I do not think that Fallout 3 offers more freedom. In fact, I felt the general story concept to be terribly limiting as to who you can be and what you're supposed to do. NV gave me a lot more freedom to be the kind of character I wanted to be with the motivations that I wanted.

Yes, New Vegas offered a lot more freedom within its storyline, but the actual freedom of movement and exploration was a lot better in Fallout 3.

Well, I will agree that Fallout 3 opened up earlier than New Vegas, but once NV did, I felt the experience was a lot more rewarding, in connection with the greater freedom of choice within the storyline and side content.

Except for Broken Steel, which the FO3 mechanics were not prepared to handle :/

Fallout3 had great level design. The whole city felt like I'd imagine a dilapidated city would feel, and I loved that very early quest that sent you to the giant supermarket. But I can't fault New Vegas for bad level design - a desert should feel open and aimless. Wandering the DC area felt a lot like walking around downtown DC (in fact, at one point while walking in the monument area I realized I was going places based solely on points of interest from the game...that's how good the scaled-down geography was for FO3), but walking around the Vegas wasteland felt a lot like convoying through the Afghanistan desert(which is actually pretty much a perfect analogue for the New Vegas world, and a climate match for Vegas).

I'm a sucker for the BoS and was so disappointed at their treatment in NV, but it worked with the lore. FO3 was a tighter, more focused game - and that might mean better. But all the differences in NV felt right, and neither of the originals were exactly railroads.

TL;DR

I liked FNV a lot. I thought Fo3 was okay until I played New Vegas.

Not really interested in Fallout 4, but I am a free market guy and will buy it if I like it.

Zero hype though.

What was wrong with Broken Steel? It was also made in response the game's ending which you could not continue.

Yeah, I get what it was for; I personally like the original ending for FO3 but also liked how they handled the opening of Broken Steel, so I didn't whine about it either way. But the game was designed for 20 levels, and with the level 30 cap for Broken Steel, you encountered one of the worst design problems in a Fallout game - level-matched enemies that took so long to kill that it stopped being fun. I have no problem with difficulty; no problem with equipment decay and scarce resources (it's Fallout, ffs, resources should be even more scarce than they are), but if you didn't zerg right through the plot, you'd hit level 30 early on in the Broken Steel expansion and have Super Mutant Masters who took 200 rounds of 10mm to kill or so many shots from a Tri-beam laser rifle that killing two of them took it from 100% to a jamming heap of scrap.

Don't get me wrong; I liked Broken Steel. I liked seeing the Enclave flex a little. But the game mechanics were not prepared for those extra ten levels.

Having played the game due to a friend's suggestion and without checking out reviews, I never realized Fallout 3 had caused such mixed feelings. I thought it was an amazing game, and I had sunk so many hours into it. Then again I'm an heathen, never played any other game from the franchise.
I'm interested in Fallout 4 and would also like to give a try to New Vegas, but I'm not to keen on Steam.

Yeah. The Ghoul Reavers were the worst of them all. During my recent playthrough, I reached level 20 at about the half-way mark. Making your way through some of the DC sewers with sometimes several Reavers at once, now that was intense.

The Super Mutant masters weren't that bad if you shot their tri-laser rfiles out of their hands and picked the gun up before they could do it. Bad for the gun if you wanted it, but good for you.

Oh I hated level scailing in modern bethesda. Can't we just have dungeons that are too high level and just wait until you become high level?

The whole point of the level scailing is to let casuals beat the game at level 1.