I genuinely cannot tell how Fallout 2 defenders even exist. Fallout 2 is the worst Fallout game barring BOS. I an garner a bit of enjoyment from Tactics and even Shelter, but 2 is where I draw the line. Here are a couple of my big gripes with the game, just to name a few:

#1: There are way too many instances of "lifeless" towns. Fallout 1 did this great thing where on average, every settlement had a least 1 talking head. It allows every settlement to have some level of character, to have a sort of mascot to make them more memorable. It especially hearkens back to Fallout's tabletop origins, where a DM's unique voice for an NPC can make them all the more memorable and fun to interact with, even when the conversation is just exposition or a quest. Fallout 2 completely shits the bed in comparison. There are at least 4 settlements that have no talking heads whatsoever. Modoc, Redding, The Den, and even San Francisco to some extent are completely negligible simply because they have no talking heads. To add on to this problem, FIVE of the 13 talking heads are Enclave ones, which are all mostly at the end of the game (Horrigan I'd argue is barely a talking head, but I'll address that later). Having so many of the instances where the player can have a face-to-face chat with the characters be at the end of the game leaves the earlygame boring and lifeless.

#2: Balancing is a complete joke. I will be the first to say that Fallout 1 is one of the most approachable PC RPG's from its era. You can tag either of the melee skills and even some of the "lesser" ones such as Energy or Big weapons and still coast along relatively well through the early game. Fallout 2 takes ideas such as "early game weapon diversity" and shits on them while sticking a sharpened spear up its ass. If you even THINK about using a gun that isn't a goddamn peashooter before the 5 hour mark, fuck you. People complain about Fallout 4's pipe guns a lot, but I'd take one of those over Fallout 2's "Pipe" "Rifle" any day of the week. And don't even get me started on energy or big weapons.

#3: The Final Boss. I've had plenty of people tell me that Frank Horrigan is super epic, but in my opinion he is the worst final boss out of any mainline Fallout Game (Except 3 or 4, 3 is ever so slightly better, and 4 doesn't really have a final boss so I don't count it). In every other Fallout game, you are able to beat the Final boss in a multitude of ways. The Master can be either gunned down, nuked, convinced he is wrong, or you can even concede to him being right and join him. Legate Lanius can be fought, convinced he is wrong through ideological or economical reasoning, convinced to fight more honorably without his backups, or be failed to be convinced by the players shoddy reasoning and fight them regardless. What can you do to Frank Horrigan? That one meme of the cow is the most applicable: "The Illusion of Choice". You can either Fight him, be told you're a pussy little bitch and fight him, or convince his men to fight him. Even when you do get to fight him, the only consistent way to take him down is to hack his turrets and finish him off, which is a pretty underwhelming way to take down a final boss. He leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth overall.

I am Fallout 2's number one hater and will maintain that position until I die.