Games

I feel like I got my money from it, and they've fixed it a lot since launch. But it's not Fallout 5. If you want to play it as a purely-single player game -- obviously, if you want multiplayer, it's the only option -- I'd say that it's the weakest of the mainline series. If someone just wanted to "try Fallout", had never done the series before, I'd probably direct them to Fallout 4 or maybe New Vegas.

It's the newest, but graphically, not that much has changed since Fallout 4. There's the more-organic Mire, and there are panoramas of forest. Nothing like the jump from New Vegas to Fallout 4 or Fallout 4 to Starfield.

It's not very moddable, which is a major element for many people with Fallout 4 (and a big part of why that game has had such longevity).

At least for me, there are some minor graphical artifacts that I didn't see with Fallout 4.

It's got other human NPCs that have been added in over time since the release, but there are fewer human NPCs than Fallout 4 (though to be fair, I guess West Virginia isn't as populated as Boston, and some of that is stuff like forests). There isn't that much by way of character development for most of them. I do think that the NPCs were more-believable then Fallout 4, where every other character seemed to be downright psychotic. But they also weren't as memorable.

Its late game is fixed (has to be, since the intent is to let players keep doing the late game as long as they want). Fallout 4 without mods ultimately had enemies turn into bullet sponges in the very late game.

I think that New Vegas was the best of the series, if you compare them at launch, but it's also pretty old.