Polish isn't based upon opinion at all, hell I never loved a Blizzard game, but they're all polished to a gleam.
AP and FO:NV are fugly games from all kinds of professional perspectives, being technically poor, and artistically void. AP was certainly clunk from a gameplay perspective. We can expand this analysis if you wish, the simple point is that basically polish isn't based on opinion, its based on obvious improvements due to development iteration.
Uh, I'm not a professional developer. I'm just a gamer. As an untrained pleb, I thought AP looked good and FO:NV looked fantastic. I found both interfaces easy to use.
If you really want to spend time educating me about this, feel free to. But I imagine it is a lot like comparing art. Sure, there is a huge difference between an untrained and a trained artist, but it gets a lot harder to explain why Picasso is such a big deal compared to some other neo-expressionist Joe Schmoe.