Seriously, what is so special about New Vegas. I seriously do not understand why that one is so wonderful. :/

Favorites from most favorite on top:

Fallout 3 GOTY. I love the exploring the urban DC ruins and the subway ruins; and the GOTY adds a lot that 'comes with' FONV. I also love how many mods are available for it.

Fallout 2

Fallout New Vegas

Fallout 1 (just replayed recently. Still love it; just slightly less so than the ones above)

Well, I for one enjoyed the roleplaying a lot more than in Fallout 3. Way more nuance, variation and reactivity to it. I get to choose my motivations and who my enemies are. And the game even acknowledges that.

To me, NV feels like a logical progression from the first two games in terms of the scenario. The post-post-nuclear thing simply worked for me.

Much links to the original Fallout storyline, some choice and consequences, the hardcore mode, themes on a more mature point than Fallout 3, NPCs better written...

It was a decent Fallout game.

Fallout New Vegas would be somewhere after Fallout 1 and 2, but before 3.

Fallout 3 didn't feel like a Fallout game to me; it felt more like a dungeon crawler than a RPG. I couldn't be bothered to replay it, whereas I replayed the other games several times.

You have stoked my memory.

It's been some time since I played, but I recall this being one of my major gripes with New Vegas. Something like I wanted to befriend the Kahn but they wanted me to kill all of the Brotherhood to do so; and I didn't want to have to do that. Admittedly I don't recall the exact details due to passage of time (I may even have the 'clans' wrong) but I do recall being very disappointed that I was forced to make and be friends with the factions in particular ways that my character found distasteful.

For me, at least, I did not get to choose my motivations and enemies like I wanted.

I had forgotten about this; but your post brought it back to mind.

-Fallout 1 ( completed somewhere between six to ten times )
-Fallout: New Vegas ( around three hundred hours played )
-Fallout: Tactics ( played multiple times, but never completed )
-Fallout 2 ( completed twice )
-Fallout 3 ( lost interest early)

I played first game around its original time of release, but I didn’t get around to playing second until about a decade later.

There was probably a fair amount of nostalgia clouding my memory of the original game, but the sequel wasn’t nearly as satisfying despite a larger world and some notable technical improvements. Whereas most locations in the original felt like they had a history, most places in Fallout 2 seemed like they were primarily created to fit a theme. Shady Sands, The Hub, and The Bonyard felt like they belonged in the same world and impacted each other to some small degree, but New Reno and Redding felt like they came in to existence so “Gangster Town” and “Old West Town” could be crossed off a checklist somewhere. Characters also seemed more shallow as a rule, the Atom Punk/Diesel Punk elements were not as prevalent, and the references to modern pop culture were considerably more frequent than I would have liked, but I did enjoy my time with Fallout 2 a lot even if I felt it didn’t live up to the legacy of the fist game.

Fallout Tactics was something of a guilty pleasure for me. I liked some of its aesthetics a lot for some reason and combat was decent enough as long as you weren’t playing it in real time, but I’ll freely admit that isn’t as good of a game as Fallout 2 in objective terms and has barely any connections to anything else in the franchise.

I haven’t played much of Fallout 3 so far, but what I’ve seen of its world and plotline hasn’t been all that appealing to me. I couldn’t stand most of the NPCs I interacted with and much of what was going on around me didn’t seem to make much sense. The movement away from an isometric perspective and turn based combat didn’t really bother me, but character development and overall balanced was looking like it was going to be pretty sloppy. While the game did seem to have a greater focus on the retro-futuristic elements than Fallout 2 or Fallout Tactics, it seemed that Betheseda was paying little attention to anything they felt they couldn’t easily market.

Fallout: New Vegas has little bit of everything I liked from Fallout 1, 2, and 3. Its overall tone seemed to fall somewhere between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. While it still has many of the same issues I had with Fallout 3, they’re generally less severe and require less work in the G.E.C.K. to fix. No single faction stands out clearly as the most beneficial for the region and you’re often forced to choose between factions, allies, or quests in the default game rather than being able to please everyone.

My biggest problems with New Vegas are the implementation of Caesar’s Legion, the number of tasks needed to allow the battle over Hoover Dam in contrast to its supposed urgency, and the fact that the battle is available at your leisure rather than triggered or linked to a time limit.

I think New Vegas may be my favourite fallout as a first-time playthrough, but replaying it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as replaying fallout 1 & 2, mostly because exploration wasn't done quickly on a map anymore, and the map was closed off in one particular area that made it very hard to skip some areas and get to new vegas earlier

It's not a free-for-all, after all. Not with all those factions and conflicting interests, so there's no way of being friends with all of them at the same time. It makes sense to me. Which is why the Mojave felt a lot more alive to me than the Capital Wasteland.

Of course the old Fallouts are better than the new ones, but I hold New Vegas in much higher regard than F3. New Vegas also had more diverse DLCs, out of which Dead Money is really underrated.

I'd pay 45€ for New Vegas if it was DRM free (haven't spent that much on a video game ever) , but now it's no deal, although I REALLY want it. :(

Hmm yes I heard about that.
I should really get around to installing that mod.

I agree with you there. What bugged me (as I recall; like I say, it's been awhile <g>) was that the Kahn weren't like "we hate the Brotherhood. You are forbidden to have dealings with them. Go wipe out this patrol of theirs" or something. Instead it was more like "Want to join us? Then you must first obliterate every last one of them - and their major-sized underground base. Kill 'em all!". Just seemed a bit extreme to me (based on how they were 'behaving' otherwise - which wasn't that extreme).

/oh well