Speaking of the TV show, I know it's dead and buried by this point(until season 2 drops and then the shilling/fake hype will begin again), but I did find this nice video that I must have missed when this was going on:
MATN is a Bugthesda baby so I didn't think I would agree with him, but I guess he's a strange case since he has limited experience with classic CRPGs and his favorite game of all time is New Vegas.
Not much more to add than this, he's pretty much spot on with what he's saying there, so this is a good video to recommend to people who want to get into Fallout.
If I had to give my own input, it would be this:
Fallout 1 is definitely the best place to start, period. The game isn't all that hard and it's very short, plus it has the best tutorial in the series. You will know all of it's mechanics well by the end of the first dungeon(Vault 15), even if you never played a top town isometric CRPG before. The game is short too, so you can easily start with a new build and try it out here before you play other games.
Once you know the game well enough, you can download Fallout Fixt or Et Tu and enable the invasion timers. Those are for hardcore players only, after 90 days LA Boneyard falls and after that, the other cities continue until the eventual game over when they reach Vault 13. For reference, 90 days in you still have 60 days to find the Water Chip, and you can only get the best gear(Turbo Plasma Rifle and Hardened Power Armor) there, not to mention the best shop in the game, before those 90 days roll in. This brings up questions you would never ask in any other Fallout game, such as "is it worth going to the nearby town and burning X amount of days when I can spend it healing myself here or continuing the main quest?" Very different experience, and one that I myself enjoy(it reminds me of Dead Rising's merciless timer, I wish it came back for later entries)
He also didn't talk about Tactics, that one is strictly for those who are experienced with Tactics based Squad Strategy games like Jagged Alliance 2, and those who have mastered the isometric combat in F1/F2 so definitely not a game for beginners, but one that rewards those who can handle it's quirks. The game is not just hard, but LONG, world record speedrun for the game is 2 hours and most content is NOT OPTIONAL, so it definitely gonna filter out a lot of people, newcomers especially. Definitely the meatiest isometric game, and the only one where you can control more than one character and use vehicles(minus Frontier mod for NV), so it is one of the more unique experiences Fallout has to offer.
I am interested, however: What was the first Fallout game for the users here, and is it even your favorite one? For me, it was Fallout 1(obviously), and I do still think it is the perfect, most pure Fallout title in the franchise. New Vegas might have more content and combat might be better in Tactics/F4 while Fallout 2 did almost everything better, but Fallout 1 is still the baseline for the franchise, and it's a perfect weekend game with how short it is. It's short runtime is a plus, while games like F2 or NV and especially Tactics are long commitments, F1 is a great game to just knockdown whenever you feel like it, and like I said with the timers, it is a very unique experience as well that rewards game knowledge and speed running tricks/meta gaming.
