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.
