The game cares less about your stats or how much you kill weak enemies. It's about acquiring better gear and attacking stronger enemies for instant levels. There's a whole bunch of stats you can choose with some of them being useful only for a single instance. When you pick skills for your starting characters, spread them evenly and don't raise them above 1 because skillpoints are very rare. This is so that you can buy new skills later in the game in other locations that have other skills available. If you have the money and use the needed password you can get mid-level gear from Darwin right at the beginning. The sensible progression is to start with brawling (crowbar, chainsaw, proton ax etc), then progress to energy weapons with some assault rifle or AT weapon expertise sprinkled for midgame. But somehow my characters could competently use energy weapons without any points in that skill. For attributes you want 23 IQ to be able to get the energy weapon skill and very high Luck. At least two characters should have unlocked the Doctor skill, but the rest is up to you. The only challenging dungeon in the game was the first main plot area, the notorious Las Vegas sewers. Don't forget to keep a canteen on every party member, ropes and explosives are essential equipment too. When you need to heal go to the hottest desert spots and hold esc to hasten the time, because those don't have any random encounters. Don't forget to make backups of your saves because the game autosaves every time you enter a new area or use the radio.

The game is intriguing and complex for its time, as you can scatter your party members into groups to avoid burst firing enemies from damaging everyone. Sometimes you have to temporarily disband a member to interact with objects alone. There's some weird jank like trying to deliver a Visa card to a man and not being able to use it on him, or at the table in front of him, but to use it on a chair opposite of him. I didn't encounter any bugs, only the really weird inconsistencies like that. The 80's Bard's Tale games are similar, but this one has a more interesting world. The soundtrack is somewhat fitting despite being made long after and this edition has the luxury that you don't have to read chapters from the book as they're included in the game.