As a fan of Fallout, the revival of the Wasteland series had a lot of appeal to me. Without the original Wasteland, we’d have no Fallout. I played Wasteland 2, but lost interest in it halfway through. So, I was hesitant to try Wasteland 3, but decided to give it a try. And I’ve got a lot to say about this game.

In regards to gameplay, Wasteland 3 is an isometric RPG that took a few cues from tactical games like XCOM. You have a squad of up to 6 characters you control, 4 rangers and 2 companions. How you invest their skill points determines what type of soldier they’ll be. I think that is one change I appreciate from Wasteland 2, the skills seems much more concentrated. Instead of separate skills for each type of gun, stuff like shotguns and pistols are lumped into a “small gun” skill. I know streamlining skills system is a sin to the more hardcore RPG crowd, but I think it’s a smart move here. There’s still a plethora of skills to pick from. Early on, you have to choose how you want to spec your rangers. I had my heavy weapons guy, a sniper who also picked locks, a support member with book smarts, and a gunslinger that was meant to move up and push hard. If you have rangers with lots of overlapping skills, you’re playing wrong. There’s also attributes to upgrade, like Strength, Charisma, Intelligence, etc. Here the game seems to encourage to you make your rangers all-arounders. While certain firearms favor having certain stats higher, you can’t neglect the others. I found Strength to be a troublesome stat. Towards the late game a majority of high-end armors require a mid to high Strength stat. That’s fine for my heavy weapons guy, but not for my nerd character who favors the Intelligence attribute.

The armor issue led to a lot of my rangers feeling like glass cannon. They could dish out a respectable amount of punishment, but they could take about 2 hits before going down. I was playing on Normal, but even then, the enemies felt like they were cheating a little. Combat is a tactical turn-based affair. If you’ve played XCOM, you know this system. Each ranger has a set amount of action points they can use to either move, shoot, use items, or perform a special action. The enemies felt like they were playing with double the action points I had, which led to my rangers being downed a lot. Luckily, reviving a downed teammate is easy to do during battle. The battlefield is broken down in a grid format and there’s cover dotted across the field you have to make use of. Combat challenge is ramped up by including more enemies or stronger ones and by having you start battles in inopportune positions, like in a narrow hallway, or on the low ground, or in an open field with little cover. I never got bored with combat. It always stayed fun and engaging as I unlocked new abilities and collected stronger weapons.

One thing this game adds that wasn’t in Wasteland 2 is the Kodiak, your snow cat battle wagon. It’s used for traveling across the overworld map. That’s the one thing in isometric RPGs I never cared for, overworld maps, because of the random encounters. When you run into something you don’t want to deal with in a 1st person RPG, you can just nope out of there. With these random encounters, you are stuck dealing with them if you don’t have a high enough survival skill to dodge them. Besides that, exploring the Colorado wasteland is enjoyable. There’re also a few occasions where you use the Kodiak in combat. It’s a freaking tank. Unless you are fighting another vehicle or a robo-scorpion, it’s an unstoppable beast. It can kill enemies instantly by running them over and the guns you unlock for it are game changers. Having the vehicle adds a fun aspect to combat and I wish there were more chances to use it.

Now, I like the world of Fallout and it’s lore, but I’ll admit, I think I like Wasteland’s world better. The first reason is Wasteland is more contemporary than Fallout. In this universe the bombs fell in the early 90s, not 2077. The game has Snicker bars, dot matrix printers, and Soviets. There’s one whole area centered around Ronald Reagan. There’s futuristic weapons, but the world feels more realistic than Fallout’s. There’s not that extra 90 years of pre-war lore. We aren’t learning about how every pre-war company was stupidly evil. There is some corny 90s edge leftover from the original Wasteland, mainly a character named “Angela Death”. Wasteland is also a lot more upfront with cannibalism. In Fallout, it's usually a secret thing practiced by one community. In this wasteland, cannibalism isn't quite as taboo, which makes sense for a food-scarce wasteland.

I also really love the gruff Western aesthetic of Wasteland. I like Fallout New Vegas, I think everyone does, but the Western aesthetic is just a coat of paint. They go for a campy 50s Western, which is fine, but Wasteland 3 nails the gritty Western feel. Your squad is a member of the Rangers, who are pseudo-Old West lawmen. There are factions of Indian tribes still active in the wasteland. The Colorado wasteland feels like a distorted version of the Old West more than New Vegas did. That doesn’t mean Wasteland 3 is devoid of humor. There’re some ridiculous things, like a gang that wears monster masks or a cult to Reagan, and most the item descriptions are sarcastic or references. They are funny, but also fit in the world. The only really dumb joke I found was the President’s “War on Hugs”.

I think the Colorado setting helped hold my interest. There’s plenty of desert like post-apocalyptic games, but I also feel drawn to the “nuclear winter” settings and Wasteland 3 has that in spades. You are in a constant snow storm and it creates a different feel to the world. Armors aren’t just pots and pans, you have to have layers for warmth, vehicles all have tracks on them for navigating snow, heat is an important commodity. My only suggestion would maybe having an area where exposure was a risk, make the cold a gameplay mechanic.

Another thing that endeared me to this game is the music. It is on point and worth a whole star grade. They took some royalty free hymns and American ballad songs and gave them a dark country spin. And this game does the thing I love to see in games. During pivotal battles or story moments it plays a song with lyrics. My favorite was the “Blood of the Lamb” which played during the first mission. A few of the other big battles have America the Beautiful or Battle Hymn of the Republic playing. It makes the combat encounter feel special. It’s not just another fight. The standard RPG “Where are they now?” ending slide is narrated via song from an artist I listen to. As you travel around, music will play on the radio occasionally and I had a big dumb smile when I realized they were covers of old 70s TV shows. The two I heard the most were WKRP in Cincinnati and Green Acres. Using theme songs as music for a post-apocalyptic games just seems great.

One reason I lost interest in Wasteland 2 was the story never really grabbed me. I remember just kind of listlessly exploring Arizona with the plot taking awhile to show up. Wasteland 3 hits the ground running and outlines your big goals. After the events of Wasteland 2, the Arizona Rangers are barely scrapping by, but they are able to strike a deal with the leader of Colorado Springs, the Patriarch. He’ll send us aid, but first we have to track down his 3 wayward children. As we go through the Colorado wastes, we are contacted by Angela, who was part of the first Ranger squad sent to Colorado. She wants you to abandon your mission and try to overthrow the Patriarch. I really like the situation this story but you in. You have to decide what’s more important, your mission or your morals. If you want to see the mission through, you’ll have to work with some shady characters and get your hands dirty. If you only work with the nice guys, you won’t go far. I made a lot of morally gray choices because my guiding principle was “I have to save Arizona”. Even the good ending requires you to make some bad choices, like arresting a smuggler trying to help displaced refugees or letting the Reaganites perform a dangerous brain transplant.

This notion is sort of undermined by the reputation scale. Like New Vegas, you have a standing with each faction you must monitor, but not every faction has a reputation meter. The most notably absent one was Brygo’s Mob. They are one of the power players in Colorado Springs, but their opinion of you doesn’t matter. In one mission you have to chose between Brygo or Colorado’s police force, the Marshals. Your reputation with Marshals matter, so metagaming would dictate you’d side with the Marshals. You also have a few companions you can help out. Jodie is a Ranger that came up with you from Arizona, Scotchmo is your comic relief character, and I often had him in the party. Lucia Wesson is basically Kim Darby from True Grit.

The character of the Patriarch is well written. 9 times out of 10, anytime someone rolls into media with a name like the Patriarch, they’re going to be the undeniable bad guy. You expect him to renege on his deal or betray you, but no. If you do the job and don’t try to overthrow him, he keeps up his end of the deal. He’s a good example of a stubborn, “I know best” dictator. It’s very clear that in the wilds of the post-apocalyptic wastes, you need someone with a firm hand to rise up if you want a chance at civilization. No one becomes the boss without breaking a few eggs. He’s locked up political prisoners, sent criminals to the raider gangs as a protection payment, and seems to be fine with his police force being corrupt. He's not a great guy, but you can tell he’s the hero of his own story. After building and ruling Colorado Springs for so long, he’s hesitant to turn the city over to democratic elections. I know those type of “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” people in real life. He’s not secretly experimenting on people or trying to conquer the world, he just wants to keep Colorado Springs strong, even if it does mean leaving some of the less fortunate behind.

Whether you can personally forgive the Patriarch for his sins or not is up to you. Angela can’t and that’s why she wants you to help with the rebellion. She’s not portrayed as a plucky rebel, she’s blinded by her personal values, willing to sacrifice Arizona’s salvation to remove the ‘bad man’ in Colorado. And a third angle to this power struggle is the Patriarch’s daughter Liberty. She is an extreme version of the Patriarch. She’s embraced the raider warlord lifestyle. Her philosophy is simply “might makes right”. When everyone is her subject there will be peace. Of course, this leads to the same problem Ceasar’s Legion has, what happens after her death?

All in all, this game was a blast. It held my interest much better than Wasteland 2. I loved exploring the world and being immersed in the Coloradoan winter wasteland. The gameplay isn’t original, but it’s solid. If you are someone who can get into isometric RPGs, I highly recommend Wasteland 3. It may be my favorite of the genre. I’m interested to see if we get a Wasteland 4, possibly set in Kansas.

I had had wasteland 2 on my harddrive for well over two years, it was always a game id been meaning to play, meaning to go back to, meaning to finish, but i never felt any real pull to, i had tried it once several years and got through a few hours but the story and gameplay was very dry and i was struggling to really be captured by it all. I never held that against the game cause i had wanted to play so many games at the time that maybe i felt this wasnt worth it right now and id circle back to it. I never did.

I finally decided to delete wasteland 2 from my computer a few weeks ago, but right after i did i saw wasteland 3 had released on gamepass, and i thought about how id been always meaning to play 2 cause it did intrigue me but it suffered from being very dry (Partly because of the massive walls of texts) and kind of jank, so i said screw it and downloaded wasteland 3 and almost immediately the game had done away with all reservations from the past game, a better looking, better sounding, less jank gameplay, the walls of text had been replaced by stellar voice acting, a far more understandable skill tree (albeit very daunting starting out) getting a bit more freedom in my choices and seeing how my choices can come back to bite me in the ass, for example, I had met a boy looking for his mother but he was too afraid to go looking for her, bandits and cannibals you see, but i told him to live his dream of being a hero and get out there....i could not help but feel a deep sting when i saw how it all ended, another example would be how by not putting a few points into the first aid skill i had managed to get a companion killed off at the very beginning in a story sequence, it was shocking, it was weird, i felt cheated, they could have told me about this, but i kept going and i learned that thats kind of what the early to mid game is about as you spec your characters, assign them skills, you cant know everything all the time, you can be good at some things, maybe even exceptional in one, but if you want to know everything youre going to need a crew, and a crew is what i built.

I dont know how long i played but it had to be close to or over 50 hours, and i thoroughly enjoyed most of it, the games still kind of janky as sometimes actions in combat can feel more like a suggestion then an order, technical bugs run throughout the game but luckily i didnt encounter anything that couldnt be solved from quickloading or restarting the game. The factions of the game are presented as something akin to what we're used to in fallout or other rpgs, many have a stat indicating how liked or disliked you are by them but there arnt enough of them to really warrant that stat and youre never given many real moments to try and win their favour outside the BIG missions in their area, but once youre done with them the factions just kind of exist which i really felt was a lost opportunity, how can you have a faction of people in the wasteland who just wear shitty dollar store costumes with a history of murder and pillaging while making monster noises and have them just be sidelined, like COME ON. While the world building in the game is very interesting i cant help but feel a lot of it seems like set up for more thats not yet in the game, maybe dlc, maybe setting up for 4 who knows, so while the nice blend of world building and story does go hand in hand in alot of scenes were very, there are sections where it falls short or i wish it had been more expanded on. My hope for the next game is that they keep doing what they do, but allow more room for factions to grow and more depth given to the characters positioned as antagonists. While i do wish the factions had far more depth given to them, theres still alot of meat on this games bones, and a robust skill system that expects you to mess up starting out, but by the end youve learned to coexist with.

If you enjoy CRPGs or are interested in them (this was my first real meaty one) i highly recommend giving this game a shot (especially if you already have gamepass) it takes some getting used to, but once it gets in gear its thoroughly entertaining with the huge amounts of writing done for the game, im sure if i ever played it again i would go down completely different routes and make choices different then i did the first time around (while admittedly, most of the game would still be the same but you know) which makes it a very interesting play experience, knowing that there was something completely different that you never saw while not being disappointed with what you did get to see.

And if nothing else, the games given me some stellar songs to add to my music rotation