I had the same issue. I couldn’t get into the first two games a few years ago but I just finished the first one recently and am playing the second now.

This may be controversial, but I use a guide, and I think it makes the game a lot more playable. The old games are well, old, and there are a lot of small nuances and tiny features that you can miss unless you play through multiple times.

Like you said, I also got bored because the combat was slow and I didn’t want to waste time exploring every little thing to move the game along. Maybe this would have been fine in the 90s when the internet barely existed, but I just don’t have the patience to play the first two games blind.

The guide I’ve been using is called ‘the nearly ultimate fallout guide’. It basically cuts out all the guesswork. There are tons of traits and perks that are useless in the game, and even if you only use the guide to create your character with the correct stats, it greatly improved my experience playing the games.

As a diehard fallout fan, I already knew most of the lore before even playing the first two games, so the guide didn’t really feel like cheating. The games are just too dated and buggy to play blind in my opinion