Great! Did you finish 1? The two games are narratively independent, but there are references to events and things from 1 in the sequel.

Any combat skill that is a good go to OP one? Im usually most interested in speech skills, maxing them before anything else.

Stay away from Throwing unless you install a combat rebalance mod. All other combat skills are viable, through some peak at different times. Melee is great early but falls off a little bit. Still viable all game though. Unarmed can be great, there are some awesome Unarmed-only perks, but you can raise it to like 100% for free if you want to min/max. Big Guns and Energy Weapons are great late and very fun, but it might take a while to find one. Small Guns is the easiest way. You’ll find plenty of them early, and the late game options scale well.

I recommend starting with high INT, tagging Small Guns, Lockpicking and Speech and going from there. If you want more build advice just ask. Also the Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide is basically the Bible when it comes to looking up solutions to frustrating problems. It contains basically anything you could possibly want to know about the game. Tons of spoilers though, of course. So beware.