Wasteland 2 (2014)

I never played the first Wasteland, but I do know it was an inspiration for the Fallout series

Wasteland 2 is a party based RPG with tactical combat. You play from an overhead view. In the party of 7, you've got 4 characters that you create and three NPC's. The characters you create are highly customizable and have individual personalities. The NPC's in the party have their own agendas

Simply put, a nuclear war has occurred between the USA and Soviet Union leaving the world devastated. There is quite a bit of plot in the game. It's never complicated, but a lot does happen

The story is very good and your choices can branch how it goes in many ways. I enjoyed the environment and the tactical combat very much

Lots of replayability. I guess the biggest question is why I never got around to playing Wasteland 3

Wasteland 2 is quite the achievement in its attempt to bring the role-playing from Wasteland into a new era with some quality of life improvements. However, the stat imbalances requiring a fair bit of grinding, the drawn-out combat, and the low-chance percentage checks add some frustration to an intriguing experience.

Taking place after a global nuclear war, you play as a squad of the Desert Rangers, a group of soldiers who assist communities in Arizona and beyond. Investigating some strange radio signals involving synths and a new threat to the world, you head out to investigate. There's quite a few places to go, including a binary "save this town or save that town" early on that hammers in that some people just can't be saved.

However, this extends more from a narrative perspective and into a general lack of stats you'll find yourself in. Each member of the party has attributes (strength, coordination, etc), perks, and skills, the last of which are checked for pretty much any action. While most failures allow for retries the danger of a critical failure which screws up the task for retries and can damage the player is very annoying. Most of the time the player needs to level up their party but even then some high stat requirements just demand reloading saves. Wasteland 2 is a pretty large area but the amount of money/stats required to not get stuck or have to take the most unpleasant way out of an encounter involves more grinding than exploring.

Battles are very tactical, even given the stat chances. Players must be careful to reload, place their people for a quick ambush, and hide behind cover to get past some battles. That said, stats and weapons will almost always determine the course of victory. While there are a variety of different weapons to maintain a good team balance, it can be very tricky to vary those balances later on. Switching weapons that suddenly need a different ammo stock can require more grinding or management and it can be impossible later on to completely switch a party member's combat playstyle.

Back to narrative, the wasteland has some interesting characters. Nuke-worshipping monks, mutant plants, sleazy Hollywood, gun-toting priests, etc - few characters are particularly memorable (Angela Deth and Vulture's Cry stand out as some of the most impressive characterizations) but there'll be plenty of quests and conversations to be had. Just know that given those high stat requirements the player will find it a struggle to choose the more interesting options.

As for the audio and visuals, Wasteland 2 has a decent soundtrack to play the ambiance of a desert wasteland with some electronic bits thrown in. Visually is probably where Wasteland 2 shines the most, with a full rotating camera and exquisitely detailed environments that look particularly gorgeous when out of the desert and into LA. Character designs are a bit nondescript but animations are solid.

Wasteland 2 is a long and at times restricting journey that enforces patience to not only put up with slow, tactically focused battles but also grind out high skill requirements if you don't want a particularly embarrassing or frustrating run of the desert.

Finished playing the Directors cut version of this today. Loved the game and loved playing a good CRPG with actual choices and consequences.

Got all the achievements for this as I liked it so much!
Most tedious Achievement: Wasteland Historian - Having to collect all the lore entries which can be easily missed is not fun. Had to follow a guide for it.

Most fun achievement: Sinners and Saints - Making peace between Hollywood and the Bastion is a great storyline and I really enjoyed playing through it.

I have put hundreds of hours into CRPGs like The Baldur's Gate series and Neverwinter Nights and Divinity 2 and such... but I could not get into this game. I put in a few hours and it never hooked me.

Finally I got to a point where I kept getting wiped and thought, "why am I still playing this?"

...so I stopped.

Wasteland 2 is what Fallout 3 should have been. Yes, the game is plagued by a myriad of bugs and broken quests; and yes, the weapons and armors lack any semblance of balance. However, the lack of polish, the old-school graphics, the oft-neglected top down, turn-based approach, and yes, even the plethora of glitches, serve to enhance the level of immersion of this meticulously crafted post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Actual Score: 3.5/5

Wasteland 2 scratches all the classic Fallout itches but is still a far from perfect game.

I think this game is a mix of the classic Fallout series (1 and 2) and Fallout Tactics. Praying a lot on the nostalgia so people loving the mentioned games will feel right at home. I admit the atmosphere is there. Travelling wasteland is fun and engaging. Combat is well designed and satisfying. The quests are varied and most of the times interesting giving multiple ways to tackle the problem (most of the times at least).

There is a steep learning curve though and having played it once I would have made a completely different starting choices. Which is a shame as I did take the original pre-defined party of characters. It's not bad but due to my choices on levelling up some characters ended up as cannon fodder rather than the useful team members.

Guns are fun but some of the gun classes feel useless. Especially the handguns and shotguns. I wanted a varied party so had a medic with a pistol and guy who was supposed to be close combat shotgun wielder. Sadly had to re-purpose both of them changing the first into energy weapon sniper and second to standard rifleman. The shotgun just felt so useless.

Quests for the most part are well designed though there's quite a few of 'go and fetch' ones. Some require a bit of thinking and are not all that straight forward which is a nice change from the current generation of "go to this spot and press this button" missions. However there are some really badly designed - one for example hints that there are multiple ways to approach the problem but there are actually two. And while the first one is obvious the second one unlocks only after you acquire the part required for first approach. And the part is somewhat 10-15h of game play away (out of around 60 for the whole thing in my case). That is just stupid. And you can't even go at it guns blazing as this is the only part of the game that has super turret guns killing you instantly no matter how many explosives you throw at it. Really annoying.

There is a few quests that are not interesting especially near the end but those you can tackle with guns blazing approach which was nice. The amount of text in dialogues seem to get out of control at certain points without any real benefit to the game.

This is also a game of two parts. The Arizona one which feels more fleshed out and the LA part which for some reasons changes mechanics, introduces completely not necessary plot lines and feels a bit rushed. It also introduces an instant spike in difficulty making all enemies two times stronger. Luckily from the get go there is a vendor selling guns that are way stronger than your current loud out.

Graphicly it's pretty bad. I played the directors cut which should be updated version with better graphics and assets. And it still looks bad. The texture quality is pretty low, the game sometimes look worse than Fallout 2 in my opinion. The camera works sometimes really strangely. There is no tilt control, and the angle sometimes feel weird - though you can get used to it. The worst looking part must be the world map though. Such an ugly thing.

Audio wise - there's not much to tell. Didn't notice any soundtrack. The voice acting is good although not sure why some characters have the voice and others don't (excluding the main characters of the game). The screaming goats are pretty annoying and not sure who decided it was a good idea even if meant as a joke.

Overall I'd say a decent title. Had fun for the most part with exception of some annoying situations. Wouldn't recommend it for everyone but for all Fallout 1/2 without a shadow of doubt. Good world design, fun storyline, engaging game play, a bit disappointing ending