Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition

Right before I bought this game I tried reloading fallout tactics to see if that would satisfy me (having already replayed fallout 1 and 2 so many times...) It didn't... tactics is a buggy and unfinished mess with brain dead AI. About 2 hours in I'd totally penetrated it and there wasn't any challenge left, just a lot of naked flaws daring me to get upset about all the missed potential. Fallout 1 and 2 were buggy as hell too but you know, you stuck with it because you loved it or you bailed because you didn't. I'm about, I dunno, 20-40 hours into Wasteland 2 and I have at this point totally penetrated it. That makes it 10x better than tactics but at this point only my interest in the story is carrying me forward. Needless to say I'm playing on the "supreme jerk" setting, but despite the colorful name, even terrifyingly impossible battles are easy enough to blow through at this point, and the real shame of it is that 3 of my characters are basically useless for combat and my conservative skill point commitments ( at least 70% unassigned ) means I'm basically only at 30% capacity of how much I could be tearing through these baddies. I could 6 people with maxed out weapon skills but I'm destroying everything with only 3 gunners with minimum skills, 2-3 points here or there. The bottom line is that the game is too easy, I'm not trying to be a badass or something, you just can't argue with those numbers. Everything else is great but damn... unless you're like hopelessly bad you will learn the system and have it pretty much cornered after your first couple major quests are complete. After this point only the cheapest of surprises will even have REVIVING a fallen party member, outright deaths are so rare its just ridiculous. That and the economy is already breaking pretty bad as well... I have almost no supply stress whatsoever, even for freaking bazookas. What I find is that I'm basically playing a rather gimmicky and violent adventure game, which is cool and all, but the gameplay, which is awesome, just runs out of challenge way too early in. That's my honest opinion and I don't regret buying it.

I think the skills are more cluttered than they need to be. Fallout had this down 15 years earlier (I do appreciate the first Wasteland pre-dated Fallout 1). The combat isn't bad, but not particularly good either. I moved between being interested in the story to simply not wanting to fight another group of same-y raiders, realizing that's how the gameplay flow would probably be for 20 hours. I got it as a freebie, so I don't feel too gypped.

I've been playing video games for 35 years. I'm guessing I've played close to a thousand titles. This is the most frustrating game I've ever played. It is the kind of game that is fun 75% of the time but is so mind-numbingly bad the other 25% it doesn't really matter. The things that really stick out (difficulty spikes, ridiculously long encounters, massive sections of the game with no variety in combat/enemies) are all design flaws. It is absolutely infuriating.

I'd like to give this 4.5 stars, if there was a bit more rating granularity. If you are after loot explosions and mindless clickfests, or are allergic to reading, this won't be your cup of tea. If on the other hand you want a gritty, dark (but with understated touches of humor) post-apocalyptic RPG that rewards tactics and resource management, this might be just your game. I am about 30% through my first play through, on "Ranger" difficulty (one notch below the hardest). The game is nicely resource constrained on the higher difficulties, particularly if you don't cheat by reloading. That means there are locks you will break permanently, doors you won't open, resources you'll never acquire. You end up finishing fights thinking, "Have I found enough rounds of 5.56mm to make up for what I expended killing those mutants?" You might even want a backup weapon skill for those times you've run out of ammo for your main weapon and all you can find is a few rounds for that old 38cal pistol you've been lugging around. The post-apoc atmosphere is top notch. The are radio broadcasts from other squads "out there" in the wasteland, interesting characters to talk to, and an intriguing story to explore. It's a gritty world of burnt out trucks, rusted out abandoned buildings, sawed off shotguns, and choices that save or destroy communities. The native Linux version works great on Kubuntu 14.04; No crashes, only very minor bugs. On the negative side, random encounters are a good dynamic but feel repetitive. Unlike the primary exploration, the random encounters use a few "canned" maps, so feel a bit samey. Also, not all the dialog is voice acted, and some fights are too easy even on the 2nd hardest difficulty. Overall, it's imperfect, but still the best squad based tactical rpg in years. It was clearly made by folks who value the genre, not by a soulless EA-type company. More than worth buying, IMHO.

Short review - I read all the negative reviews, but bought the game (on sale) anyway. I'm glad I did. Still in my first campaign and I understand why the game has some of these reviews. The game is not boring but it does have it's technical problems, as in it crashes every so often. Save your games and it's a non-issue. There are people who have reported fixing their problems for good, I have not achieved that yet but might care enough eventually to fix it, it doesn't crash enough for me to care. The devs were not lazy making this game, it just has some high and low points to it. They did a good job making this like the old-school rpg games, lot's of nostalgia items and quotes that I'm sure a lot of the kids don't understand or have memory of. Fun game, I hope they make another.