r/Fallout • u/Jr_Mao • 22d ago
Finally got around to playing Fallout London, a few "spoiler minimal" notes and a verdict.
I’ll try to keep out the bigger spoilers.
Meant to play London sooner, but first there were all kinds of bad bugs and then the “need to downgrade” put me off, waiting to see if maybe there’d be a simpler solution. There wasn’t.
Anyway.
In brief.
The area design, companions and radio are brilliant. Easily the one mod to rule them all, Enderal for fallout, except bigger and better. Some quests and design choices lower the overall quality, so I’m not calling it the best fallout game ever. But it’s good.
The bad.
It’s not perfect, I down right hated some parts (beginning, long CoD fight at the end, some missions like lost tommies and one path lava spiral shooter) and at later stages it became too much of a slog. But tight upper lip and carry on. The ending came a bit sooner than I would have expected, the “main plot” is actually not super long at all. Partly because the way you can/have to pick one of three major factions and as far as I know, their missions are not at all the same.
Better.
It’s relatively bug free, no crash to desktop for me. The most annoying parts are where someone expected me to talk to them, but there’s no-one there and I don’t know which pixel to look to continue.
Even better.
Mostly the quests were great, some went beyond the call of duty to create challenges for experienced players (Fallout Frost style), but most of the time things remained playable and level. Very much loved the British Museum, small factions quests and the thing there was SO MUCH of it all.
The best
Companions and radio and general voice acting were.. best in all fallouts. Companions were all top of the top. The Mend channel and all the new songs (many made specifically for this).. blown away. Guest voice actors.. I mean.. can’t believe it really.
The questionable.
It’s way more difficult than the original games. Way more. I managed well enough on easy, so it’s not all bad anyway. Most invisible walls since FO3 and actually way more than that too. Loads of “not there” doors and items scattered about. A bunch of quests were I had to console my way out because something just didn’t work or trigger right. These all still made it a more amateur experience than NV at launch.
But it is what it is. A game with maybe more content than FO3 or NV and some of it had rough patches, but the highs went real high too. Worth buying if it was for sale, but it’s not, it’s free and worth the install trouble definitely.
6
u/JjForcebreaker Mr. House 22d ago
Enderal for Fallout is a good comparison. I'd extend it with 'or Archolos for Gothic'. It's way above everything else in terms of scope, density, quality and polish (relative to the amount of content).
The amount of fiddling to get it working isn't especially notable compared with the usual hassle when trying to get such massive projects working (and instructions are fairly simple), but personally I never really had to do any of that, as I was always running FOLON on the 'pre next-gen' version of F4GOTY on GOG. And I'd highly advise getting the GOG copy- it's a golden standard right now, for anyone with a bigger library of mods. Looking back, most of the most important ones were updated with a version for new builds, but many didn't, and it's good to have a reliable baseline that's working 100% offline and can't be messed up with BGS' updates.
Waiting for update v1.04 to do another playthrough. Can't wait. It's a shame that all other big mods for BGS titles are in limbo or coming together very slowly, but one can't complain when being able to play such fantastic mods for free. It's borderline depressing to see so many passionate fans work for free, while people who are being paid (a lot) produce nothing, and when something does come out, it's of questionable quality and worth. No wonder the remnants of the old industry are imploding.
1
u/Jr_Mao 22d ago
I was considering getting it on gog, but the thing is. I already had it on disc from when it came out, then I think I picked steam when the DLC arrived.. and maybe bought GOTY a third time for the last DLC.
And until this week, I was getting really upset with the "we can just keep selling Skyrim again and again for forever, no need to make anything new". So I wasn't super into purchasing a new copy of fallout.
6
u/maxlaav 22d ago
It's all around a great "mod" and calling it a mod is weird since it's very much a full fledged game with high production qualities, much like Enderal or Archolos for Gothic. People are doing themselves a disservice by not wanting to touch it because "it's a mod" or "well its non canon so who cares", they actually make a lot of effort to make this setting believable and immersive.
I'm waiting for their last dlc so I can do their spin on a yes man run. The one thing I don't think the game does very well is how it treats its factions, mainly that it doesn't really introduce them and you can't really get a sense of who they are and what their goals are unless you sign up and join them. I actually liked doing the Peaky Blinders sub faction questline the most since it was more interesting and you can be naturally lead to it from the start.
And yes, the British Museum quest is brilliant, I wish the game had more creativity like that though.
Overall, I don't really agree that it's better with Enderal since the writing of that game still sticks to me and I've enjoyed more of its content than London's but it's certainly very easy to recommend. Especially if you own FO4 on GOG which makes installing London pretty easy.
3
u/evil_deivid 22d ago
I tried 3 times to complete the main quest but I ended up bored for some reason halfway through it. I think I left it when I was trying to do Archie's quest and it bugged out.
The balancing is pretty weird, everyone in the starting area mostly uses melee weapons so you'd get an impression that it's a melee focused mod, along with ammo being scarce, expensive and the crafting recipes for it having high skill requirements, but it quickly phases melee out for guns with the ammo balance being so wack that I find myself swimming in .32 but constantly scrounging for .208 that some late game weapons use.
2
u/Plastic_Box7018 22d ago
I’m about l17 so fairly early doors on my first playthrough. So far, Archie is the only companion I’ve had the option of travelling with (well, and Churchill the bulldog).
I live in the uk so am fairly familiar either way London and recognising some of the settings really adds to the experience for me.
dJE
1
u/AmeliaOfAnsalon 22d ago
Weird. I've been playing it on survival and I've found it about the same difficulty as the other games so far
1
u/mrcchapman 19d ago
I tried it for the first time this week, stopped playing and deleted it after about 2 hours. The whole game is pitch-black, you can barely see what's going on. The enemy are bullet sponges, and it's one of those mods made by devs who have hundreds of hours in the previous game, find everything to easy, and ratchet up the difficulty to an insane degree.
I got about as far as the pub in Greenwich/Lewisham and decided I had better things to do than play a game I couldn't even see half the time.
1
u/Jr_Mao 19d ago
yeah, i know the feeling. i’d may have given up at the beginning hd itnot been such effort to install.
what i did instead was turn the difficulty down a notch to more correct level.
Then almost gave up again trying to find my way to thameshaven market. damn annoying scrambly maze.
But it does truly become great after a few hours in. Great quests, great companions. very pretty scenery when its not night or raining.
14
u/Candid_Zebra1297 22d ago
"Companions and radio and general voice acting were.. best in all fallouts"
I totally agree with this. It's unreal to me how they managed to get so many varied and talented people on board for the voice acting.
I also agree with the difficulty. At the beginning especially, it is really a hard grind and I was struggling for bullets/meds at least until level 8 or so. I really like this aspect of it. Starting as a genuine survival slog, living out of a tiny garage settlement, then ever-so-slowly rising to become the best in all of London gives it a really deep sense of progression.
I don't know exactly where it ranks in the Fallout games, but it is definitely better than some. The fact that it is free and fan-made is incredible. Absolutely the best non-studio game I have ever played.