Indeed, it's a requirement for multiple playthroughs. I kinda feel bad for the folks playing this on consoles. Personally I found the absolute best addition was one that added about 500 more thematically correct songs to the various radio stations, making them suddenly tolerable again.
I'm going retro and playing through fallout 1 at the moment. Interface is very meh but it's still a decent game once you get over that hurdle.