Hopeful Future Owner

Hi there everyone!

I'm new to the forum, and really love what I see. For a while now I have kicked around the idea of buying a mid-size truck for myself, the only problem being that I am paranoid and miserly.
So to put my paranoia at ease a bit I have turned to you all at the Frontier Forum! Most of what i need to know is just about reliability, I am looking at crew cab 4x4s and would hate to spend so much to get something that will break. I realize that a lot of this will come down to how hard I off road it and how well I maintain it.
I suppose to sum up all that I need to know is: Are 4x4 Frontiers reliable, I will be looking mostly at manual transmissions but would consider an automatic for the right price. This is probably the wrong forum to ask this but would it be worth it to just spend the extra money and get myself a toyota? (I can't wrap my head around the fact that they would be worth so much more)
Some info that would probably be useful would be to know that I like in New Mexico in a High Desert climate, and most of my offroading will be done on washed out dirt roads/mud when it rains.

Thanks for any help and advice in advance, I look forward to more posts.