Fallout 3 is an excellent RPG with just a few small problems.
Upon starting a new game, you will find yourself playing your character as their life progresses as a newborn baby, an infant, a child, a teen, and an adult. These beginning scenes showcase the base of the skill systems and SPECIAL attributes, and allow you to craft what your character will look like as an adult. Through a series of events, you are forced to leave your safe home of Vault 101 and take your chances in the irradiated Wasteland. The storyline quests and side quests also present the excellent moral system. Depending on your actions and speech choices you can have good, bad, or neutral karma. While the character animations could be much better, their situations often bring out your own personality. For example, I do almost everything good, because even though it's only a game, I still feel bad doing terrible things to people.
Combat in the game is perfect, provided you are using the VATS targeting system, which allows you to target an enemies specific body parts. Outside of VATS, the FPS-style combat works fine for the most part, but likes the style that VATS gives. Ammo for weapons is rather limited at the beginning, but as I neared the end of the game, I almost never found myself running out of ammo. The enemies at the beginning are also quite a threat. While there is a set difficulty for the game, once you're playing, encounters are often more difficult. Radscorpions, for example, are some what common around the wasteland, and pose a small threat. However, stray too far and you may encounter a Giant Radscorpion, which are several times the size of a human. The only way to make these encounters less difficult is to simply wait until you are strong enough to take them on.
The graphics are fantastic, to say the least, and they have to be, considering that much of the time you are looking at plains of rock, dead trees, and overall destroyed landscape- but with graphics this good, you hardly find the setting bland, but rather filled with detail. This combined with the sound and music create a very exciting and tense atmosphere. Fallout 3 is also not lacking in its share of OMG moments. For example: the HUD does not have a mini-map, only a compass showing which way you are going and displays green and red markers for allies and enemies, respectively. However, these only show up on the compass when you are facing in their direction. Several times, I've been walking through the Wasteland when I hear a small skittering noise and turn around to find a Giant Radscorpion a few feet away preparing to attack. And it scares the crap out of me every time.
If there is one thing I have a real issue with in this game, it's bugs and glitches, and there aren't a lot. However, every now and then, I get I graphical glitch or something, which is usually fixable by reverting to an old save or leaving and re-entering the area where the problem occured.
Overall, Fallout 3 is an excellent game. It was also my first true RPG, and has influenced me to take a look at other RPGs. I recommend it to anybody and everybody who enjoys action and exploration. See you in the Wasteland!