I must say that FNV is still my favorite game in the series. The story, the options and the different outcomes you could get. The only thing i missed would be that you could play after the battle and see the effects it had on the mojave.
But the mechanics of FO4 was a great addition though.

New Vegas was just such an experience, a lot is owed to the Fallouts that came before it. I felt like I had an impact on the world, like I had a say. "You know what Mr. House, maybe I don't want to kill the BOS, I think I'll take you out instead". You could be a hero, or you could be as harsh as the wasteland. Sometimes I just wanted to act like this guy:

Whenever these topics appear I always have the inclination to vote "no" and play devil's advocate because there's no point in expressing my opinion since it's already popular and repeated endlessly. There's a point where it's fine to have confirmation of your ideas, other times it's just annoying.

That being said, yes I do think Fallout 4 is worse than 3 and NV like any other sane person would believe, but in many ways 4 has better elements than 3 and NV (better visuals, combat, physics, more interesting factions, etc). 4 was flawed like every other product that has ever existed, but it's flaws were way more blatant in it's design. It didn't deserve as much hate as it recieved, but maybe it should've recieved more, maybe then we wouldn't have Fallout 76.

I would absolutely say that the older fallout games are better than the newer ones in certain aspects. Gameplay graphics shooting mechanics and things like that have certainly been improved with the new games overall. However the rpg elements have been slimmed down the story of the newer games does not hold up to the much better writing of the the older games and generally speaking to me the older games just feel better to play and have fun with. I'll admit my opinion is quite biased but for me I have to go with the older games.

Yes and no (if that makes any sense) I believe that overall Fallout 3 and NV are better in many aspects than 4 is. However I don't think that Fallout 4 is a bad game. I think it's a lazy game.

Everything about Fallout 4 feels lazy, like it's only half finished. some may say that I'm wrong and you may have a valid reason to. It's just that ultimately fallout 4 feels only half finished to me.

the problem is older fallouts focused on meaningful content. since skyrim and now fallout 4, bethesda's moved away from meaningful content and is just putting "cool" features into the game for modders to screw around with.

i pretty much knew this game would be a let down, so i had no expectations. i mean, i mod it, so that's my thing. bethesda didn't upset me 'cause i knew this would be dumbed down in this age of gaming.

for memorable stories and characters, we have to rely on obsidian.

Unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed the story of FO4 more than FO3 and FNV. There's this quote that floats around all the time in Fallout circles... "My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun." And as much as I enjoyed FO3 and FNV, I feel like they explored the same ethical aspects of the world that we had already seen in Fallout 1 and 2. "You're the Vault Dweller"... that kind of thing.

What FO4 uniquely lets me do is explore the managerial perspective of that world from the role of people that were only hinted at in previous games. I loved the caravan missions from FO1 and I always had a daydream about being the boss of my own caravan, setting up trade routes, optimizing paths, collecting resources... etc, and FO4 lets you do that (albeit imperfectly). You can be a vault overseer and run experiments, the mayor of a town, a general... or my favorite was being the boss of my own raider gang. Obviously there's some debate to be had about the actual implementation of these ideas but I liked that they're even there at all. Yeah yeah, I've already done the "Chosen One" storyline in previous games. At the end of my ~700 hours in FO4 I could look back on so many aspects of the world that I had dynamically changed and know that I did that myself without the devs shoehorning in scripted sequences for me.

I'll grant you that the dialogue tree was better in FO3/FNV, but I still really enjoyed the Blade Runner themes that they explored in FO4. Without a doubt, the character that I created that I felt the most emotionally attached to out of all of the Fallout games was my guy in FO4. Poor Joel started out trying to do the right thing, but by the end of it all, he had grown cold and bitter to the world and just wanted to watch it all burn down (he became Kellog essentially). Good times were had.

I will admit, it is alot to consider and to take in, considering how the modding environment works in Fallout 4. Seeing I have little knowledge on how Papyrus works, and the fact Bethesda just complicates things, saying 'Oh but the texture directories go to your C drive, my documents' blah blah blah, and I don't know what they were smoking, but my C drive is not even a terabyte big. I hope they have fixed this, because I believe (thanks to friends) that I have almost everything I need to begin modding for it, the question is, is it ready for me?

I would love to finish the storyline, I would love to finish it with the experience of mods. Aside from that, one can simply finish the game and then be bored with it afterwards. So, Fallout New Vegas may not have alot for me anymore as it used to when I first grabbed the DLCs, but seeing that I've spent some considerable time modding it (if not playing other games or experimenting with new armor sets in Oblivion firsthand before porting over to Fallout, all made from scratch too mostly) it's what kept me in New Vegas this whole time.

I would love to try out Tale of the Two Wastelands if I can even install it right. I do have my old retail version of Fallout 3 before it became Steam-branded, though my old DVD drive doesn't really seem to work anymore on my current rig. And I do have the old files of Fallout 3, but somehow the TTW installer doesn't seem to pick it up as already installed. So I may have to repurchase Fallout 3 GOTY from Steam itself and see if it will play ball for me. I'm not doing that right away though, because for the Steam versions, Oblivion and Fallout have alot more problems, in-game related issues and bugs such as freezing/CTD/etc., and the community has busted their asses out trying to fix these issues, all the hats off to them for making them playable. But I'm not touching the Steam versions unless if there is no problem installing from such a source. New Vegas may indeed never be as immersive as Fallout 4, but for as long as mods like the Frontier and TTW exist, it does make my FNV experiences worthwhile. Essentially TTW experiences if you wanna put it at that.

to put it rather condensed and simply.

In terms of the story telling/Experience

FNV - FOV then FO4

In terms of graphics

FO4 - FNV - FO3

Gameplay

FO4 - FNV - FO3

DLC content

FNV - FO3 - FO4

Mechanics

FO4 - FNV - FO3

It's obviously subjective but what got me into the series was the story and settings and 4 just fell really flat to me. 4s very low on my list of favorite fallout games

Man and I though this discussion would end up like most threads on r/gaming. Dang it they were right, came for the mods stayed for the community.

Fallout 4 is a great game, good gunplay and I loved the settlement building system, even though I basically uses SIM for most of the time (cuz i'm lazy as heck but still wants my settlements to look dope). I personally loved the Voiced protagonists and not to mention the sarcastic dialogues are hilarious. The story is average at best but I never really played Fallout for the main quests anyway.

As for Fallout New Vegas. Even though I have almost 500 hours, I only beat it like only twice since I was basically testing out mods and restarting my playthroughs cuz it got corrupted and stuff. tbh I never finished the game even once on vanilla so I couldn't say for sure. i'm recently restarting for my 3rd playthrough, maybe I'll come back later to edit this.

Fallout 3 is kinda meh for me. It's same as my Fallout NV playthrough but a whole lot more frustrating because it just keeps crashing and I just didn't know why. I think I only finished it twice and the first walkthrough was basically just me F5-ing every minute hoping it won't crash. and my second playthrough was on TTW so I can't say what I really like Fallout 3 in general. The gunplay is meh and the main story is average at best (except for the DLCs though, their stories are great! )

I've never finished Fallout 1 and 2. I got stuck on fallout 1 cuz I just couldn't get pass a force field so I basically got frustrated and deleted the game entirely.

People say Fallout 2 is the greatest of the 2 games but i couldn't even get pass the beginning, It was just too slow paced and I also just quit in the first 3 hours.

If it's coming down to just how I feel personally, then yes, previous Fallout games (the majority of them) have been better than Fallout 4.  It's all in the title for the very first Fallout, the tagline reads, "A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game".  Well, Fallout 4 is a pretty piss-poor roleplaying game,then it's by and far weaker than previous entries in the franchise. If it can't even be what the series is intended to be (at least not doing it well), then I think it's undeniable that it's not as good as the games that came before it...as well as several other games in the same genre.

As for how good the graphics are, we have better looking games that don't use an outdated engine that's been re-purposed since its implementation in the '90's.  As far as the gunplay, better shooters are a dime a dozen, and considering their team-up with Id Software and the introduction of Doom 2016, then you have plenty of options for better shooters.

Borderlands even has lite RPG elements and looting...in fact, Fallout 4 is like a really off-brand Borderlands, now that I think about it.

If it's the post-apoc aesthetic, try something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Metro. Both do the survival and inventory management better, have the ruined aesthetic, and a fantastic amount of atmosphere.