I've postponed playing the original Fallout game for a really long time, mostly because I was worried that learning of the beginnings of the franchise would change my feelings of the later games.
I'm happy to say that they haven't.

Fallout is a great oldschool RPG, with plenty of comedic moments and disturbing stories being told.
Having played through the later games, it's great to see the origin of later returning characters.

For those looking to get into the backstory of the Fallout games, this is definitely a must buy. Keep in mind however, that this game was released in 1997, so don't expect any miracles.

The gameplay is good, if a little finicky and slow sometimes (especially opening doors/containers and accessing/exiting the barter menu).

I very much enjoyed the writing, although some of it seemed very "forced" in the beginning of the game. I don't know how to put it correctly, but it felt a bit out of place compared to the rest of the dialogue. Besides that, it was a pleasure to read through.

Graphics... I mean, it's 1997. Not a whole lot going on. Enjoy the grotesque pixel art in the LA vault.

The one thing that really bothered me with this game though, was how the quests and their objectives were set up. I've played quite a few RPGs, and Fallout is definitely not an exception. But I've had numerous moments where the game didn't make it clear where I would have to go to progress a quest, or even if I had completed something at all (protip: keep a close eye on the text monitor, because it's easy to miss things in a wall of combat notifications). This can be helped by having a walkthrough or wiki closeby, but I've found that these also aren't always written very clearly.

Last thing that I'd like to point out, the core game is relatively short! I decided not to fuss about with every single sidequest I came about (mostly because of the aforementioned issues I had with keeping track of everything), but I made sure to at least meet all the major characters and factions and do at least one or two quests in each area. I finished the game in about 6-8 hours on my first playthrough, without having read any wiki's or seen playthroughs before playing the game, but ymmv.

Overall, Fallout was a (nuclear) blast to play, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking to dive into the origins of the 3D games.