Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition Reviews

clunky gunplay, uninteresting story, and incredibly buggy. huge step down from the original games, which is equally surprising as it is disappointing. EDIT: on another note, jesus christ is broken steel imbalanced. did anyone playtest this shit before it got shipped?

deeply flawed game, also completely broken on windows 10 and 11. you should only buy this if you wanna play new vegas with tale of two wastelands installed. contextually, bethesda's idea of a fallout 3 radically differs from the original premise of the black isle fallouts, both in a worldbuilding sense and in the format of the game. one of these changes is fine, the other has more or less ruined the fallout franchise. the format of the game is fine; bethesda's implementation of shooter mechanics are mediocre at best but, lets be honest, its the right direction for the franchise to have taken in regards to both attracting a wider playerbase as well as the overall smoothness of player exploration. dialogue options (though mostly horribly written) are implemented well enough and allow for an rpg-lite sort of experience compared to classic top-down rpgs like baldurs gate, arcanum or even the older fallouts. menus are relatively easy to navigate and the overall vibe of the game is still relatively consistent with the fallout franchise. in a way, its one of the first vibes-based action rpgs. this brings me to my primary criticism of both fallout 3 and every subsequent bethesda installment in the fallout franchise; they are all only fallout games because of some vague, vibes-based assessment of the original top-down crpgs. the environments and locations certainly have the same feel of the older fallout games, the world is coated in this greenish, irradiated tint to seem like a fallout game, there are all these old fallout factions we all know and tolerate. but they are not inherently able to match the charm of the original fallout games---in fact, they act as shells of their og counterparts! the brotherhood of steel and the enclave's existence in this game are both exceptionally black and white, there is no sense of personal investment that you can possibly have beyond liking their armor or their combat dialogue! the brotherhood of steel especially has somehow morphed from this strange, kooky bunch of socially awkward techno-fetishists to ideologically pure, radically kind knights in shining armor, and the enclave has morphed from this vestigial organ of pre-war america into this all-seeing skynet-esque antagonist, evil in an exceptionally obvious and bizarrely unintelligent way. and the brotherhood's estranged siblings, the outcasts, are overwhelmingly boring! they are a flawed and mediocre attempt at bringing back the VIBES of the old fallouts with these west coast ideological purists, but are seemingly unable to bring any of that charm and inherent intrigue that the original depictions of the brotherhood had! quests in this game are SO BORING! there are like three total quests in this game that are at all interesting on a conceptual front, but all end up falling into that classic bethesda trap of becoming extremely mediocre fetch quests which do nothing but act as xp boosts to your already overpowered and completely unchallenged, multi-tool character into even more of a superhuman. and of course we can't forget about the main story, one of the most god awful, horrendously written snooze-fests i or anyone else with half a brain have ever had the displeasure of having to go through to get to the even more annoying post-game dlc (which are also, for the most part, bad!) you as a player are treated like your character is at the beginning of the game, a baby with absolutely zero agency throughout every single one of this games ~30 main and side quests and however many other quests are in the combined five dlcs for this exceptionally bland game. the quests in this game are so boring players have a tendency of completely AVOIDING most of them and end up making their own game out of location exploration, looting, and shooting random roaming bands of enemies that can be found in the wasteland or in dungeons! yes, you will have more fun NOT engaging with this ROLE-PLAYING GAME'S writing and story! and this is only exemplified in subsequent bethesda releases, not just from the fallout franchise! this company loves making you fall asleep at the wheel and do nothing but shooty shooty or stabby stabby and looty looty! this games post-release dlc content is only marginally better in some instances than the base game, and is demonstrably worse (somehow) in others. broken steel, operation anchorage and mothership zeta are, potentially, three of the worst expansion packs ever released for any videogame ever. broken steel only exists as a reason for the player to not have to make a new character to keep playing through the same old gameplay loop bethesda begs us to stick with, its writing is still horrific and the new enemies and weapons added are merely reskinned and buffed versions of already present enemies and weapons (except for the tesla canon) in order to account for the level cap bump provided with its release. operation is a call of duty game with fallout 3's primitive first person shooter mechanics that takes itself way too seriously to be anything more than a slog. and mothership zeta is a big old nothingburger, just a fat slice of nothing with a side of zilch. the other two relatively okay expansion packs, the pitt and point lookout, only maintain their intriguing nature through the environmental storytelling that they send your way. the pitt holds onto the flaws of bethesda's baffling writing decisions with one of the worst twists ive ever seen in any of their games, and only maintains player interest through the steel-ingot gathering exploration section (which you could look at as the first attempt at an extraction shooter ever if you wanna be silly) and the construction of post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh. point lookout's story is fine, nothing special but also nothing offensively bad; the themes of occultish mystery combined with the swampy environment of point lookout itself adds a neat little charm that leaves me relatively excited to continually revisit this one over and over again, despite the buffoonery of the rest of the content for this game. in conclusion, this is not good. its actually quite bad. there are some good things in here and other very very very very very oh god why did you do this bad things in here, and unfortunately the latter is far more common than the former.

Still the classic fps Fallout we all know and love. Its been since 2012 since I have done a run through, and in 2025 its still fun to play. It's amazing how much you forget. The nostalgia is truly great.

Even after getting past the immediate crash-at-launch bug, ironing things out with mods, and being a big fan of the other fallout games, I still just can't enjoy 3. Between repetitive assets, poor enemy placement, and awful terrain navigation it feels like a slog to get anything done at all, or to get anywhere at all. The biggest things it has going for it are its writing and freedom of choice, which, considering the age of the game, it does respectably well. I imagine, like many of the reviews seem to indicate, if you're revisiting this with rose-colored glasses, you'll probably enjoy it a lot more.

clunky and kind of difficult but a really interesting game, especially if you are into US history. Do a playthrough on easy for your first time because having an understanding of the layout of the world is important to being successful. On hard mode general exploring can be brutal if you dont have full knowledge of the combat system.

I have not been able to get this damn thing to work across 3 different machines. Just buy it so you can import it into FNV via TTW

if you have windows 10 or 11 the game will not load title screen or if it does you start your game immediate crash and your booted from the game. don't bother wasting your money or time bethesda got microsofted into a dark era

i learnt english by playing this game (and skyrim). wonderful open world story driven rpg shooter. even better with mods. such a nostalgic connection with me and this game. combat and visuals ain't much but it's enough to hold it all together whilst you engage into stories and athmosphere

Without a doubt THE best game of its time and imo alltime as well... Three thousand hours in and never once has the game dissapointed. (most of my hours are on my old 360). It's a great game that does NOT require mods to be a good game such as skyrim. (I hate skyrim). If you like it better modded all power to you but in all my years never once have I modded it. 10/10 reccomend

If anyone wants to play Fallout 3 and New Vegas, just look up "Tale of Two Wastelands mod". It basically combines both games (you can still play them separately) and makes it so Fallout 3 runs on New Vegas' game engine. It's totally worth it.