My feelings are a bit mixed on this one. New Vegas isn't exactly the Fallout experience I was looking for but I must admit that, aside from a few parts, I enjoyed a lot playing it.

New Vegas is the first 3D Fallout I've ever played and I didn't really know what to expect. I have played the classic Fallout games fairly recently and became a huge fan. Especially blew me away with their world and atmosphere. When I first started New Vegas, I was a bit too prejudiced because I usually drop every Bethesda game I try before making any real progress. So, how did I manage to finish New Vegas? I've asked myself this a few times but honestly, I don't have a real answer. New Vegas feels like playing modded Elder Scrolls game. In other words, it’s not much different from other Bethesda RPGs. I guess the only real answer to my question might just be my love for the Fallout universe. I’ve dragged this part out a bit, so I want to get straight into talking about the game by comparing it to the classic Fallouts.

With Fallout 3, the series evolved from an isometric turn based RPG into a 3D open world action RPG. Personally, I don't have a preference between the two styles. Both sides have their own pros/cons and neither outweighs the other for me. Usually, in Bethesda games, if you play a character focused on melee, then combat feels very bland and tedious. I went in with that expectation but I found myself enjoying it way more than I expected. The main reason for this is the limb dismemberment. Shouting out to the Bloody Mess perk I picked up early on and the Protonic Axe I got from the Old World Blues DLC: despite supposedly trying my best to play as a pacifist, I ultimately found myself quick saving and slaughtering the entirety of The Fort, Strip and Hoover Dam. This happens to me a lot in games for some reason. Also, weapons like the Holorifle were also among the guns that I really enjoyed using.

Now, I want to address one of my biggest issues with the game: character progression. In the classic Fallout games, you could specialize in at most 4 or 5 skills, unless you went out of your way to grind extra levels. As I usually do, I started with a speech-heavy character but by the time I finished the game, almost all of my skills were completely maxed out. This meant I could easily do whatever I wanted and the game turned into a total power fantasy. Consequently, all resource management and tension completely evaporated. Frankly, I didn't like this at all. Of course, the reason for this might be that I played through the DLCs back to back right at the start of the game. I entered them at level 15 and ended up at level 42. Another criticism I have is that most of the traits and perks are quite uninteresting. Whenever it was time to pick a perk, I just usually ended up just taking an attribute point because none of the options appealed to me.

My primary reasons for loving Fallout games have always been the world, the atmosphere, and the absurd characters and stories within them. Here, our story starts just like the first two games with a "go and find the [object]" quest. We are trying to track down the person who attempted to kill us and stole our cargo. Everything is perfectly fine up to this point. In the original Fallouts, after finding the [object], you receive another objective, which is "go and defeat the big bad guy." I expected something similar in New Vegas but they took a different route. You pick a side among several factions/characters and go to war against the rest. While the concept is interesting, unfortunately, these factions and characters just didn't catch my interest. In the first game, Mutant army and The Master, and in the second game, Enclave and Frank Horrigan - their motivations and presence really intrigued me. In New Vegas, however, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. Obviously, this is just a personal preference. Others might find this much more engaging but it just wasn't for me.

I keep bringing up the atmosphere, so I want to dive into that a bit. Even though New Vegas managed to suck me in with its atmosphere from the very first second, as I said at the beginning of the review, it doesn't quite deliver that authentic Fallout feeling. I think I now fully understand why 3D Fallouts are often called "Oblivion with guns." Music wise, tracks from the classic Fallouts make a return and I have absolutely no complaints about that choice since the Fallout 1 and 2 soundtracks are simply flawless.

I won't even bother mentioning how much of a technical disaster the game is because you all probably know that already. If you’ve never played a Fallout game before, I think you'd be better off playing the first two games first. There are massive differences between the classic Fallouts and Bethesda's Fallouts, so I can't really say "if you like this, you'll love that." However, even though New Vegas isn't quite on par with the classics, it's still a good game and I recommend it.

To start off I would like to say I have zero nostalgia for fallout new vegas and in fact fallout 4 was my first fallout game back in about 2017-2018. I played through fallout 4 on my PS4. I'm making this clear so there isn't any reason to think im biased when I praise this game and talk about the shortcomings of 4.

Fallout New Vegas is an RPG through and through, not something that can be said for fallout 4. There are multiple ways to play through this game and when I say there are multiple ways I mean you can look up fallout new vegas challenge runs and see all the different ways people roleplay, like only using cowboy weapons for example. It's possible to do this to a certain extent in fallout 4 but the roleplaying is not as fleshed out as NV.

When I refer to roleplaying I'm mainly referring to dialogue choices. For example, if you are playing as a bloodthirsty courier you might pick the terrifying presence perk because it aligns with your character and that just is NOT in fallout 4 for some reason, probably because the sole survivor is actually voice acted but anyways, the roleplaying is by far the best in New Vegas.

Yknow what isn't the best part of New Vegas? All the best parts of Fallout 4, the actual combat and gameplay outside of dialogue. If you're playing this game on steam you are most likely going to be playing with mods anyways so this really is a non issue if you ask me. I wouldn't recommend Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 3 without any mods honestly. I have played and done multiple playthroughs of New Vegas without mods. However, after experiencing better combat, better gunplay, more perks relating to the combat, and just QoL stuff in general from mods I could never go back to a vanilla experience.

Fallout New Vegas is what every RPG should want to be, it's a game with a lot of replay ability because of all the different playstyles to choose from as well as who you want your character to be. Like I said, my first fallout was fallout 4 but man fallout NV is just so much better as a fallout game. I have a lot of thoughts on fallout 4 and the retcons they did specifically with 4 (like the power armor)

The only part of New Vegas I hated was Dead Money but I think everybody hates dead money because dead money sucks and is not fun to play

I play NV with TTW on both my main PC and on my steamdeck. I know it's somewhat of a running joke about New Vegas constantly crashing but honestly, it doesn't happen that often for me at least and it never happened when i was playing pure vanilla. Speaking of TTW, if it wasn't for TTW I never would have experienced fallout 3 or it's DLC but that should probably be a separate review.

List of my mods:
"ySI - Sorting Icons"
"Tale of Two Wastelands"
"YUPTTW 13.7.1"
"ROOGNVSE"
"JIP LN NVSE Plugin"
"JohnnyGuitar NVSE"
"ShowOff xNVSE"
"Fast Weapon Lag Fix"
"Stewie Tweaks"
"NVTF"
"UIO - User Interface Organizer"
"ActorCause Save Bloat Fix"
"VATS Lag Fix"
"kNVSE"
"Console Paste"
"Improved Console"
"Crash Logger"
"MLF"
"NVTF - INI"
"Stewie_Tweaks"
"Simple Open Strip"
"Simple Open Freeside"
"Just Assorted Mods"
"The Living Desert - Main File 2.7.3"
"Mojave Wildlife - Vanilla Version"
"A World Of Pain 6.94"
"AWorldOfPainFO3"
"Functional Post Game Ending"
"Hit - Happy Beeping - TTW"
"Iron Sights Aligned"
"ISControl"
"Long 15 - NCR Expansion"
"Long 15 - TTW Patch"
"Post-Game Dialogue Restoration"
"Viewmodel Shake Fix - NVSE"
"SUP NVSE Plugin"
"Walking Inertia"
"Dramatic Inertia - 3rd Person Movement Overhaul"
"Sound Extender"
"ZL Armaments Remastered"
"yUI"
"CaliberZL"
"Caliber Based Damage"
"JIP Companions Command and Control"
"The Mod Configuration Menu"
"Dry Wells - Legion Expansion"
"B42 Inspect"
"B42 Inject"
"B42 Melee Bash"
"B42 Inertia - Scriptrunner"
"Simple Open Freeside - TTW Patch"
"Hit - B42 Interact Animation Pack"
"B42 Inject Animation Pack - Season 2"
"Hit - B42 Inject Anim Pack - Season 1"
"Crafting and Repair Animations"
"Hit - Crafting Animations"
"Hit's Anims - Season 3"
"Depth of Field Fix"
"B42 Optics"
"Mojave Imports (Campfire) for TTW"
"TTW Food Plus Animation"
"Cooking Riot"
"Hit B42 Inject - Random 1"
"Hit - B42 Inject - Liquid Courage"
"Enhanced Animations - Pip-Boy"
"Realtime Weapon Modding System"
"B42 True Leaning"
"B42 Loot"
"KEYWORDS"
"Weapon Mesh Improvement Mod"
"Hot BnB TTW Riot Gear Patch"
"Diagonal Movement 0.6b"
"B42 Quickthrow"
"MCM Extender"
"Titans of The New West"
"Titans of The New West INI"
"Umatt's Drivable Cars - TTW Vendors (v6b)"
"UmDrivingVIb"
"NV Compatibility Skeleton"
"Real Recoil"
"B42 Notify"
All of the mods listed are compatible with TTW and should not give you any issues just make sure NV compatibility skeleton is at the bottom of the load order if you use this list because there are other mods that modify the skeleton (titans of the west) and it can create issues with other mods

Yeah! who won the lottery?! i did!