If the mostly forlorn and sometimes disturbingly cheery opening cutscenes do not suggest so already, Fallout has the theme of eking out a survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - often by any means necessary.
And what means they are! The story certainly does not hold back on the extrapolation of the things that humankind would do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world (often at the cost of their own humanity). These range from barbaric brigand lifestyles and barely concealed cannibalism to authoritarian societies that dictated the roles of members like they are parts of a well-oiled machine and the ever-durable tried-and-proven-useless state of denial (even though many of the characters in this game had been born long after the disintegration of civilization) - and, of course, delving into blissful madness. The developers were certainly wise in adopting some of the most poignant elements in previous works of fiction involving a desolated Earth.
The latest quest in struggling to survive, and the one that the game entrusts the player character to, is the finding of a solution to the supply disruption of a commodity that is all too taken for granted until it has become precious little. This story design was certainly to the game's benefit, as most RPGs of the time were yet another good-versus-evil endeavour that had long ceased to be anything but original.
Of course, the story in this game offered deeper depth than the struggle to survive. There are plenty of twists and turns, and the story already applies pressure on the player with events that will occur with specified outcomes - most of them unfavourable to the player - if the player does not do something about the catalysts for these events. Of course, this pressure does feel a bit artificial and uncalled for; wary players will soon resort to making multiple saved games for insurance, and this is not a very good solution, as will be explained later. Nevertheless, the story can be rather gripping, and this is certainly a plus for this RPG.
Graphics-wise, this game was not really pushing the limits of hardware and graphics programming at the time. Fortunately, the 2D-sprites and maps, along with any animations that they have, are designed with enough details to portray the theme of the game, together with their nuances like character personalities effectively (the ones for Super Mutants are especially amusing). However, the same cannot be said for the design of models for items that had been dropped on the ground. Many items, if they happened to have been dropped or placed into the game world, are static and often barely discernible from the other things on-screen. Despite the game's efforts to provide some assistance in looking for these items, placing the mouse cursor over them is essentially a pixel-hunt - which is a trait of poorly done adventure/puzzle games that has little place in an RPG like Fallout. Fortunately, a simple solution is to not drop any items at all.
On the other hand, there are a few of the quests in this game involves picking up items placed into the game-world like this, and bugs (or simply bad map design) in the game sometimes cause them to be obscured from sight or simply missing altogether. It can be quite aggravating when this happens, though some very critical items have been, to the credit of the wiser quest designers, highlighted with in-game effects like peculiar lighting.
Sound-wise, the game has many sound effects and sound-tracks that go hand-in-hand with the theme of the game, much like (most of) the graphics do. Forlorn moans of winds passing through valleys, faraway voices humming tunes of ennui and ominous melodies accentuate certain areas of the game. However, there are also bugs affecting the audio of the game, especially those for noisy machines. (Patching the game and updating sound drivers do fix this somewhat.)
The gameplay of Fallout is what one would expect from most RPGs: there is the usual gaining of levels, improvement of stats and of course, lots of looting involved. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of Fallout's RPG system (and one that has been copied in many other RPGs or games with RPG elements later) is the perk system, which the player can use to give their guy/girl permanent power-ups, which may or may not be useful. Couple that with an array of skills and a set of primary statistics, a wise RPG player will realize that Fallout has plenty of character builds that can be fine-tuned to suit their whims and play-styles. Yet, getting an "I-Win!" combination is quite difficult if the default character advancement system is to be used (without resorting to third-party data editing tools, of course).
Players who dislike chance-based gameplay will have to be warned here; Fallout has systems for combat and non-combat activities that are based on die rolls. These systems also happen to have fixed minimum and maximum possibilities for just about every action that require die juggling, so missing a huge, clumsy enemy like a Super Mutant at point-blank range with a Minigun altogether is still possible (& likely to be angrily frustrating). Likewise, actions that are near impossible to succeed at (unless already set as impossible without meeting certain pre-requisistes by quest designers) are do-able; it won't take persistent players long to realize that the save/load feature can be exploited in this manner (if they can solve any long loading time that they have, that is).
Inventory management can be daunting, as Fallout doesn't seem to have a large enough inventory screen to display everything that the player has. Still, there is little reason to carry everything that can be carried (this, and the weight limit governed by the player's stats). Items dropped on the ground will eventually disappear (or even get picked up by NPCs programmed to pilfer everything not bolted down), so it is fortunate that the game does make items placed in containers located in permanent settlements in the game-world quite securely stored (but these also disappear eventually - and it does encourage backtracking, which is a an outcome of game design that is dubious at best).
Interacting with NPCs mostly involve text-based dialogue (though there are some important NPCs who actually have faces displayed on-screen), which for the most part are written in a witty manner (that would then become an icon of the Fallout IP). Some bugs do plague these conversations as well, often stymieing quests; again, patches do alleviate these issues somewhat.
The story of the game is often interwoven into the interaction with NPCs. Certain dialogue and monologue by NPCs play a part in showing what players can do in this game, as well as the consequences of their decisions (as long as said NPCs have not been killed of course). There is even a special ending reserved for players who are absolutely, indiscriminately murderous. The game does provide some indications of what is to come through the Karma & Reputation system, so the player is not exactly left lurching around fearing the unforeseen.
As an important aspect of RPGs, the gear that the player can equip in Fallout has to be mentioned here. There are plenty of things that the player can don, ranging from simple rags to suits of power armor. The heat that the player can be packing is even more diverse. All of them serve to strengthen the sci-fi, post-apocalyptic theme of the game, to its benefit.
Fallout is a very immersive game, but even so, it does have some flaws that jolt players once in a while. Some have already been mentioned.
As stated earlier, players of this game may develop the habit of making many saved games. Unfortunately, the size of saved games can really balloon, proportional to the player's progress through the game. It probably will not matter to players who already own huge hard drives, but to people with mid- to low-level machines of the era of this game (1995 to 1998) can be hard pressed to resort to this measure; this reviewer certainly was. Considering that the retail version of the game is known to have bugs that corrupt saved games, this is a painful issue.
Still, replaying certain sections of the game from scratch can still be quite enjoyable, due to so many ways (for an RPG of that time) that a player can approach a situation (especially if violent solutions are sought). The game sometimes even has unexpected surprises for the player in the next replay, and most of these come in the form of very amusing random encounters.
Furthermore, the technical support for this game at the time was commendably reliable. Perhaps to the game's dubious benefit, many patches have been released for the game and the game files themselves are perfectly capable of being modified by third parties (which of course, resulted in game-wrecking exploits as much as game fixes).
To conclude this review, Fallout can be said to be quite a flawed product, but dedicated support from developers (and the fan community) prevented technical issues from diminishing the epic feel of the game. Fallout certainly had set new pars for the making of RPGs (for both game design and bug-fixing, and more), that much is apparent.