Cool. Just finished this yesterday. I usually quite sceptical about fanmade projects, but 1.5 really impressed me in some ways.
After my experience with AoD, I decided to start a tradition and make first runs totally blind, without googling anything at all. Because I didn't know if sadistic or not Czechs are in game design I started on normal/normal difficulty. Because I didn't know how scarce ammo will be I started with unarmed/melee build, with additional stealth.
This worked quite well, but while playing I remembered why I don't like melee builds. Damage output is great, but running up to people and constantly taking damage is quite annoying. Also, points spent in melee were just wasted for I used unarmed for 99% of time. My weapon progression was knuckles - spiked knuckles - power fist - mega power fist. I killed maybe five or six people with melee, no more. Killed one guy with a shotgun: bastard ran away into exit grid, I picked shotgun lying around and bursted him. Felt like Obi Van killing Grievous from prequels with blaster.
I like quest design in 1.5. There are so much forks for you usually presented with two mutually exclusive sides to work with and you should choose which one. Almost every major quest could be find inside such fork. Once inside, there's plenty of ways to finish the quest, even option to buy you way out if you lack needed skills. Anonym quest in Albuquerque is the highlight of the game. And paedophiles quest is some sick shit.
There were some challenging fights, but overall, game is not that hard. I usually play solo and I didn't find any serious obstacles during my run. Aran vs Elisa fight was annoying because Aran kept dying in first two turns: I disabled robots and hooked him on Psycho, but to no avail. Only several loads later RNG relented, he survived and Elisa died to power fist in the face.
Mutant Outpost was annoying too. With 5 speech there was no option but combat. Suicide, no less. But: if you start combat while sneaking, kill your opponent in one turn and end combat, no one aggroes on you - a proper stealth kill. I cleaned base outside this way (to kill mutie in two hits takes 4-5 reloads), rest were lured to the side and killed more conventional.
As soon as I got Slayer perk all challenge ended.
Rebirth base was a slog, but I cleared every floor.
I have issue with balance in 1.5, though. They nerfed armor! This doesn't make fights any harder, it makes them longer for you are forced to use stims every couple of turns and get high on psycho every fight. Psycho works magic on usual damage resistance, but useless against energy weapons.
And thing is, stims are hard to get buy. I had zero problems with loot: by late game I had several stashes with tens of thousands worth of loot around, but to sell it requires ultimate grind: sell what you can, wait for trader to restock, repeat. Very tedious. I was forced to leave Rebirth base two times to restock on stims. Some fix on traders would have been welcome.
Overall, good stuff. I really liked this heavily forked quest design and some moments were truly hilarious. Gotta play it again, this time with more pleasant ranged build.
