1 month and 15 days later, i have finished my modded Fallout 2 playthrough, Restoration and all. Holy fucking SHIT was I a fucking retard, to be unable to get this thing working 5 years ago.
As someone, who played Fallout 2 since i was a 11 year old, and who did 6 playthroughs on vanilla Fallout 2, i cannot express how impressed I am with both Restoration and accompanying modifications.
The game runs buttery smoooth, is fully modable and is stable as a concrete foundation - i did not got a single CtD or Save file corruption, not ONCE (with Fallout et tu i did got 4 CtD), although, around NCR, every save load took around 10 seconds longer and i was beginning to worry, if my file got corrpted - no such thing!
It was like a good old time, slowly working my way through the game, quest by quest, location by location, savouring all the new content. Gameplay wise, i do liked the new areas (EPA adds a lot of content, along with goodies that can permanently and temporarily boost your Primary statistic, free armour, weapons and new companions, although most of that requires high science and repair skills), I liked the expansions of some of the old quests (Lara's turf war in Den, Stark's scouting quest in Vault City, using the Tanker to get to Oil Rig) and the reimplemented cut content, it made a great game even greater, i don't think i disliked any of the new location, although i see why people would be miffed with places like Abbey or EPA, personally, i treated them as a fan addition to expand on the "canon" ingame lore, like with EPA's FEV info. I liked the Abbey mainly as a direct representation of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz, even though it was mainly a collection of fetch quests.
I decided to also play as a crit oriented sharpshooter, first with small guns, then with energy weapons, and, after running this build in two different games: do NOT start with Finesse (and this applies for early melee builds too). I know that +19/20 crit chance can be tempting early on, but i assure you, you will, realistically, hit someone in the eyes or limbs 2, maybe 3 times out of 10, let alone make any dmg to them, not to mention killing them. Even when you max your offensive skill above 100% early, without the perks you still won't be as effective as you would like to be, which will either needlesly prolong combat or leave you ded. Just take Fast shot or Jinx and just mutate the trait on lv 21.
I do like that with the drug from EPA you can cheat and get the full 5 men party with only 6 charisma
Here is me and the boys fucking up Navarro (ignore the Deathclaw, he was more of a liability then any real help):
Also: the Pulse rifle crit capability is wastly overrated: i was eye-shotting Enclave soldiers 2 out of 10 times (energy weapons 150%, 10 Luck, Better criticals, Living Anatomy, BRD x 2)) while, at the same time, i was reliably one/two shotting them with Gauss rifle crit shots to the eyes, head or groin (same stats). I don't give a shit that you can eye-crit a Deathclaw, Floater, Supermutant or Alien/Wanamingo - end game is fighting hordes of Enclave solders with sentry bots and you sure as shit can't reliably crit kill them with Pulse rifle, so much for "muh 300 dmg eye shots".
Oil Rig was more me tard-wrangling my team to not rush forward and get ventilated by 6 shot gauss salvo next turn, rather then actuall challenge (although i got one-tapped by the minigun turret on two occasions, was really weird). Also, first time i forgot to leave my party at the hall and silently infiltrate the base, just went in and started blasting shit left and right, Sulik and Cassidy were particularly vicious with the civvies, once they killed the soldiers they went straight for them.
I decided to keep the turrets online for the final battle, but i did recruited Granite, wasn't sure how much hurt would Horrigan dish out per turn, on top of the turrets, so i wanted his company to soak up the dmg. Surprisingly - not much, around 40-50 dmg per turn on Adv. Power armor, so easily tankable with a set of Tesla armor. Wasn't able to cripple him though, so i just shot him to death - Granite delivered the 2 dmg Coup de grâce:
Overall - i had an absolute blast and the experience made me feel 15 years younger, when times were simpler and much less ghey.
I wanted to play Nevada next, but, honestly speaking, i had my fill with isometric Fallout games and would like to try something else.
Wanted to test London, but, after reading about the constant technical problems, decided against it - i have a feeling the potential entertainment value would be diminished by the crash-induced frustration.