Having dropped New Vegas in the past due to lost interest, I decided to try this game out finally since a friend of mine was having a fallout 3 playthrough himself. It was it 8 bucks, so I figured why not. I have to say, I put way more hours into this game than both other Bethesda games I’ve played through (Skyrim and Oblivion) before even finishing the main quest line. The combat was excellent in my opinion, and I (seem to be in the minority of people who) really liked the story. The choices it forces you to make sometimes really had me feeling emotional at times. I also played it with some minor mods installed, just some custom outfits and real world guns for immersion. Nothing to break the story or anything, though there are a few DLC sized mods I’m eyeing up to play in the future. Overall I seriously enjoyed this game, I’ve noticed online it seems to be regarded as one of the least popular mainline games but I think it’s become my favourite Bethesda game I’ve tried so far honestly. Seriously recommend anyone who hasn’t played this yet to at least give it a try. It really pulled me in.
Edit: Since I’m done with F4, got New Vegas running with some nice mods to add gritty aesthetics and real world weapons. Giving it another try 6 years after I initially tried it and so far I’m way more into it!
Edit 2: more specific context
Not the person you asked, but I’m in a similar boat and used mods and spent a lot of time in settlement building. The only two mods I can remember that made a big impact included the one that basically acted as a cheat terminal (since I played it originally on Xbox, but now that I’m on pc I don’t need that anymore) which allowed me to have unlimited resources, and the other being the one that expands the build able area and the build limit infinitely. I did use other mods, but I think they were mostly graphics mods that didn’t affect the actual settlement building, just the way it would look slightly. I might’ve had some mods that changed NPC behaviour within settlements but I can’t remember 100% right now. That was probably 5-6 years ago