Yeah, it never felt like an FPS to me.
However, in my case, that's why I liked it. Heh.
I think Fallout 3 is probably the best FPS/RPG there is. They managed to merge RPG skills into a fairly fun good FPS in a useful way.
Which is, of course, only relevant if you like that mixed genre. I can see why people who like straight FPSs would dislike, as, yes, a lot of skill was replaced with luck.
For those of us who've never had a lot of skill at FPSs, though, it was pretty nice.
Oblivion tried to do the same thing (Or, rather, it tried to do it first.) but I thought it failed...but, then again, I'm not a big fan of melee combat, and I couldn't seem to get very good at ranged combat in it.
So it was a pretty unsatisfying experience, especially when combined with the confusing and near nonsensical leveling system. It's sad, because I like the premise of 'What you use during gaining a level should be discounted when you gain the next level', that actual used skill should be increased faster.
Sadly, the way Oblivion did it, was basing leveling on each skill, and often required you to grind a skill before leveling, and often you got an advantage by not leveling. Also, because leveling was based on skills, you had to make sure your major skill weren't skills you used all the time, or you'd level too fast...it was crazy, and made no sense to me. Perhaps this was some 'Elder Scrolls' thing, but this was the first Elder Scrolls game I played, and I couldn't figure it out.
Hell, I read 'strategy guides' before making a character, and thought I selected right...but by the time I was level 5 or so, I was regularly getting beat by single enemies. Apparently, I had screwed up and wasn't powerful enough for that level. Now, with RPGs, you do need to level a character in a sane manner, or you will start getting beaten by scaled enemies, but I've never had problems with that in any other game.
A much more sane way to do that would be something like 'Every time you use a sword 100 times, you get an extra sword point next level, up to 1000, at which point you get half a point, etc' or something. That would actually make sense. But Oblivion managed to take that promising concept and screw it up.
Comparing the two, and how close they are, it's honestly amazing to me that Fallout 3 is right up there in my 'top five games of all time', and my 'game to get stuck on a desert island with', and Oblivion is at least in the bottom 25%.
