Having dropped New Vegas in the past due to lost interest, I decided to try this game out finally since a friend of mine was having a fallout 3 playthrough himself. It was it 8 bucks, so I figured why not. I have to say, I put way more hours into this game than both other Bethesda games I’ve played through (Skyrim and Oblivion) before even finishing the main quest line. The combat was excellent in my opinion, and I (seem to be in the minority of people who) really liked the story. The choices it forces you to make sometimes really had me feeling emotional at times. I also played it with some minor mods installed, just some custom outfits and real world guns for immersion. Nothing to break the story or anything, though there are a few DLC sized mods I’m eyeing up to play in the future. Overall I seriously enjoyed this game, I’ve noticed online it seems to be regarded as one of the least popular mainline games but I think it’s become my favourite Bethesda game I’ve tried so far honestly. Seriously recommend anyone who hasn’t played this yet to at least give it a try. It really pulled me in.
Edit: Since I’m done with F4, got New Vegas running with some nice mods to add gritty aesthetics and real world weapons. Giving it another try 6 years after I initially tried it and so far I’m way more into it!
Edit 2: more specific context
Settlement management can get tedious and be a large time sink. Sim settlements 2 is actually not bad. You can off the most annoying ones on “mayors” to control. Show up later and add things if needed.
It revived the game for me. Changed settings so it would grow without my tedious input, so thankful for that. Show up to settlements over time to find evolving cities that are actually worth visiting and make the game feel alive, like you didn’t build every shack in the wasteland personally with the toaster you hauled from a national guard building.
I need to get unlazy and figure out how to do that. I enjoyed Conquest because it auto built settlements for you to conquer, but that’s been dead for a while.