I've beaten Fallout 1 and 2 with characters specializing primarily in hand-to-hand combat. Compared to builds that use ranged combat, melee builds are less effective. With melee builds, you don't see those unique death animations, you need to get closer or use cover frequently, and certain encounters and enemies are much tougher, if not impossible to survive.

At the beginning, melee characters are very weak and you practically need to get the Super Sledge as soon as possible to have a chance against tougher humanoid enemies. The Super Sledge is a powerful weapon that doen't require ammo, but the knock-back effect is so annoying. Even with Slayer to upgrade all hits to critical hits, the damage doesn't get as high as burst fire weapons with both ranks of Bonus Ranged Damage or aimed shots to the eyes with the most powerful single-shot guns.

It's much harder to get into the Sierra Army Depot as a melee character. You'd have to rely on Sneak, Advanced Power Armour, and Pulse Grenades. I found it easier to read Guns and Bullets to improve Small Guns skill, sneak as close as you can get to them, and then use one of the Gauss weapons (due to lower AP costs than the Sniper Rifle) to take them out.

Certain encounters with melee characters are much harder to survive, such as against Bounty Hunters at higher levels in Fallout 2 or against those robbers in the cave encounters. It's also much harder to clean out Navarro or the Oil Rig in Fallout 2 with a melee character.

I've read that with a melee character, you can't even attack the Master in hand-to-hand combat; you'd need grenades.

I've read that in Tactics, going up against the tougher enemies with a melee character is practically suicide. I'm currently watching a longplay of a character using guns, and he's hardly had anybody attack anything in hand-to-hand combat.

In Fallout 3, the way the game is made, you are practically encouraged to combine both ranged and melee combat into one build, especially since it's possible to max skills and stats, allowing you to be a jack-of-all-trades character.

In New Vegas, almost all of my planned builds use both ranged and melee combat, only one uses strictly melee combat, together with explosives. From what I've seen, hand-to-hand combat is very powerful with the right chems in New Vegas, much moreso than in previous games.

What do you think? How do you believe melee-only characters compare to ranged builds? Is there even a point to making a character that fights exclusively in melee range if ranged combat is safer and overall stronger?

Obviously guns are more advantageous, just as they are in reality, but hand-to-hand fighting remains viable.

In Fallout 2, I found an unarmed build Power Fisting everything in the head and eyes to be fun and effective. Even the final boss is humbled by breaking his arms first.

In Fallout 3, the Shishkebab was a powerful melee weapon, with the Pyromaniac perk boosting its fire damage. Some changes to VATS behavior also benefit melee combat, such as the reduced damage taken during VATS, and the ability to perform short range "teleports" to an enemy while wielding melee weapons.

NV's combat drugs allow you to shrug off most damage while boosting your own considerably. Especially lethal are the ripper, upgraded chainsaw, and thermic lance, which ignore all enemy damage resistance.

According to what I read about those weapons in New Vegas, the ability to ignore damage resistance isn't applied correctly, but Piercing Strike corrects this. They become even more devastating with Heavy Handed. The Heavy Handed Tank is the only build I have for New Vegas that primarily uses hand-to-hand combat.

What about in Tactics? Is hand-to-hand combat still as viable as it was in either 1 or 2?

I'm sure that was fixed by one of the many mods I was using, but I couldn't tell you which one specifically.

I still haven't played Tactics so I can't speak on that.

Currently, I'm watching a longplay of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. In it, the guy is playing as Cyrus, and most of the time he's swinging melee weapons even when using guns would be a safer choice. And much of the time when he does use a gun, he isn't using one that is powerful enough or fires fast enough.

If there's something to learn from this, it's that you need more than the right weapon, you need common sense!