Full Video Review = http://youtu.be/pqELTg4w2SU

Wasteland 2's story places you in the boots of four raw recruits to the desert rangers. The game starts you in the desert wastes of Arizona as you attend the funeral of Ace, a desert ranger who was recently killed. As the funeral ends the desert rangers leader General Vargas throws you into the deep end and sends you off to track down Ace's killer.

Let's start with character creation, in the game you start with four characters. You have the option of either creating your own characters or choose from pre existing builds, you can even have a combination of both. In terms of aesthetics the character models are not pleasant to look like and there isn't a large variety of faces to choose from. That being said the statistical side makes the appearance’s short comings up in spades. Your characters have both attributes which are things like strength and skills. There is a large range of skills available including things like lockpicking, safecracking and more. It's often best to create a diverse group after all the more skills your party has collectively, the more options you'll have throughout the game. I myself opted first for a assault rife bearing squad leader, a sniper with lockpicking and computer skills, a melee focused demolitions expert and a shotgun wielding medic, aptly named Doc.

When your not actually in a location, you'll be traversing the wastes on the world map. There are lots of locations to discover in the world and you can find hidden cache's of loot so its worth spending time to explore. On the world map you have to take several factors in to account when travelling. First is your water supply, your group has water canteens, each mile you travel will use up water and if you run out your party will take damage from dehydration. You can however stop of at any oasis you find in your travels to fill your canteens. Another factor is radiation, after all nukes do tend to leave some nasty after effects in the environment. Safe travel through irratiated zones can only be done by having the appropriate radiation suits, if you don't your party will die of radiation sickness very quickly. The world map also has random encounters not all of which are combat focused. Many will be raiders or animals that you must combat or run away from. Some will be travelling merchants or on the occasion something much more interesting.

Graphically Wasteland 2 isn't the prettiest of spectacles, However its art direction does bring a certain harsh, grittiness to the affair which is very appropriate for the post apocalyptic setting. I think the character models could have been done better as some of the models and animations have a blocky look to them which looks out of place. While it is not the prettiest of games, the effect animations such as explosions look well done. On top of that the things like NPC character art is fantastically done. On thing that does shine in the game is sound which is no surprise when
Mark Morgan who was responsible for the soundtracks to fallout and fallout 2 is your composer. Everything from music, sound effects and surprisingly voice acting is done superbly and brings a real atmosphere to the whole affair.



Let's move on to one of, if not the main part of the game, combat, after all theres plenty of dangers lurking in the wasteland and you can't avoid all of them. Those familiar with the recent X-com or the even more recent Divinity Original Sin will be right at home with Wasteland 2's tactical turn based system. Combat is straight forward and works from an action point system. Your characters attributes determines the amount of AP you have at the start of each turn as well as the order of which characters take their turns in. The combat is fairly fast paced similar to X-com enemy unknown, there is both cover and crouch mechanics too. The cover system is simplistic and being in cover gives you defensive bonuses. Crouching on the other hand improves your chance to hit as well as raising your chance to evade attacks.

Depending on the difficulty combat can become fairly challenging. Particularly later in the game when you meet tougher enemies and enemies with both unique mechanics and better weaponry. As you go through the game you can gain followers to your squad, these followers if you don't have the leadership skill can have a chance to lose control and they will do as they please in combat. Your weapons can also jam, usually at most inconvenient times, plus you will have to regularly reload your mags and watch your available ammo.

Overall the combat is solid, challenging and fun. It can throw you a few curve balls along the way too which is always good for keeping you on your toes. It's something that InXile had to get right and thankfully in my opinion they have executed it very well.

Wasteland 2 boasts a large number of quests to embark on. The great thing about the game is that you often have the freedom of choice in how to deal with the situations you encounter. Depending on who you have in your party and your skills, there are often multiple outcomes to any given scenario. An example of this is when I went to a graveyard and dug some graves, all was fine with me looting form the dead however upon reloading an earlier save I gained a different follower on the path and when I went to dig the graves my ally took offence to disturbing the dead and turn on my group. Things like this can happen all the time in the game and its great to see all the different possibilities there are. Not only does it ensure a good amount of re-playability but it also ensures that while two people can play the same game, different things will happen to each.

In conclusion wasteland 2 lives up to its namesake and not only provides a great post apocalyptic rpg experience but it provides a memorable one too. You will spend hours laughing at the video game culture references throughout the game as well as enjoying the well written characters. One thing I love is that the game doesn't hold your hand and lets you solve problems as you see fit, if there’s a wall in your way you could use the brute force skill or just throw a grenade, the choice is yours but the game won't tell you to do either, its up to you to come up with a solution if at all. The games story is strong and with its multiple choice system, there’s plenty to see and do. It's a solid title from InXile and something that you certainly felt after having such a successful crowd funding campaign, one that had to get right. While its release date has been pushed back several times, in all it seems it was worth it and Brain Fargo and the team have created a fitting sequel. While it does have its occasional issues and minor bugs, its a game that I would highly recommend adding to your collection. Whether your an avid RPG player or not, the majority of gamers will find hours worth of enjoyment in Wasteland 2.

Look at my name. LOOK AT IT! And tremble before the fearful countenance that is my Desert Dweller portrait!

Yes...I'm an old Wasteland 1 fan. Loved it then back on the old C=64. Loved Fallout 1, 2, Tactics and Fallout 3, all of which were inspired and modeled after Wasteland. So I am admittedly a little biassed in this brief review.


Some things I like about it so far:

- Depth of choice
- Consequences and world alteration based on those choices
- Deep character customization
- The atmosphere created by the visuals and audio
- There is 'enough' eye candy and ear candy without going overboard
- Multiple approaches/solutions to many problems
- Challenge and reward levels feel apropriate
- There is 'enough' realism to add in planning and tactics that help immersion without being burdensome
- Lots of nods and references to the original that actually fit into the story and make sense
- There is 'enough' voice acting with apropriate emotion that isn't too cold/dry or too flowery/dramatic
- The written story is deep, interesting, concise and easy to follow so you can move on quickly


Some things I would like to see improved:

- Character creation needs more detailed notes for newcomers.
- It is not clear HOW or even IF most of the C.L.A.S.S.I.C. attributes alter your skills. Derived stats, yes. Skills, I can only see one stat that will impact some of them.
- Screen edge scrolling/panning of the area map is a little slow.
- Would like a little more freeness in the camera controls. Rotation, zoom and angle. I don't care if I see map edge.
- Sometimes hard to tell what is and is not cover in combat.


Overall though, it is great fun and stays very true to the original. Even with the few lumps it has, it is very polished, rock solid stable, and seems optimized well for multicore CPUs and multi-GPU setups. Characters and quests make sense and are well scripted and laid out to be intuitive and challenging. There is some fun exploring little nooks in the areas to find hidden loot and bonuses. And while it is fairly linear, the branches you can take are divrese and plentiful. I see a lot of replay value just from the choices you can make. And your choices will have impact, sometimes in unexpected and even unplesant ways.

So, grab your Proton Axe and Meson cannon...and don your best suit of Pseudo-Chitin armor. It's time to go out adventuring among the muties. Just be careful, so you can come back to camp and share your stories around the fire over a bottle of Snake Squeezins. Radioactive glow and 3rd arm optional, of course.










*** Disclaimer - read before you comment ***

This review is my personal opinion.
I'm not interested in debate or discussion.
Argumentative, hijacking and/or trolling comments will simply be deleted.

To me, hijacking my positive review to push your negative review is the epitome of laziness. If you want to be heard, put the effort into writing your own review. You can discuss it there.

And even if I was interested in discussion...which I am not... Every comment I have deleted thus far has not held up to scrutiny when compared to the guidelines posted here:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4045-USHJ-3810

Imagine that you step into a bar with optimistic ideas of fun and casual tomfoolery. You are about to say hello to the bouncer, but just as you open your mouth, the bouncer punches you into that open stupid mouth. He then proceeds to beat you up viciously with no end in sight. But then after like 10 hours he will go, "Dude, you're alright" and let you in. Then it turns out to be like the best damn bar ever, with 1 dollar beers, Motörhead is playing Live and Kate Upton needs your help to untangle her bra with your teeth and you're like "Daaaaamn! that 10 hour beating was totally worth it!"

The first mutated frog killed my party about 20 times, then I got lucky and beat it. Played about 6 hours after the frog incident, realized my party sucks the ♥♥♥♥ of a Sumerian demon goddess and I had created just about everything wrong. Restarted the game, created a party with knowledge about useful and less useful skills. Now I'm the Terror of the wastes, The ambassador of Bad Assity and the Iron Chef of Pounding Vag. 10/10.

spent 9 hours creating a party with 4 page bios for each character

whole party dies by a buried mine 10 minutes into the game

11/11 would roleplay again

Wasteland 2 truly is a fantastic game, but you won’t see that until you’ve spent roughly 10-20 hours on this sprawling RPG.

The game suffers from an archaic user interface and the first half of the game isn’t very notable, I’d recommend having one character invest into the Outdoorsman skill, because random encounters can easily take off another 20 minutes of your time without really providing much of interest, plus you will likely find yourself walking away from your screen quite a few times as you wait for your characters to move all the way back on a map. It’s a slow, slow game.

Yet, Wasteland 2 has so much to offer. The second half of the game is an immediate improvement in quest and map design and features interesting factions and story choices. The second half opens up a lot more, giving you less directed main quests and giving you a good amount of freedom to solve your way through side quests at your own pace.

The roleplaying aspect of Wasteland 2 is great. Designing your specialized characters and seeing how they make their way through a story with real consequences offers a good deal of replay value.

If you are patient and give Wasteland 2 the time it needs to show its potential, it will be a tremendously enjoyable experience. Time definitely worth investing.

Full review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040P1pqkjrM

Wasteland 2 – 8/10 (This review is based on PATCH 2)

The good:

• Maps are often rewarding to explore
  
• Overall art style
  
• Tactical round based combats
  
• A lot of weapons and items
  
• A polished first act
  
• Overall Writing (even though the quality varies)
  
• Interesting (while also over the top) Factions
  
• Companions
  
• A good use of choices & consequences (Telltale/Bioware take a note here)
  
• A lot of inside jokes and fan service
  
• Music from Mark Morgan (not as memorable as what he did for Fallout/Planescape though)
  
• Radio transmission (especially during first act)

The bad:

• The second act of the game still has a lot of oddities, glitches and bugs
  
• Some skills seems forced for the sake of re-playability, and would have been better off combined/graded or as perks
  
• Not be able to shoot other parts of the body besides headshots (thus no enemy slow down or force a weapon drop)
  
• Your base team will never develop beyond their skill stats and your fantasy
  
• Heavy reuse of character portraits
  
• You cannot set own traps
  
• You cannot sneak

...and the ugly:

• Chance evaluation feels broken to me (from weapon jams to critical misses to ...well everything)
  
• Heavy quest items which you have to drag along

Verdict:
For lovers of classic RPG and the setting i surely can recommend it. I backed it two years ago with a good sum of money and I don't regret it. Will it be remembered a classic 10 years from now? Probably not, but it will sure find it's fans...at least I'm one of them now.

On a sidenote:
Even though Brian Fargo makes fun of DLCs in the game, I wouldn't mind to explore more maps and side-stories with my team. The hub like system seems so predestined for such things. It's a missed opportunity to not give fans and in the end Fargo the chance to continue refine Wasteland 2. Since he could live off it for years.

Did they pull it off?

I don't quite know what I was expecting when I first backed the Kickstarter. Wasteland was a beloved classic, my first proper PC game, and it showed me just what games were really capable of. Problems with more than one solution, missions that could be failed without forcing a game over, the player's responsibility to build a balanced team, the combination of descriptive paragraphs with the limited graphics to paint a more vivid picture; the experience blew my fragile little mind at the time. A contemporary title can do many or even all of those things, but whether they can match that feeling - the impression that I'm playing something truly groundbreaking - is a much more loaded question.

Many positive reviews of Wasteland 2 frontload the criticism, ending with some variant of "but I liked the game anyway because etc." It's easy to see why: bugs still being ironed out, a rather clunky interface, widespread locks and traps with long skill use animations, overuse of a limited pool of music, some weak story elements, large chunks of wasted space... you don't have to look too hard to see some serious flaws. The enjoyable aspects are likely to be subjective: how well the combat clicks for the player, whether they like the setting and overall fiction, the extent to which building a proper team is enjoyable, and so on. Indeed, in their bid to create a classic-sized PC RPG, it seems inXile could have made the game play better without sacrificing its hardcore appeal.

For instance, the locks and traps thing: consider the Baldur's Gate games, which also made use of frequent locks and traps on obstacles. Where BG has the advantage is that skill usage is practically instantaneous; the character moves to the trapped item and, if successful, the trap field simply disappears. WL2 added some needless visual flair to the process - your ranger rubbing their hands before working on the object, or kicking it repeatedly as a meter fills, or whatever - which adds a few seconds to each skillcheck. In a game with hundreds of them, those seconds start to add up. Little changes to things like that could have smoothed out a lot of reviewer complaints, with few if any adjustments to the core mechanics. No doubt patches will address this and other issues over time, but the impression has set in nonetheless.

I'll be blunt: I put a fair chunk of change into the Kickstarter, and I can feel the little nagging doubts in the back of my head. Would I be fair if I saw something that bugged me, or read criticism? Would I go easy on the game, knowing that some of my own money was somewhere inside? Would my opinion be more biased than others? It's a reasonable question, and I never did come up with a good answer. Even putting that aside, I'm not gonna deny I was a little nervous when this came out. It's been a long time since the Infinity engine was king of the hill. Did I still have the stomach for a big PC game? What if my appetites had simply moved on? Doubts upon doubts upon doubts.

Did they pull it off?

Like putting up with the wizard fight at the Friendly Arm Inn while you're still level 1, the appeal persists: a game that won't pull its punches, that will try its best to bring me down. WL2 definitely has the spark of those classic RPGs, that hard-to-define something that makes them hard to put down once I start. Fights were tactical, kinetic affairs: cover got destroyed, enemies repositioned, backup weapons were handy, well-timed explosives turned the tide, and even a difficult encounter could be mitigated with the right preparation. Environments presented their own challenges, and with several ways through a given obstacle I was more often than not encouraged to work around a failed skillcheck rather than savescum. Uncooperative plot elements or even bugged out triggers could be answered by force-firing, and there was no problem that the right size bomb could not solve.

Arizona did drag and suffer from design problems - the Prison being chief among them - but it held its own curious charms, and it presents a neat contrast with California. At the start, you control a bunch of customizable scrubs whose mission rapidly spirals out of control. Echo Team starts in known territory and gradually pushes the boundaries, earning their stripes in the process. Water is precious, communities are scarce, and civilization is on the knife's edge atop a pile of late 80s-early 90s rubble. By the time I did get to California, Echo felt every bit the veteran ranger squad, doing what rangers do best: venture into wild territory and bring order to chaos. There, the script is flipped: water is everywhere, settlements are common, and it's on us to put our best foot forward. Every arrival the base, every interaction with the public, every time we stepped in to right some wrong felt like it mattered somehow, like it could have gone differently - and like everything we'd done before had shaped us for that encounter.

That's a key spice to those old titles: variety. What happens if I do this instead of that? What does this guy say or do if I mention this? What if I didn't have that skill, item, or party member? What are the consequences if we just kill everyone? Is there a way to get what I want peacefully, and if so how bad do I want it? I was constantly asking myself those questions during Wasteland 2, and it's for those reasons that I know I'll be back. There's more to see, even if I think I've seen it all; there's more to try, even if I've already sunk some 80 hours into the campaign. Old PC RPGs sometimes get a shot of life from modding communities, but even before I had heard thing one about mods, there were some games where I knew - just knew - that I'd be back, just to see what happened this time.

And god help me if I didn't get drawn in at times, just a little. I searched frantically during a hostage situation, wondering if there even was a third option between 'take down the enemy' and 'save the hostage.' I debated whether to intervene in a loophole-ridden religious dispute, and if so how. I paid attention to the radio broadcasts in LA, making mental notes of who's who in the neighborhood. The villain was something of a one-note antagonist - there were moments of good writing, but his was a stock grand scheme - but there was a respectable sense that something was tracking Echo and the Rangers. There's a strange appeal to being stuck in uncharted territory, surrounded by potential enemies, with friends well out of reach and one hell of a longshot goal ahead of us. It's predictable in the end, but not without its highs; the trick of bringing back everyone you've made friends with for the final battle is an old one, but no less effective.

Sometimes it's not the game I'm after, but the adventure, the challenge. Sometimes it's the sense that I am probably going to lose if I play this game like I play every other game. So it was with games like Arcanum: flawed to hell and back, difficult to recommend, but special in a way that most games simply aren't for me. So it is with Wasteland 2.

Did they pull it off?

In my humble, flawed, biased opinion: yeah, I think they pulled it off.

If you're a fan of the original Wasteland, the long-awaited sequel hits just about all the right notes you'd hope for. It builds upon the original's style, writing, skill systems and combat in a completely logical way, without getting "too modern". It's also chock-full to the brim with references to the original, both in dialog and in the locations you visit (the whole first half of the game is basically a love-letter to the fans, as a matter of fact). So if you're coming into it from the same nostalgia-fueled background as me, you'll probably enjoy the game.

As for everyone else, I am really not so sure. The game is good, but far from perfect. The biggest issue is probably that the combat can get to be a bit simplistic and tedious after a while. Although there are elements of strategy to it, you almost never need to do anything "outside of the box" to successfully win a battle. The story is OK, but nothing you haven't seen before - a post-apocalyptic wasteland threatened by a megalomaniacal antagonist... yadda, yadda, yadda. The writing is good overall, striking a nice balance between serious and playful, though some of the dialogue ends up being a bit cheesy (especially towards the end). Two other big issues are the pace and length of the game. It really takes a while to get rolling. This is partly due to the aforementioned tedium in combat, but mostly because of the sheer size of the game. It becomes pretty obvious after a while that the developers just decided "screw it, this is our one chance to do this, and by god, let's go all out"... and "all out" they most certainly did. They threw everything they thought of in there, plus an extra kitchen sink. On one hand, that's admirable and I completely understand it. But I also just ended up feeling that maybe they should have scaled back their ambition just a tad, which would have allowed more time to tighten up and polish the experience overall. There are quite a few bugs in the game, at least as it initially launched. Thankfully, there was nothing completely game-breaking that I found, but there were definitely some bugs in various quests and dialogue options, and a few other glitches that popped up here and there. Finally, I also felt that the skill and weapon systems weren't quite balanced properly. After completing the game, it became kind of obvious that some of my skill, attribute and weapon investments were more or less useless. Again, not the end of the world, but the game could definitely use some additional balance in its systems.

Overall though, none of these minor issues greatly affected my personal appreciation and enjoyment of the game. I backed this Kickstarter project on day one, and don't regret it for a second. That said, I am also pretty forgiving when it comes to these sorts of things, especially when I know what a labor of love the project was for Brian Fargo and his team. So while I do recommend it overall, I would suggest it primarily for fans of old-school turn-based RPG/tactical-type games. Casual players, or those on the fence should probably check out some gameplay videos of the combat, in particular, to see if it's up your alley. If so, and if you are willing to look past a few minor flaws, definitely give Wasteland 2 a shot.

This game... Im not even done yet. Coming from a fallout fan id say is spot on what i wanted, Game is about tactics and smarts not reaction times (Check), Game is full of lore (Check), The maker of it took 1 million of his own personal money and used it to make the game better (Check), No dlc (Check!). Now past that theres more. The lore is so intense i spend lots of my time just reading lore. If you like lore then you could buy this game just for that. There is no "reaction time wins" here. That means no, if you call "skill" seeing who can shoot the fastest then you wont find that "skill" here. Skill here is about whos the smartest. And how you positioned your people. If you bring even the best weapon to an easy fight you can still loose if your stupid.

This game is by one of the best game designers you can trust. Brian Fargo. He has never let me down on a game. Be it Fallout 1, Fallout 2, any game. And even when he did sell fallout to bethesda he made sure it was a good company. He could of sold it to EA im sure but he picked another good company. Fallout 3 may be diffrent from the old fallouts but its certainly not a bad game. Same with vegas.

So in short its a great game with acutal skill good lore made by a REALLY good game designer and company and NO DLC. None. Also you can trust this from me. Im practicly an expert on old and new fallouts. Just check how much time ive played fallout 1, fallout 2, fallout 3, fallout nv. Also i even got more time on consoles. So again im not just some random guy i know whats a good game and a bad game.

Also there is msny little things in the game that make you think lots. For example a woman wanted me to put her out of her misery i did so, then a kid told me he was gonna tell the authorites and i shouldnt of done it, i had to kill the kid. I think about that scenario alot. Theres many more like it so that when your done it makes you think long and hard about all youve had to do. There really isnt winning in this game because if your human you will find a way to do something horrible that has to be done. Even if you dont do side quests you could still end up having to fight a kid. So this game is one not like cod where you blindly shoot, it makes you think about each person you meet or kill.

finally, Finally, FINALLY. FINALLY!! FINALLY!!1!1!eleven!1!!

And that isn't a crack against how long it was in development, I've been looking for an INTELLIGENT thinking mans game since the orginal Fallout 1 and 2, we had touches of it with Baulders gate and games like it were great, but I've been in freaking LOVE with post apocyptic games since the fallout series (pre 'DERP LETS TURN IT INTO A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER!, hey, we only have like 11,237,423,423,523 FPS's, lets compete in THAT market some more. What do you mean there aren't even enough TACTICAL squad based games that you can count on a single hand, that means that genre is DEAD obviously! every big developer for the last 20+ years)

The problem, many of us apparently, have had with most games these days, they are set in one of three settings, 1. Fanasty setting 2. Current setting (lets shoot ethnic minorities in sandy countries with modern weapons!.... pass) or 3. Lets kill Zombie Hilter controlled clones for the millionith time. All of which CAN and ARE sometimes great games, but how many games do we have set in Post apocalyptic worlds. A world where yes, there are guns, gernades, rifles, and melee weapons, but also more exotic stuff like plasma and laser weapons.

Also, where combat IS a major part of the game, each and almost EVERY mission has a VARITETY of ways to solve it. EXAMPLE (BUT NOT FROM THE GAME, MAKING THIS ONE UP MYSELF no spoilers!)
Small town is being harassed by a two local gangs, how do you solve it as a ranger?

Possible ways to solve it!
1. Guns blazing - lets BLOW EM ALL UP AND KILL EM!
2. Dialog/Diplomacy - Infiltrate both gangs, and give them clues that the OTHER gang is out to slaughter em, make them fight it out via planted evidence, then finish off the survivors so the small town can be free!
3. Use mechanic skill to turn off water/power to bandits bases - unable to support themselves the bandits move on
4. Use Animial Whisper skill and turn wild life against bandits - a combination of patience and timing makes the bandits a 3 course meal for local wildlift and saves the local town
ETC. ETC. ETC.

THESE are the kinds of ways I like to see a game able to be played, not where the only option is 'aim at ONLY moving targets on screen EVER, and pull trigger until enemy is no longer moving. It lets you not only have different ways to get things done, but you ALSO have almost unlimited replayability, even with knowing how things can generally go, you want to try new things BECAUSE there are so many possible ways to GET TO THE SAME RESULT.

Like I said, a little more intelligence and/or patience is required, and for an industry that is chock full of FPS's, and 'Who can twitch fastest is the best' games it's been long, LONG overdue where we can have a top down game where I can use terrain, combat skills, and different weaponary to beat superior forces.

Oh and lets not forget the morale parts of the game, instead of the typical 'become a boyscout or SATANS RIGHT HAND MAN' there are just dozens of shades of gray all through this game, and people will treat you differently in one location over the next, almost as if they were part of isolated communities that had a hard time talking to each other.... ....... ............... Eventually things WILL filter down, and where you might end someones suffering from pain, another person could see you and say you killed them in cold blood. Almost NOTHING is clear cut, and you'll find yourself actually having to think of different outcomes rather than the typical game.

I really hope the ADHD that has infested the gaming industry the last 10+ years can be put aside for a few mintues for WL2, it's not MEANT to be the 'run of the mill' crap we've been force fed over and over. It says it gives you 80+ hours of game play, I spent all weekend playing it and I'm not ashamed to say I took a sick day tomorrow so I can play it all day without interuption in an empty house. It's THAT good, at least to me anyway.

Now, there are a few things that will work against it. It's NOT perfect, it's a little rough in a few areas and sometimes you WILL be angry that you can't find a particular item, NPC or easy solution. Other times the game will surprise you with it's richness and attention to detail.

Oh and that's another thing, HUMOR is big in this game, there are tons and TONS of refferences to all sorts of things from the last 25+ years all through it. I won't ruin them so hopefully you can get them yourself, but lets say some characters from other games, movies and books do make apperances through out the game. Some might be as simple as walking past another Ranger team and closely looking at their names and saying to yourself 'wait a second, .. oh damn, that's !!!!!!!! son of a B! That's AWESOME!'

Other times you'll notice little pieces of inventory 'junk' that make you just grin, I've found everything from a Chia pet to old gaming consoles from the 80's and 90's. Each and everything I've also read the description on, mostly because it just makes you laugh at some of the crap they threw into the descriptions since many people just skip by them in most games. In WL2 I'll say it's worth the reading the items at least the 1st time you see em, after that np, see it again just skip it, but up the Devs got more then a little creative with some of this stuff.

Oh and while this IS a tactical combat game mostly, I will say that you should probably make a play through where you focus at least one character with high intelligence, charisma and a hard path of the dialog skills. There are simply SO many times in conversations where I wish I was able to choose some of the other options but I couldn't because I was too combat focused.

So there is a great chance to have multiple play throughs on this, I'll give it that as well. Something with most single player games just hasn't been the case these last years.

And yes, I'm obviously dating myself with some of what I've said, but I've been a gamer for almost 25 years now. And a really good tactical squad based thinking game has been lacking since the late 90's. Wasteland Two has made me feel all of those good feelings I got when I played the orginal fallout games. I'm just hoping that by writing this, obivously long as all hell review, that it will make a few people on the fence about getting it swing to the 'let me give it a shot' option. Then if you like it and you are one of those people that do 'Let's plays' please do one for this, I'm not technical, I don't know how to stream or record, but I'd love to see this game get the attention it deserves and, HOPEFULLY, will reawaken developers to the fact that we need more then clones of the same 4 genre's invented, reinvented, re-hashed and regurgitated over and over to a market that does have more then a few of us that have more then the 'push button - recieve result x 10,000 = YOU WIN!' mentality.

Yes, I've been a bit harsh in parts here to certain kinds of gamers, I aplogize for that, but we need MORE details in games, no dumbed down crap over and over, Wasteland two has me just grinning like a madman the entire weekend. To the point where my wife just looked at me and said 'go... play that nuclear death game all you want, you'll be useless to me all weekend anyway.'

That's rare and I can't stop smiling about it.

Thanks to the Dev's for making it and I really hope I've brought a good case to a few of you that will take the time to read, and hopefully find this (early) review useful.

-Banlish

This review is being written on September 18, 2014 - the day before the game is released. It is a review of the final playable beta version.

If you haven't played the original Fallout or Wasteland games, this game is like KoToR * X-Com. It's ♥♥♥♥ing awesome, best game I've played in recent years.

That said, a day before release, it is still buggy as ♥♥♥♥. I've put 30 hours in and came very close to completing the beta (which they said was 40% of the final game), but I can't progress any further because I killed one of the bad guys instead of letting him live, and that bugs the whole game out and I can't progress any further. I've also had to manually edit my save file 2 separate times to fix game-breaking glitches.


Hopefully this is all fixed tomorrow. If it is, then buy it at whatever the launch price will be. If not, I can't justify spending more than $25 on this game.

I must say I ended up being somewhat disappointed. In case you never heard of this, it's a turn based roleplaying game set in a post apocalyptic world, extremely similiar to Fallout (the original Wasteland 1 is the spirtiual predecessor to Fallout). It offers a very good amount of content and great athmosphere. The world is well built and interesting. The story is ok (you pretty much just help local folks, the big bad only rears its ugly head every few hours for a line or two) - it's a game that is living more off the lore than off the plot, which is totally fine (see for an excellent example: Morrowind). The disappointing part is everything else. The attribute and skill system is just bad. There are only 3 viable character builds attribute wise. Attributes are completely detached from skills, so the only thing attributes concern is combat. So there are strong guys who can walk fast (melee) and guys who can shoot well and often (sniper) and intelligence chars who suck at combat but get more skills (skill donkey).

There are a ton of skills, for example lockpicking, animal whispering or mechanical repair, as you'd expect from a RPG. But the difficulty scaling of skill checks is made in such a way that you need expert characters to keep up with the skill checks. So every character just gets 2 skills you'll dump all your skill points in every few levels. There is no customization or thinking involved in building a character after it is created and you start the game. Every level is just new skill points you have to spend in the same skills every time. Terribly boring. The skill checks themselves also ultimately become boring as hell, because every single chest in the game is locked AND trapped. It just becomes an annoying chore to disarm and open it. The reward is usually just 3 bullets of ammo and a bit of junk to vendor off. You'll also constantly come across containers with only 10-30% success chance. Prepare for the exciting meta gameplay of quicksaving and then trying and reloading as long as it takes to finally open the junk. Or simply ignoring it. But at least early on, the game is balanced around you really going after every scrap. Later on it becomes irrelevant instead.

And the biggest problem, the combat system is very very bad. It looks like another take on the tried and true Jagged Alliance/XCOM formular. Only it's the blandest iteration I've seen so far. There are no skills, no classes. There is just one type of cover. At the end of the day there is nothing to do but just sit down all your chars behind a wall and keep firing at the nearest enemy until the fight is over. By the end I didn't even bother with cover anymore. I just left my guys standing in a big blob where the combat started and kept shooting. That's how dumb the combat here is. The maps also only very rarely offer interesting tactical opportunities. Most maps seem to have been made with aesthetics in mind and not tactics. Blackguards for example was WAY more inventive here, where you could clearly tell that the designers hand crafted every encounter and tried to get a unique twist out of every battle. In Wasteland it's just cannon fodder fights with a random fence you can use as cover if you want, or not, it won't make much of a difference.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible game. What kept me going was exploring the world and seeing how the small surviving communities in this world worked. Still, I can't help but feel terribly disappointed over the massively wasted potential on display here.

As a lover of Tactical and turn based games my whole life, is with a heavy heart that a say i can't recomend this game to anyone.

Tactically the game is very poor,there is none to little strategy involved, the levels are so flat and linear that the battles does not have any changes from one to another, it's very rare to find a point of advantage and there are just a few elements to act as cover in the levels, the developers said they would add special moves, the only thing they add was a "headshot" option.
You'll see your rangers missing a lot of shots, is normal to miss 5 or 6 70% shots IN A ROW, whille your enemies have much more AP and acuracy, to much sand in the eyes of the desert rangers?.
There is only HeadShot(Useless, since your rangers are blind), Ambush (wich is pretty much useless), and that is. There is no advanced tactics, there is not even a simple stealth mode, were you can use a sneaky char to surprise your enemies.

With no Special moves and a very linear environment, the battles are very repetitive and purelly luck based.

The developers didn't keept their project promisses,just like the special skills, early videos featured a lot of armors models showing in the characters, but they simply chose to change this, so now, does not matter the armor you have equiped, your ranger will just change their clothes, so you can have a power armor equiped and your ranger may still show a ragged shirt.

Character customization is minimal and the models are so ugly that you could easily mistake it for a game of the 90's.

The game offers a false sense of open world but actually is very linear, the base missions are very boring "go to place, click something, come all the way back", the roleplay is also very shallow even with the very good story.

The story is very good and the game isn't that bad, but i can't say that i'm satisfied, both the hight price and hype didn't help with it. After 25 years the wait is finally over, and i wasn't worth it.
Wait for a 75% sale to try this.

On the inExile forum there is the discussion how to rate the game 1-10.

I give it a plain 9/10.

Is it looking like a modern game is expected to look. No. But the graphics transport the atmosphere in a way modern engines lack. In fact it´s not the graphics that lack, but the story and sometimes the gameplay.

And that´s because it only gets a 9 - there is room for improvement, the combat system is well known from Fallout, the first parts, though it differs. I do miss some more tactical options, like delayed ambush or the ability to protect a weaker char. On the other hand it leaves you room for unorthodox methods of defeating an enemy.
Still Jagged Alliance had the best combat system ever.
So why give it a 9?

It transports the original feeling, many of you might not have experienced, so well, i hardly can get myself away from it, even if i should - get some sleep, just take a break or make something to eat that takes more than 5 mins of preparation.
Back when the orignal Wasteland was released i did not play RPGs, nor was my english (german here) any good.
And i have to say that Wasteland and an english-german dictionary was quite advancing my knowledge, shortly after i began reading english books.

In Wasteland 1 there were no fancy 3d graphics, no sound and surely no voice acting. If you have the digital deluxe edition, try the old one, if you haven´t experienced the DOS era, you might think, how the hell anybody could play such a game.
Well, it was like a good book. You had to image the places you visit, only having (great) text based descriptions to fan your fantasy.
I can still picture the inside of Cochise base.

And there is one thing W2 does a lot better - it gives you more directions. W1 was pretty much open world, leaving one often with no clue what to do next, except from mentioning a city somehow. I do remember i had no idea how to get the visa card for the guy in... Needles, Quartz? Well he eats them, but that i needed it and how to get it....
In W2 you are pointed more directly in the right direction, but still you have to figure out how to solve things. I miss that a lot in modern games - as long as you can shoot stuff, you win. Quite boring.

The storytelling is great, if you take your time to read all the stuff. READ? Yes you have to read a lot and it is rewarding, though some areas have a bit too many people telling pretty much the same about the situation. Nevertheless, Wasteland 2 is a more than worthy and greatly rewarding game, that lives it´s orginial strengths inside a modern shell.
Modern? But you sais the graphics... Yep, i did.

Again, it does not take a 3d engine that requires 5 Nvidia Titans in SLI Mode to make a great game.

And there´s the matter of time a game takes. Okay a good deal is reading, but i consider those modern games, i play through in 16 hrs. straigt still entertaining - but way to short, even if they look fantastic, but i often find myself that i don´t value the work the company put into it, just because the game ruhes me by it. W2 slows you down. And that is a good thing.

I spend DAYS with the original Wasteland. I have spend DAYS with the Early Access already and thats just 50% of the game, though i replayed a bit, tested other options.

Where other games need a DLC after those 16 hrs gameplay you paid for, that will enterain you for 2 hrs at most, this game just sucks up your time and you want to do it again, just a different way next time, or just doing it better the next time.

Do i recommend it? Though i cannot judge the other half, if you like a great story, with more than adequate presentation, tactical combat and some serious dark humor, i don´t think you can go past Wasteland 2 - even if it´s not a 9 for you.

This is a long review so let me give a tldr: I personally do not understand the plethora of positive reviews this game has garnered. If don't know about this game, save yourself some time and money and just boot up Fallout Tactics. For me, this game doesn't live up to it's reputation. It struck me as an unpolished and uninteresting product.

I kickstarted this game, and was excited to play it partly because of its purportedly stellar writing. Unfortunately, the basic format of tactics rpgs colludes with the lack of mechanical depth to severely limit the relevance of the writing. So while descriptions of areas that appear in a small text box are indeed well-executed and occasionally evocative, the lack of any meaningful interaction between your party members (or, indeed, any character or NPC) means that whatever that shows up in that little text box feels like window dressing. The lack of complexity in the gameplay means that what's contained in the textbox is also largely irrelevant to the experience of playing. The end result is pretty hollow. I suspect you could complete the entire game without ever glancing at the writing. This feeds into a more insidious problem, where the game's overall and immediate plots start to feel like a procession of meaningless skirmishes connected by an ephemeral charade of narrative, the kind you see in any MMO questline.

"But hey, this is a tactics RPG! Who cares about characters or writing or any of that crap?" Valid point. But unfortunately the game's shortfalls here are many, and worse. Where the writing was well-executed but irrelevant, the gameplay is unpolished and shallow. A problem for a game who's central focus is something like tactical combat. Combat in WL2 is a linear shootout, a numbers game where there are no meaningful tactical decision to be made once you're outside of a merchant's screen. I could make a really long list of gripes here, and cite the basically equidistant ranges of weapons, how gear is the single most important character element, aggressively incorrect "Hit %" in the UI, lack of any enemy AI outside of "rush up to face and use gun/crowbar", zero terrain relevance, and a hundred others. But the takeaway is that lack of polish I mentioned. The combat dies from a thousand of these tiny cuts, each of them trivial by themselves but fatally boring taken together.

And honestly, it could maybe have survived all those problems if the game had interesting choices to make. But. Remember that lack of mechanical depth I mentioned? In WL2, your only meaningful interaction with the world happens through skills. Skills have basically two purposes in the game: Opening Boxes and Murder. Social skills are a member of the former category. Maybe that doesn't seem like a problem, as hey, Fallout 1 and 2 come dreadfully close to doing the same thing. But compare this tactical rpg-elements game to other tactics classics like XCOM, Icewind Dale or Final Fantasy Tactics. Different Classes or Abilities on the battlefield dramatically change the landscape of any individual battle. "Should I Suppress or Flush?" is a question you have in XCOM only after you've acquired those abilities. Should I tank that group or kite them? Lightning Bolt or Fireball? No skill or weapon or indeed, any element in WL2 is going to approach altering your game choices, because all skills do is open boxes and give slight bonuses to hit chance.

Wasteland 2 relies on ancient game ideas with no new spin on them, and worse, seems to forget many lessons that've been learned about these systems in the last fifteen years. Which alone, would be acceptable, even enjoyably "retro". But the lack of polish or depth to these systems made playing the game aggressively monotonous. If this game had come out in 1999 it would have been a reasonable but ultimately forgettable companion to the then-game-market. But honestly, there are better places for your time and money, and if you're expecting a post-apocalyptic XCOM or Fallout experience then you're looking in the wrong place.

Take this review with a grain of salt. If there was an option in between 'Yes' and 'No', that's what I would have chosen. Also bear in mind, at the time of writing this, I have *not* completed the game. I'm not sure I'm going to just yet until they do some serious work on it. I'm about halfway through the main story. With that said, here goes... (warning: minor spoilers throughout)

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Conclusion: 6/10 - The game feels like a beta. I'm glad it was released, but it needs some serious work. I'd hold out on buying for patches/mods. If you are really looking for something to play, the game is fun, it just lacks a large amount of polish that is necessary to make this game go from "okay" to "fantastic". Also, I hit the word limit. Definitely missed some things.
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The Good
+ Storyline is interesting and easy to get caught up in.
+ Voice acting is great. Not everything is voice acted, but where it is, it's done well.
+ Character Customization is great. You can create your party of 4 from scratch, or use pre-made characters if you so choose. There is a large amount of build variety. However: [See associated con.]
+ Random skill-use events. While venturing out into the Wasteland, you'll often come across various obstacles that can be passed by one of your party member skills. Ie. "My wife is sick! Please help her and I'll let you loot this stash I left in my house!", in this case, a party member with the 'Field Medic' or 'Surgeon' skill would be able to heal his wife and get access to some loot.
+ Recruitable party members! From your starting party of 4, you can have up to I believe 3 more members of your party that are recruitable as you progress through the story. The first of which is available almost immediately when starting the game. These guys can help fill a lot of the gaps in your skill selection and provide some alleviation on skill-events and some flexibility in combat.
+ The game is huge. A lot of content and a lot of story. Developers suggest it'll take 60-70 hours to beat. That is awesome.
+ Random radio chatter. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game. You'll be wandering around and randomly hear radio chatter about other rangers in another part of the world checking in about taking down this fugitive or saving this town, etc... There is also random radio chatter from radio stations in major towns, from psychopaths from various factions, etc... Awesome addition to the game.

The Bad
- WEAPON JAMMING. This is absolutely my biggest complaint. I'll get weapons with a 1 or 2% chance to jam, yet they jam almost every-other encounter and cost almost an entire turn's worth of AP to unjam. Absolutely infuriating. This also goes for hit chances & skill succeed chances.
- Weapon variation. Weapon variation in this game is pretty obnoxious. I've been using a crowbar on my melee toon since about 30min into the game and I've yet to find anything better. Going through Arizona, you find the same weapons over and over again. Even at the vendors! Protip: Make sure you level weaponsmithing on one of your toons! Or you'll find yourself making the long trek to a vendor more often than you'd like.
- The travel system. The travel system in WL2 is just plain bad. I understand what the intent was, but it largely just made the experience frustrting. Areas are very large and in order to travel to the world-map, you need to find an exit on the map to "The Wasteland". Once in the wasteland, you have to travel across the map to your destination, regardless if you've visited it before or not. It's slow, tedious, and takes away from the immersion. I constantly find myself needing to travel to some distant point on the world map and thinking "Eh... Maybe I'll take a break and go play something else for a bit."
- Character customization limits. If you create your custom party when you first try out this game, chances are, you'll miss a skill that limits things your party can do. There are skills associated with opening different kinds of safes, accessing a large amount of loot, getting through various doors, remaining undetected in hostile areas, you name it. There are also quest elements requiring you have specific skills. These skills are not necessary to have, but not having them when you find a vendor that will only sell to you if you can use x skill to help him out, is upsetting to say the least. Especially to those, like myself, who enjoy doing *everything*. [See associated pro] ALSO, be sure to level perception on at least one character. If you don't, you'll end up with your whole party perma-dying due to land-mines.
- Factions and choices are very opaque. Early on in the game you visit an area where you are assisting in getting their water system & power fixed. Afterwards, you are supposed to back a certain candidate for mayor since the previous mayor had been killed during a raider attack which you helped stop. After fixing the power/water, you exit the tunnels to find the election already underway and the "bad" candidate being elected by a landslide without you being able to do anything about it. You are treated like scum by the town & going back to your HQ everyone makes smartass comments about what a "great job" you did. Turns out, you had to do ALL of the sidequests *before* the main quests in that area, as well as a couple other arbitrary things. I was fairly frustred with this, especially seeing as how the "good" candidate was extremely happy with me for helping her out, then after the election, I was suddenly dirt. The questlines here were not very well articulated.
- Assocated with the previous con, choices are fairly hard to differentiate. You may decide you want to go for a "good guy" playthrough as you may have done in similar games. Good luck keeping that up. There's one point where you have 3 different factions all approaching you and all giving you quests to screw the others. You have no idea which one gives decent rewards, no idea which one is actually the good guy. No idea which one you should be following so you don't get in trouble with Ranger HQ. So, you guess, you end up screwing them ALL over because of this or that reason that you were unable to control. It all gets very unorganized and tedious.
- Random items you pick up that you aren't sure if you should hold onto or sell. No descriptions, just random. Protip: Hold onto ANYTHING white. Safe to sell gray stuff except for one type of item that you'll find out about shortly into the story.


The Maybe
+/- The combat system I'd say is a maybe. I personally enjoyed it, but there are a few things that made it incredibly frustrating.
+/- The grahpics aren't great. This isn't a complaint for me, but I am aware that this is a big thing for many people. This will likely be improved with future mods.
+/- Honey badgers. Honey badgers everywhere. You encounter honey badgers so often in this game, it should be renamed to "Wasteland 2: Revenge of the Honey Badger". While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it breaks immersion for me. You look at the combat log and it's *filled* with stupid honey badger jokes and references that just repeat themselves over and over again for the duration of the encounter. Upon looting the corpses, you get a bunch of junk including "badger's nutsack". While this was humorous as first, the honey badgers quickly got old for me.
+/- Upon leveling up you are required to call into central command for a "field promotion" before being able to allocate your gained skill/attribute points. While this isn't a huge deal, it gets fairly annoying after awhile. Especially with your party all leveling at different rates. You'll end up with 2 party members having leveled, calling in, then 10 minutes later another party member, then 10 minutes later, your remaining party members. I often find myself holding out until my entire party is ready to level before calling in. Not a bad thing, just a minor annoyance.

Tactical turn based combat, a cover system, optimal fire range's on all the weapons that you will have to consider, crouch and head shot options, overwatch mode, weapons that can jam and need to be reloaded mid battle, all of which will cost you action points to utilize in combat. You also have a skill system for outside of combat that include things such as toaster repair (think the wasteland version of treasure chests), perception (land mines, trap/alarms on objects), lock pick and safe crack, computer repair, mechanical engineering and much more. All of your skills you will be finding yourself using quite often in your travels to do many things such as get the core out of a plastic man to performing surgery (a skill) on a kid who had his leg blown off from a land mine or fixing various broke down machines you come across for the people of the wastes to make their lives easier. There are so many places for you to use your skills that they never feel like a useless point dump when your weapon skills are high enough. With a story set in a post apocalyptic wasteland where life is cruel and unfair and just a bit radioactive (maybe more if you're not careful) that's what kind of game this is. The variety of people you meet along the way and places you will journey is just amazing, there were a few times where I found myself laughing out loud at something stupid I came across from some junkie's camp or in wonder at the place I had just discovered filled with robotic junk and run down machinery. It really was a joy to explore in this game I have to say. Many of the characters have some real personality to them that you will remember long after you move on which really makes it feel more personal when the NPC's you meet aren't soulless bunches of code and pixels you know? Often there were times where I found it had a very elder scrolls quality to it where you just look around you and go wow I can explore ALL OF THIS which, if you ask me, is just a fantastic thing to feel in a game.

Wasteland 2 is finally here, courtesy of Kickstater, and for all the good it does to the genre, it's still a mixed bag.

//Contains spoilers//

It opens up really nice, with a live-action intro, thrusting you into the unforgiving, post-apocaliptic setting as you bury a fellow ranger. A scene later and you notice a unique shotgun straped to the hip of a nearby guard, all thanks to your perception skill, and with a little bit of convincing (another skill) you can make it yours. Across the bridge you can charm yourself a butt-kicking goat companion, which raises one of your ability scores by 1. And all that's in the very first, small area.

It's a great start, I found myself thinking, and if this reflects the rest of the game, I'm sold. Love me some world that actually reacts to my character build.

Unfortunately it isn't so. Perception soon becomes mainly a mine/trap finding tool, and truth be told, at some point it's simply better to detonate the explosives and accept the blast directly, then to try disarming any of them. There goes role-playing. Try watching the same disarming animation over and over and over again, and you will know what I mean. You are better off using a healing skill every once in a while. You can still find some buried junk using it, but it gets somewhat underwhelming after the initial shotgun surprize.

Taking about junk, You will easily find yourself at weight capacity carrying around all the junk you just found, hoping that someone somewhere may want it. And they do, but the game gives no hints as to just who may be interested in baby wipes. You may just as well gather all you can before you leave Arizona, and re-visit every single npc in the world looking for dialogue cues. And did I mention there are regular junk tems, and shiny junk items? Yeah. And when you use the Sell All Junk button at stores, the UI is hell-bent on selling the shiny ones too, even after you specifically flag them as not junk.

Item management in Wasteland 2 is a game on its own. You can't see your character's weight capacity on the merchant screen, you can't compare weapons with the ones you have in second hand slot, and you can't compare trinkets. All the clothing items look the same in the inventory screen, so unless you want to spend additional time trying them on and seeing what they actually look like, you will just sell them, like me. Armor does nothing to change the way you look, and the merchants screen gets really laggy when there are a lot of items.

The game has its moments, but they seem very few and far between. There is one giant robot fight, well three if you count fighting the same robot model again, and then its flame-throwing cousin. Yep, no huge mutant creatures, and no big ♥♥♥ bosses for you. The combat works at the bare minimum, and may get stale pretty quick. There is little excitement to be had on that front, and 95% percent of enemies can be taken out by a single shot from an RPG-7 if you get the enemies to clump together. Imagine my dissapointment when I finally got to fight Dugan, one of the few uniques bosses, and he went down in a single rocket blast. True, you can tune up difficulty, but as far as I know it only decreases your damage and incresases enemy's. And the last thing I wanted was to have weapons which don't do the damage they have in their description. How about more enemies? Or more hp for them at the very least. Ehh.

Random encounters have all the same flavour. Fight enemies, fight enemies. I got some barbecuing cannibals once, which seemed like a unique encounter, but the excitement was gone as soon as they attacked. In the end I just raised my outdoorsman skill, and tried to skip them alltogether. Had enough of the simplistic combat in other areas.

I found two different merchants braving the wastes, but they didn't even seem to re-stock. Curiously enough, one of them actually attacked me when I refused to buy anything, and it was a nice little way to spice things up. But still – Fallout 2 had it in spades and done better.

Then there are...bugs. Visual bugs, dialogue bugs, and of course quest-breaking bugs. Take your pick. There are whole forum threads on how to complete the Hollywood questline. There are people who spent hours on end, saving and reloading, trying to finish up quests in the correct order just to get the quest log cleaned up. Hats off to them. Personally, I could not get to finish the quest where Heidi asks my rangers to help her take over the Bastion of Faith. Hell, I could not even talk to her anymore. Her dialogue screen went blank. No “Hello”, no nothing. At this point I just said ♥♥♥♥ it and rushed to the ending. I don't know perhaps I talked to someone I should not have.

If that's all that could be achieved with nearly 3 million dollars, I shiver to think what the game would feel like if the devs got only what they asked for - a mere 900k. The games gets patches regularly, so there's hope. But for any potential buyer, I would suggest to wait a few months (and I thought I did that...) and try it then. Hopefully your experience will be better than mine.

Do I regret buying it? No. Am I planning on re-playing it? No.

The game's a good effort, and has some heart, but the brain is just not there yet. And just because it's a long-awaited sequel, it should not get a free pass.

Not recommended at this patch stage.

6/10

I strongly can't recommend this title at the current price point of 40 bucks and am disappointed that it has been launched in this condition.

Its not polished, the AI is ridiculous, the ending had absolutely nothing to do with what I actually did in the game, with key npcs that I killed still living and running the show. The characters that I recruited throughout the game only one of them made the ending credits and her future was forgettable.

Regarding the AI for a tactical turn based strategic game for the npc AI to do exactly the same thing for 80 hrs is unforgiveable. All enemies without fail bum rush you from off the screen moving further in one turn than your sniper can shoot. Worse valueable player npcs without fail do there best to commit suicide every single round.

I found a couple of quests that can be turned in infinitely for xp and rewards. Not a huge deal for single player game but considering how linear the progression is I don't understand how it was missed.

Armor is so broken currently. Buying the most expensive armor in the game will result in you being one shot by anything with an energy weapon whereas running around naked will have that plasma just tickle your exposed fleshy bits.

Some quests particularly in the second half of the game dont conclude appropriately. Free slaves, woot freedom, they stand outside the cages with a bland thank you interaction.

Its not that this couldn't have been a great game its just that everything has been dumbed down so much that the depth and complexity has been gutted from offering leaving a grindy on rails choose a or b limited experience.

Plenty of the skills are absolutely worthless which really makes me wonder why they included them at all.

Anyway I hope they do the right thing over the next year and patch or turn it over to the community; for me the ending was mass effect 3 cringe worthy and I hope they have better ideas for Torment.

With so many great CRPGs coming out that were backed through kickstarter, I definitely recommend adding Wasteland 2 to your collection.

It doesn't have the same freedom as D:OS (Divinity Original Sin) but there does seem to be some meaningful consequences in the choices you make. The BETA was fun and buggy, with many issues ironed out in the full release. I haven't ran into anything game breaking as of yet (only bug that was slightly annoying was that I saved a burning house and when I loaded my save the house was burnt down).
I highly recommend picking this up if you're a fan of the original fallouts (including Tactics which I loved).

Edit: I will throw in some of the cons. The biggest one in my mind is that Wasteland 2 isn't a very pretty game (running on max settings), the textures and models of the game aren't good, and the voice acting is on the same level.

All in all, the humor, references, combat, and story (apparently 50+hrs worth!) makes this a must buy for any CRPG / Turn Based RPG enthusiast.