Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 have some of the best stories, characters, and random encounters you will ever find.
I found it boring and incredibly pretentious, and it's possible to suddenly die for seemingly random reasons - for example, I dropped the game after examining a parked car caused me to die. I don't remember the details as to how the game justified that because I was pretty fed up with it at that point.
If you really want another game with Fallout 1-like gameplay, check out Atom RPG. It's currently $6 on GOG so it's probably for sale on Steam too. I got stuck on that one too when I got to a point where my melee-focused build was causing me to get blasted to bits before I could even touch my enemies in a crucial part of the game, but at least I had dozens of enjoyable hours of gameplay before I got to that part.
I got several morale game overs (one of them from a 12 year old bully, that didn't feel good) before I realized there's a button to take Magnesium to restore the lost sanity. So I feel you, but I pressed on and it's a quite rewarding gaming experience
I'm afraid I did too- the overblown purple prose of the intro sequence made me roll my eyes, and also had too many errors for my liking (the vo says "conscious" instead of "conscience" or something like that, which as a voice artist and sometime voice director, annoyed me - did nobody pick that up?) Some of the performances I found excruciatingly flat and unnatural. I couldn't get more than half an hour in.
Not sure when you played it, but the "Final Cut" edition fixed a lot of the grammatical errors and also re-cast a lot of the voice actors. When I played it it was a very polished experience so I am willing to bet you played the old version.
Also the original creators have been forced out of the studio by scam artists. So if you want to buy the Final Cut edition, keep in mind that none of that money will go back to the people who worked on the game.
It's a great game, I just started it a few months ago. It takes me a lot of mental energy to sit down and get started when I've been on a break. More than most games.
For those who are into story-driven games (e.g., Disco Elysium), Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 have some of the best stories, characters, and random encounters you will ever find.
See you all at the Cafe of Broken Dreams!