Wasteland 3

First, the good. most of the code bugs are fixed, and the story doesn't seem very prone to bugs. No broken quests on my first playthrough. It's not an open world, but it's nonlinear, and it's a triumph whenever decision trees work well in nonlinear games. The robots are funny and their voices are great. The music is solid too. Now, the bad. Technical stuff: the UI is unintuitive and you'll shoot your squadmates for the first hour or so you play. Cover doesn't do much for your squad, although it works great for your enemies - including your own cover, which works against you. Armor doesn't do much at all. More generally speaking, the game is unfocused, trying to do too many things: nonlinear, cooperative play, modding. Modding was especially pointless, at least on normal difficulty. A game like this should focus on the kind of story involvement of Disco Elysium and the combat of Shadowrun Returns. Focus on one or two elements that you can do, as opposed to a whole bunch where you don't know what you're doing. My biggest problems with this are the story though. It seems to have been written with the intent that players will play through the whole game several times, making different choices and seeing different outcomes. This is good in theory, but the game seems to really want you to side with crummy people. For a game with a "gray" morality, the characters are really one-dimensional. Also, it's way too easy for your cats to die, and for NPC cats to turn against you. It's not vivid or anything, but it would be nice to be able to turn it off. There are a few characters who you'll get 3D avatars of to talk to. These look terrible. Like Playstation 2 terrible. It's a relief when, halfway through the conversation, the game switches back to the isometric view. The voice acting varies. I would say that about 40% of the voice actors pronounce "Colorado" they way that anyone between Wyoming and Texas would pronounce it. Most of the humor is pun-heavy gamer humor.

Recommended for veteran RPG players, in my opinion. The game is much more than I expected as far as options for combat. If you run into an impossible it could be an easier way was missed or the wrong tool or even build was used. This affords numerous possibilites and replays as well as exceptional co-op fun. I wouldn't recommend the game for a new RPG player and if you haven't played at least one with tactical awareness (i.e. Divinity Original Sin / Shadowgate etc.) it may be a bit hard. The Easy setting is not bad though. Some other things: Story immersion: 4/5 Voice: 4.5 / 5 Combat: 4.5 / 5 Music/Battle Music: 3.5 /5 Dialog: 3.5 / 5 Consequences: 4.5 / 5 Tactical/Strategic: 4 / 5 Graphics: 4/5 Technical: 4/5 Fun: 4.7 Love it!

Basically, the game has 10/10 writing and visual design that clearly isn't attempting to be realistic. The game is made to be a fun, interesting world that's up there with its predecessor Wasteland 2. (I haven't played the first one mind you) that had some quality of life improvements like streamlining skills and making concessions like the idea that pistols and shotguns shouldn't be separate and neither should bladed and blunt. Problem is, you wind up favoring a few skills that overlap, but don't matter if they do. If the writing is good, where's the bad blood? First, the UI is pretty unrefined and buying/selling items is a chore and so is scrapping guns on top of some crazy stupid scenarios in the game that leave you trying to figure out why the game is so inconsistent. Your ally has 0 AP? rally them and watch them gain 0. Have the serial killer quirk and sneak attack? Watch them not gain the benefit. Sometimes rangers get upgraded animal companion perks for no reason and sometimes AOE effects will harm allies and sometimes they won't when you're on a difficulty with friendly fire disabled. Cover the map in flames? The friendly prostitute is fine. Use a focus melee attack? Congrats, now your companions hate you for your sins. Launch a rocket? You're fine though. These inconsistencies make the game dreadful along with how certain effects make the game chug and how you can order a stealth melee attack and watch your ally sit in front of an enemy for three seconds, get caught and then swing, using the AP to attack while also not gaining the stealth bonus. Not to mention the fact that there's other small things like getting free actions from a crit and losing the refunded AP because your AP momentarily dropped to 0. The game is great. Buggy, bad at explaining certain aspect, but holy hell is the writing a beautiful work of art. 3/5 for me, would have relations with Little Sparrow again. Fix the game so I can rate it better please.

This game is unfinished garbage, and not in the nu-gaming sense of "everything is released unfinished". It goes well beyond that and into the realm of the literally unplayable. It is full of game-breaking bugs and issues, with multiplayer being practically useless. Stay clear.

I really want to play this game. I own it. I started it. But it turns out after playing for about 14 hours, it is just too buggy to play. I'm only playing this in coop, not single player. It's pretty disappointing that review sites seem to have only played this game in single player because we are clearly not playing the same game. Load issues, ui issues, audio issues, quest issues, and many other issues are abound. Absolutely wait for multiple patches to come out. One or two patches are not going to cover the shear number of bugs in this game. All that said, it still looks like it could be a cool game. But it should not have been released when it was. Not sure if GOG lets me edit reviews later down the line after patches get released. If not, feel free to disregard this review after a few months.