Fallout 2 is one of those hen's teeth-like situations in which sequels outshine the original, by undertaking that craziest of concepts: fixing what the first one did badly - for example, the lack of companion AI in Fallout 1 or the initially game-ending timed quest - polishing what the original did well - creating an even darker (arguably) and more expansive story, a much larger scope - and improving on what the original was - a much better sense of level progression, no level cap, not having to finish playing the game once you finish the main quest line, even though there was no cohesiveness between the various locations, they each had their own internal consistency allowing you to become a different type of person or character in each.

I remember putting in SO many of my highschool playing time in this game and have never regretted it ever. The initial version that I had came with a well known problem when it came to loading games. Oldschoolers will remember it could take up to minutes - depending your machine, and I had a very old one by those time's standards - to load a saved game. I would wake up, start up the game, click load game - then make my bed, change and brush my teeth - to barely return to the computer and find the game loaded. I also remember that it was one of the greatest moment of my personal gaming history when I found a patch for that particular problem on a CD that came with a computer game magazine - this was still a couple of years before dial-up was a thing so finding something THAT valuable on a computer #gaming magazine CD was mind-shattering.