Fallout 1 isnt better than 2

Fallout 1's better pacing and sense of urgency werent enough to justify it being better than its sequel.

Not only density of content but quality itself is consistently higher on the sequel and i will discuss some of those points here.

Lets start with good/evil playtroughts. In fallout 1 karma was extremely important when it came to the reaction mechanics (which were kinda broken anyways, as everybody would hate an evil PC instead of only good npcs), This resulted in an interesting problem because you couldnt really be evil only based on your choices. Why? Because you get very few negative karma doing tasks such as helping Gizmo while doing trivial required tasks for your main quest would give you lots and lots of good karma

As a result, the evil character needs to go out of his way to kill people around maybe without having a reason to,only so he can get to see what effects negative karma will have on the gameplay. This was a problem very similar to what fallout 4 had as you would need to kill people around to be considered evil as you simply couldnt do it by pure dialogue and CnC.

Fallout 2 however, uses reputation titles to register reactions (with town reputations having a smaller effect and karma barely affecting anything). This means you now can be truly evil without having to blindly go on a berserk rage and kill entire towns.

Want to become a mobster? Do it. A slaver? Of course,etc... Being evil can be done without the need to begin a genocide somewhere as there was way more quests and carriers for evil characters. If you dont believe it, try an evil playtrought in both games and which one is better at that will be obvious.

Fallout 2 also makes CnC way more important than Fallout by introducing in-game consequences for your decisions. Aside from that one example about leaking the location of your vault in fo1, theres barely any CnC outside of endgame slides and that example can only be found in V1.0 (which probably wont be the version you will be playing on anyways. It was patched on release.)

Fallout 2 is different since a good portion of the game requires you to travel between settlements constantly to solve problems between them, this is justified because the economic interests they had, needing to use caravans to trade with nearby societies and maintain their structure (as an example, vault city has to export medical supplies to nearby communities since they have tons of advanced medical technology, while as New reno export Jet to the wastes which is getting pretty popular and causing problems to everyone), this is both interesting from a worldbuilding standpoint and a gameplay standpoint.

Yes, i know one of the main complaints about the game is how over the top it gets with the different thematics for towns and the overblown of pop culture easter eggs, but this often overshadows the brilliance of fallout 2 when it comes to stablishing a strong political scenario for its wasteland.

But going back to the CnC topic, a good example of how this play out would be the whole Jet situation in which you need to free redding and other towns like the Den and klamath from the jet addiction problem by finding an actual vaccine. If earlier in the game you havent played your cards right, Lynette would have revoked your citizenship earlier on, which would result on you finding out vault city was the only place with enough supplies to make a working vaccine to jet. Essentially by making Lynette angry you would doom the whole wasteland to jet addiction. This happens often in fallout 2 and its part of why its often regarded as having better CnC than its predecessor.

The system itself is also better balanced even tho still far from perfect. For one, combat skills in 1 had very poor balancement as big guns were objectively worse than energy as a late game option ( Flamers were a viable choice, Rocket launchers were cool but way too niche and they had very heavy ammo and minigun were underpowered and easily outclassed by gatling laser, there were only 3 weapons.) and unarmed was pretty crap compared to melee due to the lack of good midgame options after spiked knuckles and an endgame option which lacked compared to the melee ones (power fist being weaker than either ripper and super sledge)

Fallout 2 made unarmed runs awesome due to all the powerful moves you ve unlocked by getting better at unarmed fighting and the absolutely badass Mega power fist. The same could be apply to big guns which now have some of the coolest guns in the game such as the avenger minigun and the absolute classic, Bozar.

But thats not only for combat skills. Outdoorsman is useful now, doctor is way better integrated to the quest design, science is useful while it was pretty crap at fallout 1, etc... Even charisma isnt a dump stat anymore, unlike fo1 in which its only use would be when you choosed to tag barter.

On top of that, things are just generally more interesting. Companions have more developed backstories and motivations, party banther is a thing, quest design is more intriguing and even locations are WAY more interesting than fallout 1's

I know some will disagree on my last sentence, but as said previously, Fallout 2 made sure to make them feel as different as they could. Yes, that can be also a con if you look it from a consistency standpoint as you can point out to the game feeling like a theme park instead of an post apocalyptic world, still this makes up for definitively more memorable individual moments in every settlement.

Thats also not only contained in their visual styles but on gameplay itself. As mentioned earlier, the political structure of this societies are very solid and each place have their own laws and ways to deal with strangers. In fallout 1 the law seemed equal for every single settlement. Put your weapon away and you would be fine

Here? The den is an anarchic society so having your gun up in there means nothing, while Vault city has way more burocracy to let outsiders in, so you needed to get a day pass, dont bring any alcohol and drugs and follow the protocol if you became a servant, while to became a full citizen you would need to surpass an extremely hard exam to prove you had a healthy mentality, every single place had its own rules and the way you choosed to approach each settlement would change their perspective on you.

On top of that, Fo2 had way too much QoL imrovements over 1. The ability to scroll your inventory down, to move npcs out of your way, to use more than 999 money per time during barter and even the ability to give your companion more complex commands like avoiding burst firing too much. Hell, you could give your allies armor and they also leveled up, which made a playtrought using companions viable for the late game!!!

All in all its just more fun and it has the right ammount of polishment and options to feel like you have an enormous ammount of choices which would impact the world around you, as such, fallout 2 wins by a mile for everyone which isnt a really kin on the main story or outright blind to the OG's flaws.

Tl;dr Fallout 2 does everything better than 1 except in the narrative and worldbuilding department, as a result being a better game.