When I played NV on release, I felt it was excellent, and likely a Fallout title worthy of that name; having recently played it again with all DLC, I am convinced.
Thematically, everything clicks, everything works, and everything feels like the setting is moving forward without losing track of what came before. When a series changes hands, temporarily or otherwise, it's not uncommon to find the new studio trying to work with what they know or falling into the trap of trying to make it "their own", while only looking at the more salient elements of the games that came previously. You might recall Metroid Prime, where Retro Studios carefully studied Super Metroid and, barring an element or two, successfully captured Nintendo's still - somewhat - unmatched lightning in a bottle. Fast forward to Prime 2: Echoes and there was now a "Light" and a "Dark" world, and a nonsensical hunt for Sand Keys, Dark Agon Keys, Swamp Keys, Dark Torvus Keys, Cliff Keys, etc., which was nothing more than the duller aspects of Zelda metastasizing in space. By Prime 3: Corruption, the joke was on us: there was Samus, falling through space, shooting Ridley in "action-packed" sequences, and a terrible ending montage where she accepts the role of heroine, which was a lot more damaging to the idea of her character than Team Ninja's Other M.
Notice how in Fallout 4, you now have the "concept" of "synths", which kind of hilariously flies in the face of how the setting was created. That's what doesn't feel Fallout, not New Vegas. Vegas not only respects the name but carries the torch. Obviously, Sawyer's love for history would materialize in something like the Legion; but this was already known at the time of Van Buren, which is where it began. I really dig Sawyer's work and am at times reminded of Yasumi Matsuno. Both know their history; Matsuno directed Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for the Super Nintendo which, if you never played, is a wonderful turn-based game with an intricate historic background, where choices and consequences could drastically affect the story's outcome. At one point you're asked by your superior officer to kill several peasants to make it look like the opposing army was responsible. For a 1995 16-bit console game, that's... pretty rad. But the core idea is one of war, change, choice, and consequence; I can't think of many other developers, or designers, who have a penchant to work with these specific themes. Matsuno does, or did, though I don't think he approached these themes after Crimson Shroud. Sawyer is another. In his case perhaps less about war itself, but the engines that drive it, the escalation, and the motives; in a timeline where people building a city around a nuclear bomb is accepted as "sensible" and dialogue such as "Have you seen my dad?" receives numerous GOTY awards, he's a keeper.
I'll say Honest Hearts was a tricky proposition because admittedly I'm not big on exploring tribal backgrounds. They can make for good fiction (and generally do in Honest Hearts) but you'll excuse me if at least one of my eyes twitches at the sight of another quest involving gathering "sacred roots" to prepare "a drink" that will "reveal truths", and then sends me off to kill "an evil or troubled spirit". But Graham was a sight to behold, and Follows-Chalk had some nice quips. I get the feeling the DLC could have been more, however, but I'm not sure of what. It does feel Graham could or should have, earned more time under the spotlight, especially with that fascinating background of his.
Dead Money risks being my favorite one, and that has a lot to do with the writing. All of the characters really come to life; with the exception of Dean Domino, whose raison d'etre seemed a bit finicky at the end, it shines through and through. Unlike Honest Hearts, which had the mendacity of doing things like spawning 3 Giant Geckos in my face as soon as I left a cavern, then proceeded to murderfuck me because they were untargetable until I walked 2 or 3 steps away from said cavern's entrance, it felt challenging all the way, but always surmountable. At times I was reminded of Bioshock, or should I say, how Bioshock might've been if it was well-written. Yes, yes, Art Deco and stuff: it's pointless. You could have Brutalism on a volcano or Baroque on Mars for all I care (and I would), but if your writing doesn't go beyond a tutorial with an Irish accent, you can drown along with the rest of the Splicers. Dead Money is the only other DLC which I think could explore its setting a bit more. The idea of the holograms, somewhat condemned to repeat themselves, to replay themselves between a state of misery and attrition, is wonderful.
Old World Blues is fun and snappy. I liked the Sink's appliances, though obviously, the heads of Big MT take the cake here. But it ends up being the DLC that least "did it" for me, possibly due to things like the repeating challenges (for the Stealth Suit, for instance). It showcases that you can at least do something interesting, thematically and design-wise, with that dead horse of an engine it's saddled to, but I can't help thinking it might've worked better in some other scenario. Maybe a murder mystery, where the case gets more convoluted and the clues harder to find on subsequent trials? Something to think about, at least.
Lonesome Road is great all around; I felt the way in which the Courier's and Ulysses' stories crossed each other, to a point of (almost) no return, was exceptional (and ED-E's background development was pretty cool, too). I'm uncertain of how I'd score it; maybe on par with Dead Money, stronger in some aspects, weaker in others. At first, I was taken aback by the linearity, but in the end, made peace with it. This is where the road ends, where the American Dream runs out of America; extensive choices and consequences and quests might risk losing that focus, that peculiar kind of thematic investigation. Again, I made peace with it. It's fine. One thing the DLCs lead me to notice is that, at the end of the day, these characters end up being the driving force of the stories, and part of me still pines for a role-playing game where my own characters manage to carve a story as intricate and long-reaching as those of Elijah or Ulysses.
So yes, New Vegas, especially with the DLC, is one of the best Fallouts. With no nostalgia on my part, the Master remains an excellent antagonist, and the first Fallout still has, overall, a better "sense" of a very specific kind of adventure or journey through a very specific kind of setting and world. Fallout and New Vegas would be my choices for the better Fallout games; Fallout 2 comes third, if only because there's still quite good stuff among the murk and the muck. Does Vegas have issues? Sure. From a technical perspective alone, New Vegas went from smooth sailing to maddening sessions at times, freezing and crashing when traveling, when auto-saving, when walking, when sleeping, when it was 12:27 in the afternoon and a tumbleweed was rolling by, when nothing, when everything. The kicker is that it mirrors my experience with Fallout 3 as well, which borked itself repeatedly. But Obsidian tends to get the bulk of the complaints on performance hits, for some reason.
I think it's important to remember that some things are very much artifacts of their own time; Fallout's permanence on the collective memory of a given player group or role-playing grognards (I use the term sweetly here) is a given how it captured a certain spirit back then, a certain glimpse into what RPGs could be like. There was nothing quite like it; despite the similarities, even Wasteland felt like a distant memory after emerging from Vault 13. But there's no mistaking it, really: as well fleshed out as they seemed, Fallout and Fallout 2 also have some perfunctory writing and trite character development. This is more noticeable in the sequel, I think, which has that roller-coaster feels smeared across its design, and this, in turn, also reflects on some of the characterizations. Yes, you remember Marcus and Byron, but how much is that due to a handful of interesting lines, the marvel of looking at their animated faces, and the fact that by those elements alone they would obviously stand out from a gameworld almost exclusively comprised of non-descript sprites who trafficked in floating text and boorish pop culture references to pantomime life? Vegas' are developed much deeper, and, perhaps more importantly, in a more credible way than some of the series' stalwarts.