Having seen the extremely attractive current price for Fallout 3, I'm wondering if it'll be worth buying.

There are two things stopping me for now. First, an RPG or an FPS wasn't in my plans, despite the fact that my girlfriend (a fantasy genre fan) keeps bugging me to get Skyrim. I am currently alternating between FNV and Civilization V. The next item on my one-game-per-year budget plan was meant to be either a real-time strategy (something along the lines of Command&Conquer or Starcraft) or an economic simulation (something along the lines of Sim City perhaps).

Second, and more importantly, I'm not sure how playing Fallout 3 is going to feel in comparison to a newer, presumably more refined and advanced, game such as FNV. I have fond memories of the original Red Alert, but I would not necessarily want to go back to it after having played Command&Conquer: Generals, if you know what I mean.

So, would Fallout 3 feel "dated" or inadequate compared to FNV or would it not?

Fallout 3 for me is quite old but defently fun seems like the graphics on both nv and fo3 are the same to me anyway, and I don't see much differnence in gamplay except mods for guns and perks and a few other things if u can afford fo3 and skyrim you would prob enjoy it but do what u want.

Fo3 was amazing buy it now.
Its really only missing mods for guns and weapon repair kits.

You'll get conflicting opinions. Personally, I will never play Fallout 3 again after New Vegas. The writing, quest count, quest quality (choices and consequences), amount of weapons, DLC, the skills/stat system, perks, and mostly everything else is far superior in New Vegas. Plus, there are the little things they added to the engine like weapons mods, the companion wheel, and special melee attacks. You might be disappointed, and honestly, if you're going with one game a year, I wouldn't get Fallout 3.

You'll notice a difference in the story, tone, and atmosphere and some gameplay aspects from FNV will be missing, of course, but like the others said the game play is basically the same. I think FNV is more balanced than Fallout 3, simply because by level 30 in FO3, I'll be able to kill most of the things that come my way, but in Vanilla Fallout: New Vegas, I will still have trouble killing deathclaws and other high level enemies.

Honestly I think for sheer bang for buck fo3 would suite a one game a year plan i've got about 900 plus hours and only now i'm I getting bored.
It depends what you liked in fonv? Honestly fallout 3 is very immersive and has great atmosphere for it's own merits and has interesting characters and dialougeit doesn't match fonv in those two areas but not to many games can compete with fonv in that regard while fo3 does have better exploration if that means anything.

To summerise fonv is better in most aspects significantly but it's a sequel that was built from mostly fo3 assets and was here to fill a gap in the market to be a bigger and better version of fallout 3 without makeing huge changes or risks so fonv is better but fo3 really gets acclaim because of how new and fresh it felt fonv never had that it's like comparing bioshock (bigger impact and arguably will be remembered more)and bioshock 2(technically better) in this regard.

I tried my best to give an honest opinion.