So, I'm going to share an unpopular opinion with you guys. I could not stand Fallout 3.

I put upwards of 20 hours into Fallout 3 between 2008 and 2009 and watched friends play it even longer in the same time frame and could never figure out why they liked it so much. I tried, I really did, but it does so many things poorly. The dialog is bad, the voice acting is cheesy, the game is ugly even by 2008 standards, the combat is clunky, the world was full of empty space with nothing to do in it...

And I understand that a game can be good even if I don't like it, there are plenty of games that I don't enjoy but I can see why other people do. Fallout 3 just didn't come off as a good game to me.

I am genuinely asking here, what made Fallout 3 such a good game?

To be honest I don't know what people see in that game either... I even played it two times to see why I couldn't enjoy it as everyone else...

It simply sucks (even worse if you are playing it on PS3 like I did)

I played it once for a few hours and then died of boredom. Luckily there was a Vita Chamber nearby to revive me.

Well I played it on pc and loved the exploration and feel of the game plus I liked the VATS targeting system too.

Just let yourself fall (haha) into it. Just imagine it is you. Always imagine, you are born in the vault, find out your dad is gone and you can escape in the wasteland. 

Now Make it your life job to survive and to find out the truth. 

With this attitude, you will love the dialogues, the world, the game...

Fair criticisms, but I largely enjoyed the 50's humor, and the soundtrack was pretty good.

I enjoyed it. I thought New Vegas was better though.

The appeal of Fallout 3 lies in the story. If you can't get into the story, Fallout 3 doesn't have much. Gameplay is somewhat lacking, and the world isn't exactly overflowing with events. The color choice is a little off putting too. I know it is supposed to be a desolate wasteland, but the color choices are just so lacking.

New Vegas improves over Fallout 3 in a few ways. The map has more to do, there is more color, and everything generally looks or feels better. Where New Vegas falls short is that its story is somewhat weak.

Basically, the last two Fallout games have all the elements of a genuinely great experience, but neither quite manages to get it right. Hopefully Fallout 4 manages to put together the best of both worlds.

Fallout 3 and FFVII are my favorite RPGs.

It is one of my favourite games ever. And I don't even like rpg's in general.

What sets it apart to me is the atmosphere and story.
Every place tells a tale. Walk into a room and often you can piece together what happened, find audio snippets or logs about the days before, it just has so much attention to detail that it immerses you in its world.

The games themselves are taking place in what the people in the sixties would think our world would be like today after a nuclear Holocaust. This means laser weapons, robots and hover cars, Intelligent AI but with old monitors and OS's. It's just really imaginative a lot of these things when you see it in action.

A lot of it comes from the little things though. You are basically learning a whole new world and need to cut off your knowledge to modern society. Looting money is pointless as the currency is now bottle caps for example. It's just something you have to loose yourself in and it is a game best enjoyed while deviating from the main path and explore instead. That's where the real meat in this game is