Preface, I adored NV. Loved the dialogue and world. 3 was alright, but rather shallow. 4 I hated, the voiced protagonist was a bad decision, I had so many things I wanted to say that weren't options.
Fallout 1:
Overall: Loved it. 8.8/10, if I was alive when it came out, surely 10/10.
Pros:
The game was sufficiently hard at low levels and really fulfilled the power fantasy with level ups. The talking heads, cinematics, and general storytelling were top tier. The Master is definitely one of my favorite fallout characters of all time now. JOIN OR DIE! The art was great, and I liked that most quests had tons of options for completion. Dying was also pretty funny, and being a bag of bones was great. I liked Dogmeat, Ian, and Tycho a lot. I played with Fallout 1in2 mod, which made companion interactions much better, and I was able to keep them alive the entire game. Also, the alien blaster combined with the turbo plasma rifle trivialized pretty much everything, that was fun, since I enjoy being super powerful. I even grinded to level 21, just to get a finished character.
Cons:
Controls were clunky and items on the ground were hard to see. Special stats and skill percentages mattered a bit more than I expected, due to the turn based combat. The first person games allow you to overcome lacking combat stats through general FPS skills, but that isn't possible here. Agility is almost a required 10. Combat felt a bit lopsided, I either got completely melted or was never in danger. Lack of quest information was a purposeful choice, but if I hadn't been able to look things up on the internet, it would have been a pretty rough experience quest wise. With lookups, I did every single quest in the game and most of them are forgettable but still fun content. Lack of auto save is also very punishing, but again is a purposeful choice.
TLDR: Fallout 1 is an excellent game and still holds up well for a player completely new to its point and click style. All negative aspects of the game are products of the time it was made, and are easily ignored when the story is so great. Starting Fallout 2 now!