Greetings.
I played Fallout 3 for the first time when it was released. Went all the way 'till finished.

Now, I want to play it again. I'm really into playing a ninja-like character, but I remember when I played it the first time, there where some bits of the game, including the final battle where I only managed to get through shooting the enemies with my energy weapons and miniguns.

Is it viable to play it, beginning to end, with a melee-only character, or should I also have a ranged skill as a secondary weapon?

Thanks!

I think that you're going to want to have a secondary ranged skill. If you are melee only, you will have to wade through a hail of bullets just to get close enough to administer your own beatdown. And that might svck. It's possible that you can sneak up on your targets, but still, you are still having to get close to your targets. If you don't want ranged weapons, you could try Explosives as a secondary. When the Enclave shows up though, you will then be wading through laser and plasma fire. Inside sounds perfectly viable though. It's just outside when you have an expansive landscape with no cover, you will feel the hurt. My two caps.

Thanks!

Maybe I'll invest a bit in energy weapons...

You definitely can but i'd give a gun skill a few skill points here and there so as to save yourself in a real scraqe.

After trying a pure melee character a year and a half ago, that's the only way I can play now. A Chinese Sword won't last you very long but a Shiskebab combined with the Pyromaniac perk is pretty much an "I Win" button. You might want to take a companion with you for those times when you might run into an enemy sniper but most of the time you'll be able to rush into a mob and tear up Jack all on your own.

If it were me I'd probably go with guns as a secondary combat skill. Having a revolver at your side like the Blackhawk is going to make your life a lot easier.

The problem is getting a powerful enough weapon at the beginning, most of the perks, skills and items that make it viable come from advanced levels and DLCs.

Eg. before DLCs, up to 18ish I had a character I played on Normal with a fawkes super sledge, with enough DR you could dive in and beat down waves but there was always that risk of dying that was very much lessened when I picked up on energy weapons.

Now recently I've gotten GOTY and made another I'm playing on Hard, and with stuff like the Chinese Stealth Suit and a Shocksword (doesn't give you away like the shishkebab due to no fire) you can sneak attack every time without giving yourself away, destroying everything that isn't in the league of psudo-bosses like sentry bots, overlords, deathclaws etc in one or two hits given all your hits are guaranteed criticals.

Even then on hard you can take 35% of a behemoth's life in a swing, but be careful/warned, if you only play melee you need a follower or a weapon powerful enough to deter yourself from feral ghoul reavers, these nasty buggers will see through your stealth and will kill you unless you have a big stash of stimpacks.