Don't listen to all the haters. I got this game a couple months ago expecting it to be bad and it is excellent. So much to do, you can play this for a 1000 hours and still have a ton to do. The game has a super long learning curve and isn't the easiest game out there. I haven't even had all that many bugs knock on wood. My main gripe with the game is the small stash and carrying capacity. You really have to be organized and scrap everything you aren't going to use.
The world is MASSIVE and 150 hours into it, I still haven't seen a LOT of it. I've barely made a dent in the quests either. There is tons of loot and hundreds of ways to build up your character skills although I would choose melee and shotgunner to start with and then once the better weapons become available, fine tune it from there. There is ZERO reason to pay a dime on the Atom store. You get a LOT of Atoms just playing the game. I think I have 1200 right now and I just spent 500 a few weeks ago on some repair kits (The best thing to buy in the Atom Store, they make your life really easy if you are out of steel or something).