Honestly, you can make good beer and win awards in pretty much any kind of fermentor. With "makes good beer" ticked off, it comes down to price, convenience, safety, looks.
Stainless cleans easier, looks cooler, easy to clean, oxygen impermeable, and if you get an infection it's easier to get rid of.
Glass is like stainless but is transparent (actually very useful) but fragile, some might say dangerous.
Plastic is cheap and tough, works fine, but if you get an infection it may mean replacement.
Conicals (plastic or stainless) are nice-to-have but not essential by any means.
Pressure-fermentors let you do closed transfers (less oxygen pickup) and you can carbonate in the primary which saves time and CO2.
There's a bunch of different combinations out there. I think anyone serious about brewing will go through several fermentors in their brewing career. I used plastic buckets until I got infections in them, replaced them with a plastic pressure conical, then corny kegs (aka cheap stainless pressure fermentors), and recently a stainless pressure conical.
Personally I highly rate pressure fermentors over any other kind. Less oxygen makes better beer and being able to carbonate in primary saves both time and gas. If you want a cheap stainless pressure fermentor, look no further than a standard corny keg with a spunding valve. Only downside is the size - you can't ferment 5 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon corny so you need two of them linked together.
But when you are starting out and you have a bunch of other things to spend money on, it's hard to beat a plain plastic bucket,or a fermonster. Stainless is awesome but don't let anyone tell you that you can't make great beer in plastic.
