Fallout: New Vegas

bethesda didnt make this one

This game is 10 years old and is still better than Fallout 76

Short verdict: this is how FO3 should've been made.
Story: it's multilayered, detailed and makes sense unlike in FO3. There's context to your action and all the characters and locations are part of the story. The main story is quite short, though. Therefore, it's highly recommended to play the side quests first, which often are even more interesting than some of the main quests. Many of them are intricate detective stories. The dialogues are written and voiced well. There's plenty of humour in them. It's juvenile, uncensored, but still funny and true to the FO2 tone. Plenty of memorable NPCs. Plenty of factions. And just the right amount of notes and holotapes to read/listen. It's not like FO3 or Skyrim that drowns you in extra information that you forget in an instant, because it has nothing or little-to-do with your current quest or the world around you.
My only criticism is that, one of the major factions, the Legion, was depicted as pure evil. They didn't have any good quality about them, except for order, but it's an authoritarian, ruthless order. One might say that they are lawful evil in D&D terms. So there's no reason to side with them, unless you are role-playing as an evil character. I'd have preferred, if the Legion was a more morally ambiguous choice on a par with its counterpart, the NCR. But the game pretty much pushed you to favour the NCR over them.
Also, I have some criticisms about the stories in the add-ons, which are inferior to the main story, but more on that later.
Exploration: it's rewarding. Most of the locations are unique and there's almost always a reason to visit any of them: it's tied to a quest, it has an interesting backstory it has a special enemy, it has a special item or it's convenient to set-up a base there. No generic dungeon mazes in FO:NV. And, with graphic mods like NMC's texture pack, Nevada skies, Electrocity and Wasteland flora overhaul, it's possible to make this game look beautiful even for 2019 standards.
The only thing that I didn't like about exploration was the obscurity of the pop culture references unlocked by the Wild Wasteland trait.
Combat, enemies and weapons: it seems that the shortcomings of the combat system are related to the engine used. You get the same old V.A.T.S. system, which works as it's supposed to, but the real-time combat is clunky. The weapons are not responsive and just don't feel very real. Additionally, the big weapons cover almost half of your FOV, and the crosshairs are not perfectly accurate. When enemies are killed, there's this typical rag doll animation that you see in any of the Bethesda RPGs.
On the bright side, the hardcore mode on the very hard difficulty provides a sufficient challenge until about level 30. After that, if you have a decent equipment and a couple of companions, even the deathclaws are no match for you.
However, the stealthy approach is still not something to bother with, when it's so much faster to just shoot or hack the enemies. Sniping is useful in limited situations.
As to the weapons, there's a whole lot of them, even too many for my taste, because the progression from weak weapons to strong weapons is not limited by anything and many of weapons stay unused, because you quickly find something better. Mods and DLCs provide even more weapons. I guess, for majority of the players, that's a good thing.
The UI: the UI is inconvenient and style was a higher priority than practicality, when it was designed. I wish that there was a dedicated map button and there were sorting and filtering options for the inventory, but there aren't any. At least, the Project Nevada mod allows to label item categories. I kind of hate the Pip-boy. I prefer a more conventional drag-and-drop interface of the old RPGs.
The UI, the UI never changes. Neither does the engine.
DLCs
Dead Money: an annoying attempt at creating survival horror content. It has two mechanics that many players hate it for: toxic gas clouds and exploding collars. I guess, they are supposed to bring in some kind of tension, but what they mostly do is frustrating the players and limiting the exploration. Fortunately, there's a mod that disables these mechanics. I also didn't like the street mazes, I spent most of my time in this add-on on searching for the quest marks. Harder enemies are fine, except that there are two types of enemies that don't make sense to me: "ghosts" that rise from the dead, unless you shoot their heads off, and immortal holograms (!) that can shoot lasers at you. I think the "ghosts" don't really fit into the FO lore and the laser shooting holograms are not really holograms, if they can do physical damage. On the other hand, 200 years old food is still fresh in this game, so whatever. The main plot is centred around a tragic love story.
Lonesome Road
In Lonesome Road, you travel down a radioactive highway and wasteland ruins to meet another courier who sheds some light on the backstory of the main protagonist. I liked Lonesome Road a bit more than Dead Money, and there a couple new types of enemies, but it also has the same problem as Dead Money, namely, maze-like maps. Also, the story didn't make much sense to me.
Honest Hearts
A refreshing experience after the previous two add-ons. No mazes, no radiation, ... no challenge. This add-on is basically a collection of fetch quests. But that's fine with me. It allowed me to enjoy the exploration, as Utah landscape looks very pretty with the graphic mods. A nice change of the setting.
Old World Blues
Another collection of fetch quests, but with a good dose of humour. It might be good to play this add-on first, because it rewards you with a nice base that you can upgrade, as you complete the missions. If you complete this add-on after all the other add-ons and shortly before the final vanilla mission, as I did, there's no point in using that base anymore.
Note: each of the four aforementioned add-ons increase the level cap by 5 up to 50 max.
Courier's Stash
A collection of early game weapons and armour that I never used (except for the throwing spears).
Gun Runners' Arsenal
An overwhelmingly large collection of powerful weapons. With Project Nevada and crafting mods, there's really too much to choose from. I kept 80% of them in the stash most of the time and never used.
In conclusion, New Vegas is the best Fallout and, to me, FO1, FO2 and NV are the only FO games that are worth playing. I just wish that Obsidian had more development time to implement all the original ideas they had for NV.
My overall rating: 9/10.

BIG IRON ON HIS HIP

Finishing the game... that's not the hard part.
It's letting go.

Patrolling the Mojave Almost Makes You Wish For a Nuclear Winter.

Okay, the main thing i wanna say is it's the best Fallout game, everybody knows why i guess. It takes everything best from classic and bethesda ones, this game shows how should look the modern Fallout game... I think everyone who loves Fallout must play it, but you could love it for aestheric, great quests, true rpg system, variability... or hate it for bugs, bad graphics et cetera... But anyway this is a fact that New Vegas is the true heir to Fallout and Fallout 2... Even in game you can see a lot of easter eggs to personages(or even meet them - for example Marcus) and places from classic... lulz i dunno what i can say 'bout one of favourite games of mine (:
So it has two minus, its engine and RU(FU) tag and that's all i see XD