I would definitely recommend giving it a try.

A number of devs from Interplay (developers of the first two Fallout games before Bethesda acquired the license) moved to Obsidian and worked on New Vegas. Many long-time fans of the series consider it to be the best of the series after the transition to 3d first person, if not the best in the series, period.

A lot of the negative reviews were tied to the very buggy state the game released in. I've heard rumors that Obsidian asked for more QA time but was forced by the publisher to rush it to release. Given that Obsidian had a bounty reward if they hit a certain Metacritic score and they missed it by one point, I'm inclined to believe that rumor.

Personally, I think Fallout 4 has better gunplay, but New Vegas is much better at being an RPG with guns in it, rather than a shooter with RPG elements tacked on. It's gotten a ton of polish since release, and there are years of community mods and patches to further smooth out the rough edges.