Fallout 2/YMMV


 * Complete Monster: The Enclave as a whole are pretty damn evil, but Frank Horrigan is easily the worst of them. They at least want to bring the United States of America back to it's glory days even if it means wiping out most of the human population in order to do so, Frank is simply a psychotic, racist, hypocritical brute who loves to hurt others and will stop at nothing to wipe out whoever gets in his way, even if it means condemning his allies to die while doing so.
 * Myron is also a loathsome little shit. The guy created a drug called Jet and tested on hundreds of slaves that all died before he got it just right. He doesn't give a damn at all that they died, and mocks the Chosen One for getting mad at him over their deaths. Add the fact that he's also a rapist and you get one nasty little teen.
 * Doctor Schreber. He created K-9 as an assistant, but K-9 disapproved of the doctor's horrible experiments, so one day, he bit him. So what does Schreber do? He disables his legs and sticks him in the corner of the room, so K-9 will be forced to watch every horrible experiment he does without being able to do anything about it.
 * Demonic Spiders:
 * Deathclaws are still around, and the game introduces the Enclave Soldiers, who will absolutely insta-kill you with their plasma rifles if you're at anything other than near-endgame levels.
 * Wanamingos. They're tough, hit hard, leave radiation damage, and tend to come in packs.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Sergeant Arch Dornan.
 * Even Better Sequel: Pretty much everyone agrees that it's pretty awesome. The first Fallout was good. Fallout 2 took everything it had, cut out the superfluous parts, improved the lacking parts, and polished it all to a gorgeous finish. The result is a larger world to explore, more involved quests, morally complex stories and characters, and much deeper gameplay with a large variety of new equipment and enemy types. The first Fallout seems like a beta or a demo for Fallout 2 when you look at the two together.
 * Evil Is Cool: Frank Horrigan has his share of fans due to this.
 * Game Breaker:
 * The Gifted Trait makes character creation a no-brainer. Once a player creates the antidote for Jet addiction, then Jet also makes the player absurdly powerful with no drawbacks. The Slayer and Sniper perks also turn into this by making the player character roll criticals for every attack.
 * Sniper's Game Breaker status comes not from simply adding more Criticals. It comes from the fact that when a burst is fired, every round in the burst has it's own critical roll. With 10 Luck, each projectile is guaranteed to be a critical. Miniguns have up to 30 round bursts. There Is No Kill Like Overkill indeed.
 * Boxing in New Reno. If you win, you get a perk giving you 12 normal damage threshold, and 4% to all resistances except fire. It is cumulative with armor. Normal damage is anything that isn't plasma, laser, fire, electricity and explosive. Which means that you will take no damage from most enemies, and half damage from most more powerful enemies, without taking armor into account. Most enemies who use laser, plasma, fire and explosives are either using low-tier weapons, using Awesome but Impractical weapons, or plain non-military personnel (who don't wear effective armor and don't have much Hit Points).
 * Living anatomy and bonus ranged damage. The former gives you +5 damage against biological targets, the later +2/+4 damage against everything when using firearms or energy weapons. These ignore any form of damage resistance (tested with an EMP Grenade against humans (every non-robotic enemy gains a 500% resistance to EMP). The damage increase is done to each bullet. The best gattling gun (which use extremely rare ammo) fires 25 bullets by burst. Assuming half of them (rounded down) hit (and from close range, they will), you inflict 12*(5+4) = 108 points of damage, enough to kill most target, not counting the normal bullet damage that goes through the armor.
 * The infamous "Navarro Run". From the second town in the game, it was possible (though very difficult) to trek all the way to San Francisco and get a quest to infiltrate the Enclave Base to steal some Vertibird plans. If you manage to survive all the random encounters (via Save Scumming and a high Agility stat) and get to the base, then you can easily complete the mission without any combat. In addition to getting the Vertibird plans, you're also awarded with a locker full of high end weapons (including a plasma rifle) and a suit of Enclave Power Armor, by far the strongest armor in the entire game, which makes you invincible to pretty much every enemy until you get to the endgame. Since this could be done literally in the first hour of the game, this is completely ridiculous.
 * The mighty Bozar. Despite looking like a sniper rifle, it is a minigun-type weapon that can be acquired very early, has a tremendous stopping power and uses the common .223 ammo. Acquiring it might take some save scumming depending on your stealing skill, and it eats up ammo like there is no tomorrow, but it can obliterate most enemies in one or two blasts. If they are packed close to each other, a single burst is perfectly capable of wiping out entire squad.
 * Higher levels of Unarmed skill unlock access to powerful special attacks, starting from the value of just 55%. They come with increased base damage, greatly increased critical chance and armour piercing values. With lousy 130% in Unarmed, the Chosen One can face in hand-to-hand combat everything on his path and beat the living shit out of it. Including things like deathclaws, wanamingos, Enclave's soldiers or supermutants. No need to use any sort of Unarmed weapon either (in fact, those decrease the damage, as they override the mighty power of bare knuckles with weapon's stats). Oh, and the best part? Unarmed can be increased by anything between +25 to +50% for free, without spending a single point on it. It is impossible to leave Arroyo with less than 55% in Unarmed due to free training.
 * It's actually quite difficult to break the game when playing on the max difficulty settings (one setting for combat-only, the other affects skill checks and skill levels), as most end-game enemies will stop missing, aim for the head, and roll criticals more often with their high-tech weapons. Keeping squishy followers alive becomes a real chore, at the very least.
 * Goddamned Bats:
 * Wolves. You're wandering around the countryside trying to get to New Reno, when you get stopped by three random encounters in a row with wolves. They can't do any damage at all to a decently leveled player, but there's a ton of them, you can't skip their moves, and your companions will likely burn through the ammo of whatever very powerful weapon you've given them to kill things they can just kick! They also have a nasty habit of circling around you and mauling you to death at lower levels. There's also the rats, who stop you from traveling around and force you to enter combat mode until you just step on them.
 * The random peasant children in the Den are some of the worst Goddamned Bats. They don't do anything but run around and try to pickpocket you, and unless you're prepared to get the Child Killer perk, you have no choice but to let them unless your steal skill is obscenely high. You can go with a more moderate option and hit them once. They won't ever bother you again.
 * Good Bad Bugs:
 * Probably not exactly a bug, but is still hilarious nonetheless: Wearing a suit of Enclave Power Armor actually makes you better at sex due to the strength enhancement. The fact that you're wearing a full suit of armor with no skin even visible doesn't seem to be a problem.
 * The broken computer quest in NCR. After Jack has blown himself up, you could repeatedly fix the computer, gaining 3000xp every time. Sadly, fixed in patches.
 * If you save Smiley in the Toxic Caves, he can later teach the Chosen One about geckos, increasing his Outdoorsman skill by 3%. You can ask him to teach you about geckos for the infinite amount of times and increase the Outdoorsman skill up to 300% if you want.
 * It Was His Sled: The Reveal that the Vaults were never intended to save anybody has become less shocking after every subsequent game made this common knowledge.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Being evil is still kinda OK (although at -500 karma, you get Badass Bounty Hunters after you). Being a slaver won't make you many friends, but it's a living. Killing children, though, is an irredeemable act that will get you not only bounty hunters but also stop many people from even talking to you.
 * One-Scene Wonder: Sergeant Dornan, who is only spoken to a handful of times and can be entirely skipped, but was apparently deemed important enough to be a "talking head" character. Despite his very small role though, being a Large Ham Drill Sergeant Nasty ensures that any player who spoke to this guy will remember him. He gets a nod in Fallout: New Vegas despite the minorness.
 * Player Punch:.
 * The Scrappy: First Citizen Lynette of Vault City. The developers were so aware of what an unlikeable, bigoted fascist she was that they added a hidden reward for those who have the stomach to always say exactly what she wants to hear, knowing hardly anyone would ever see it.
 * Myron is completely devoid of redeeming characteristics, except that to the player he is funny. His level-up quotes are priceless. Lugging him around for the entire game and giving him top-tier weaponry will also make him halfway decent at combat, especially if your character is strong enough that he won't have to fire off more than a couple of shots per battle. Also, he makes Super Stimpacks which are great for killing people without any downsides.
 * Myron takes this trope to eleven. If he survives the game, the ending says that . Even authors of the game hated him.
 * The Pariah Dog, a random encounter that joins the party randomly and becomes The Load.
 * Scrappy Level: The Wanamingo Mine. And there were not many fans of the Temple of Trials.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: When you have Goris and enter the combat mode, Goris always takes off his robes for several seconds before you can do anything.
 * That One Boss: Frank. Horrigan. Yes, he's the Final Boss, but he's just so damn difficult, he fits this trope like a glove. He's a 12 foot tall power armor wearing cyborg, meaning he can absorb tons of damage. He has power armor that deflects just about everything you throw at him, and he's got 999 health (just a little fact: the Final Boss of the last game had 500 health). Not only that, he carries around a Gatling Plasma Rifle that can easily kill you in one hit and moves around faster than a deathclaw, meaning he can attack you several times in one turn. Defeating him on higher difficulties is pretty much impossible unless you either take the Vindicator Minigun with you or talk a squad of Enclave soldiers into joining you and turn his own turrets against him. If you do that, he becomes much easier.
 * Tier-Induced Scrappy: Myron is by far the weakest character in the entire game. He has extremely limited weapon selection, low health, and will almost always run away from enemies. His only redeeming trait is the ability to make Stimpaks and Super Stimpaks if you bring him the right materials, but said materials are so uncommon that it isn't worth the trouble of dragging Myron around to use them.
 * Woolseyism:
 * A minor one found in the Russian pirated version of all places (which was also how most of the Russian Fallout fans got into the series, thanks to the official version not being released until 2006), where in start-up loading screens the words "loading" were replaced with something else like (note: translation accuracy not guaranteed): "Get in the line, Sons of the bitches" (where the Chosen One is captured); "Scavengers are immortal" (Guy wearing damaged Power Armor Helmet); "Leave the hope here traveler, you won't need it" (Chosen One silhouetted against car lights); "War, War never changes" and so on. There is also an image where the "Loading" was not replaced, since it kinda fitted the image. The alternate title "Vozrozhdenie" (Rebirth, Revival) may also be this for some, if only for intended irony.
 * The Polish translation has an example of the translator adding something just for fun. In the character menu, if you click on the Eye Damage entry, the original description says "This means your character has been seriously hit in one or both of your eyes. This affects your Perception." The translation adds an extra sentence that says "If you can read this text, the wounds aren't critical."