A very fun game where you can make & meet very wonky looking people and die in the wilderness together.
No story except what you make of it, though there are logs and books to read and (bosses?) to fight.

The repetitive short loading times are very annoying, and most characters have next to no personality. This is part of it being a huge sandbox.

Resource availability makes sense but imo is just really annoying and makes it so that even though one can settle wherever they want*, it's impractical in many locations.
It's cool to be able to build my own settlement, but annoying to have to babysit everyone in it rather than being able to have passive civilians. I'd rather manage guards to keep randos in my settlement safe than manage guards to keep my workers (that I had to equip and assign every job to) safe.
Some objects that should have collision inexplicably do not. When settling an area, one should test large objects (large rocks, uninteractable ruins) to see if they may be pathed through unexpectedly.

Pathing is often broken. Sometimes pathable objects such as walls or bridges are simply not recognized by the AI, leading to some normally accessible areas being inaccessible, or making the AI go very long roundabout ways to get to your settlement.
Moving long distances often requires countless course adjustments, as the map will continually load while your party moves through it and the previous course will become invalid, making your party stop. Invisible loading walls also do this, and can result in your character being killed/wounded/critically injured if evading enemies.
This also leads your characters to sometimes move one direction, provoke the map to load a little more, and then make your characters move the opposite direction since the previous course just became invalid. Even when moving small distances.

The skill gain is neat, but can really drag. Unarmed combat is reasonably weak at first and then becomes ridiculously powerful very quickly.
Stealing is absurdly profitable and significantly reduces game difficulty at first.

The acquisition of wealth becomes pointless after a threshold, as there comes a point not far in where one does not need to spend much money for anything.

Despite all of my complaints, it's a wonderfully fun game with sometimes repetitive scenery and a cute bug named Beep. I am very much looking forward to Kenshi 2.

This game is (almost) literally unplayable on PC, with constant crashes and bugs plaguing it at every step.

However, it's very strong in how it shifted Fallout's gameplay style. The earlier Fallouts had a skewed trimetric perspective, whereas Fallout 3 is first/third person.

The Capital Wasteland is frankly very ugly. Visually, things look mostly the same. Everywhere you look, everything is grey. My fiancée insists it is green, but he is wrong- it is grey.
This does serve to make the areas that are not grey pop out and seem more distinct, but considering that the vast majority of the map does not share that distinctiveness, it's not a worthwhile trade.
The DLC areas are visually distinct and, in my opinion, are much better to look at than the main game.

Combat is very basic. A famous note for Fallout 3 is that despite some weapons having sights, guns do not use them. All of your aiming is done via reticle.
VATS is interesting and sometimes useful for wiggly targets and low accuracy weaponry.

Skill checks are very fun to have, and it's nice to be able to change how something works out because of skills that you've obtained. The speech system is a % chance based off of the speech skill and a character's charisma, which imperfectly resembles Fallout 1/2's speech system.

The story for Fallout 3 is okay. Without spoiling too much, you leave the vault you grew up in to pursue your father who left without a word. You continue the chase once you get out, and end up playing a role in changing the wasteland for better or worse.

Aside from the main story, many aspects of earlier Fallout exist in Fallout 3.
-The Enclave, primary antagonist of Fallout 2, has a presence in Fallout 3.
-The Brotherhood of Steel has a chapter in the Capital Wasteland.
-Super Mutants, different from Fallout 1/2, are present and 'procreate' by submerging people in FEV to mutate them.
-Ghouls!

I have very specific criticisms of each, but I can only get into Super Mutants without spoiling everything else.
Super Mutants in Fallout were equally dangerous and mysterious, and are the result of a plan created by a FEV mutant named The Master. Most of the first Fallout is played without us knowing much about The Master, the Super Mutants, or the Children of the Cathedral.
In Fallout 3, Super Mutants were undermined and removed from being interesting villians. They are all very stupid and very violent. They kill some creatures and hang them in netted flesh bags to eat later, and haul humans off to be transformed into Super Mutants.
Newer lore would attribute this distinct difference in 'breed' to which strain of FEV they were changed by, but this basically contradicts what The Master's discovery in how radiation affected mutations. Most infections with FEV were not successful and resulted in the subject dying, but in Fallout 3, the Super Mutant population is sizeable despite their FEV supply running low.
To explain further, FEV was made more widespread and less concentrated when they added Super Mutants to Fallout 3. The writers also went off of the story angle that Super Mutants everywhere were created when they were submerged in FEV, when this was a process unique to The Master.

Overall, I'd say that Fallout 3 is a good game and is very important for how it set the standard for new Fallout games. It'd just be better if it were actually playable on PC.