Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition

As backer, I expected a lot from Wasteland 2. But to my dismay, it did not deliver. First off, graphics is poor. Not only it is not artistically pleasing, it is most of the time bland, uninspired, and without trace of atmosphere. Colors don´t work together. Animations are akward, slow, characters flow weightlessly. Quality of 3D objects wildly varies, as of textures. All in all, I really don´t feel visuals deliver the story and overall setting correctly. Level design is pretty bad, outdated, and without attention to detail. For example, there are literally hundreds of chests everywhere, most of them trapped, like what the hell? Who left them there? In the middle of nowhere? Why? Does this make any sense? No, it doesn´t, the world is unbelievable and feels fabricated. On top of that, you´ve got to rotate camera all the time to not miss important stuff. In these regards, even Fallout 1 is way better. I´ve just completed first of the bigger quests and I really wonder whether I should play on, and hope for the better. Because so far, its a drag. Boring NPCs, boring quests, all wrapped in bad visuals. Combat seems kinda ok, although monsters are nothing to write home about. Random generated encounters are really terrible, as there are like two different maps they happen upon. It gets repetetive really quickly. You don´t expect mindless grind in single-player, but, boy, you will get it here. If I compare W2 with recently published Divinity: OS ($1mil.), Wasteland 2 looks like very indie, borderline amateurish, attempt. This is not $3 mil. game by any stretch of an imagination. I really hope Torment will be two leagues above production quality of W2. Otherwise I will question whether Fargo is able to make good games like he used to.

Every single review seems to tout this as the next Fallout, and it really isn't. The game still has major bugs, many of which have been reported by people like myself since beta/alpha. It's amazing that they just recently acknowledged the movement bug where enemies teleport across the map, or walk seemingly infinite distances on the first turn of combat. Speaking of combat it somehow manages to be worse in many aspects than games which are now over 10 years old. You cannot target specific body parts, critical hits provide nothing beyond extra damage, and the weapon jam rates are just frustrating and stupidly arbitrary. How does a cylinder revolver jam more often than a full auto machine gun? Combat balance also leaves a lot to be desired, enemies that have infinite grenades/RPGs are common and by no means interesting to fight, especially since enemies in general seem to be subject to none of the rules that you are subject to, having infinite ammo, explosives, and being fully focused on combat skills. Even if the combat isn't great it's still a good RPG right? Well, that depends. Character stats are lackluster and there's very little interaction between stats and skills, or stats and the world in general. Why does a character with a Charisma stat of 1 get the same Barter price discount as a character with 10 Charisma and the equivalent skill level? Who knows, but apparently this is a game with deep RPG elements. I also hope you enjoy disarming traps and opening containers only to get trolled by the 1 junk item inside after you spend half of a characters skill points to be able to open it in the first place. And there are a LOT of containers, why are people trapping boxes with dynamite in the middle of their own homes? Poor design choices all in all, and these are not things patching will fix as they are ingrained in the games core mechanics. I won't talk about the writing and story as that's subjective but outcomes are largely the same no matter what you do.

The game is incredibly solid, considering how many expectations it had to live up to. First of all, it had to incorporate certain game mechanics, without which it would never have been considered the rightful successor to Fargo's title: turn-based combat, isometric view, multiple ways to solve quests/missions, lots of NPCs, big map, non-linear story, gore/violence/language mixed with dark humor, etc. I personally think that Wasteland 2 manages to hit the target on all of these thing, some are more accomplished than others, but it's nonetheless the title that was promised. I like the style and atmosphere (Mark Morgan did a great job with the soundtrack), and although the UI initially feels a little clunky, you should quickly get used to it. If you're a fan of turn-based RPGs, the Fallout franchise, good story driven games, this is a must have!

This is a great example of a studio using crowd-funding to keep itself going, with little or no care for the final product. This is, hands-down, the most buggy game I've ever played hot off the press (yes, that includes such bug-infested titles as Gothic 3, Ultima IX, etc). There are detrimental bugs present that will keep you from completing quests - yes, even after 4 patches. The whole game just feels really, really half-@$$ed. And that's a crying shame, because a lot of us had high hopes for it. Beyond the bugs, there still just isn't much here. The writing tries to be "hard core" and "gritty," but instead comes off like a six-year-old trying to use bad words - immature and kind of pathetic. The "hard decisions" don't put the player in a difficult place, nor do they add "realism" to the story line - in fact, they're not really decisions at all, since in the end it doesn't really matter what you do; the story will end up the same. The plot is transparent beyond belief and feels like the writers spent all of about 5 minutes thinking about it. And while I'm certainly not one to complain about language and "adult" themes, in this game it feels like both are present just so that the studio could say they made a game with adult language and themes - and again, this comes off as being immature and ridiculous. The gameplay itself is monotonous and, dare I say it, boring, at best - at worst, it's quite frustrating. If you don't believe me, we'll talk again after you critically fail a quest-required lock or safe, jamming it beyond repair (there is no alternative to open the safe, as the game snickeringly informs you) - for the 100th time, and realize the last save is the auto-save at the beginning of the area - 5 hours of gameplay ago. There are no "ground-breaking" concepts, no new UI ideas, no "revolutionary" changes. I'm very disappointed in InExile and Bryan Fargo. They're capable of a lot better than this.

I see what you've done here. The amount of fanboyism makes me wonder did devs spend most cash on buying good reviews instead of making a good game? Seriously, this game is medicore. If it was a game from unknown publisher, nobody would give a damn thing about it. Titles and names do not make this game special. Well actualy if it was unknown publisher, I could justify such amount of mess but not from original Wasteland and Fallout creators. Skill system turns your gameplay experience into boring clickfest and encourages savescumming. Chests chests and more chests scattered in every single corner with or without reason, trapped, locked, with alarms, why? In most cases you open it and find random piece of junk and couple bullets. Thats it? Thats how you reward your players? Theres no point in search of loot, because every single town, every village has arms dealer wich has unlimited, yes unlimited ammount of bullets, weapons, meds. Makes me wonder, did i play postapocalyptic RPG, where resources should be scarce? Combat is dull and boring. Every single enemy can run to you from miles away in one single turn, so why bother then positioning your rangers? Covers are almost nonexistant and there is no tactic involved at all because of dumb AI. Your attributes have no impact on skills, luck, charisma are dumpstats, just make high intelligence character and he will be able perform all tasks better than anyone. Theres no dialogue trees, you just simply click click click, your decisions have absolutely no impact on game story. Nobody cares later in game what have you did nor anyone mentions it. Theres no carma or reputation. Quests are boring, fetch this kill that. Open world is false illusion, you cannot travel anywhere before you finish particular task. Armor is just stupid you are penalized for wearing it because in most cases you receive less damage without it! Oh and yes, every single trader has best possible armor its just unnaceptable. Dont bother this game is FUBAR