Wasteland 3

Played Wasteland 1 and 2. Played WL1 along time ago so it is kinda shaded in the shadows of nostalgia but I played WL2 within the last 2-3 years, finished it twice. I will most likely not finish this one, sad to say, it just does not in any way hold my interest. Beat Vic and Valor and just kind of lost interest. The Good: - Simplified the skills and for the most part it was good, combined the Medical skills Assault rifles and SMGs are in one weapon category same with blunt/blade, Shotgun/Pistol, Locks/Safes. - Skills augment your in game abilities more then WL2, ie Survival (Outdoorsman) gives bonus damage against animals. - Graphics are improved so it looks shinier. The Bad: - Story had a lot of potential but the execution kinda goes flat, has some good call backs to WL2 and WL1. Has some not so great ones as well. - The NPCs are varied but you really lack any real connection to them outside of the companions which are still pretty limited. - Group inventory and no management of what you are carrying as nothing has wieght. - Attributes and Skills are totally different, not in a good way, 3 skill pts each level and a stat boost each 2, I can see why they would want to go this way but the Skills still have an increasing cost. Th UGLY: - Combat is really badly executed, they have done away with initiative for the most part, so 1 team goes then the next one goes. Makes it kinda boring and encourages a shoot first before the bad guy has any chance to do anything because if they get to go first there is a good chance they win. Lots of suicide units. - Skills are pass or fail and that's it, no percentage chance of success, so they went the Fallout 4 way. Overall the combat is not very dynamic, the characters are one note for the most part and very little changes throughout the game in regards to the environments. I just looked up the endings are realized I was not interested or engaged with the game to spend the hours playing it. I want to recommend but I can't

My first game in the series was Wasteland 2, a really good CRPG that reminded me to the classics Fallout 1 & 2, with a well written story, good dialogs and many interesting characters, really enjoy the game, the difficult and the grey morale decisions (and the consequences), I could say is among my favorite CRPGs of all time... So, when Wasteland 3 was announced, I had some high expectations with the game, if I had written this review in the release date, it would have been a pretty negative one, because some gameplay changes and the removal of the micromanagement of the inventory fell pretty shocking for me, like the game was made for casuals even on the highest difficult, and I have to say I was wrong, after the first hours once I adapt to the new games mechanic, the game is so f*cking fun!!! Is less difficult than Wasteland 2 but is far from a easy game. The game is bigger than is predecessor and have much more decisions, difficult decisions that have consequences at short, mid and long term, the world feels more alive (even on the bring of destruction), the RPG aspects is more refined and the missions are much more clear than W2. At this point, patch 1.3.3 was released, InExile hasn't stoped adding new content and fixing the game, is super recommended, so if you see the game on offer, don't doubt, buy it and you won't regret it, after 3 playthrough and having played almost 200 hours, I can say that pre order this game was a good decision, I love it!

Just a big headsup to everyone (who cares about details like this). In this game, opposed to XCOM games, you can not see detailed hit chance information! You might look for a shot with your sniper and only get 75% chance, wondering why it ain't higher, but you can not see how it is calculated! Am I not gettin leadership buff where I stand? Am I too close to the target? Do I get flanking bonus, or do I need to move one more square? Shouldn't my new scope help more? Good luck with that, you get no detailed info at all in this game! (Still almost can't believe it but apparently this is the case.) For me all the fun is gone if I'm gonna fight blindly like this, I love looking at those stats and seeing how it all is calculated. It's also the best way to learn the tactical details of how everything works! If you don't care about this, just ignore my review and read the others instead, but hopefully I can save someone else from wasting their money like I did.

I've got about 10 hours into the game so far and it has been pretty much everything I expected from a WL game. There has been some good expansion on abilities and I have found some good perk synergies with some of the Strike specials. I had read on other reviews about it being too easy/watered down so I bumped up to Ranger right away and combat has been satisfyingly challenging. I recommend that to any veteran of the series. Like WL2, it pays to build a team that has 3-4 skills per character so you can disarm/repair/lockpick/medic/anything early on in the game. The attribute point system seems revised so you get way more attribute points, though, so it's easy to build up intelligence stat to get skill points even if you didn't load up on it at character creation. I personally have had 0 load time issues that other people have reported, and my SSD is 3 years old. Not sure what to say but loading save games and areas takes no more than 20-30 seconds. I have experienced no crashes at all so far, but there do seem to be some potential performance issues as combat wears on in larger fights where I have occasionally experienced the game lagging as you try to just edge scroll around the map during combat. The only bugs I've seen are minor UI glitches in labeling. The writing and humorous references are pretty good. If you are beyond the age of like, 28, there's a lot of funny references. I won't give spoilers though. I haven't been able to put the game down since I bought it yesterday and it just feels like an updated, flashier (bigger?) WL2. I love it.

The game might feel a bit unnecessarily streamlined in comparison to Wasteland 2, but the quality of life features make it a really fun RPG that doesn't feel too cumbersome. The game manages to combine lightheartedness with dead-serious stuff in a fluid way that doesn't feel too tryhard. Although it needs to be said, that the player kinda has to have eye and tolerance for the sort of writing and humor the game strives to offer. Lots of choices to be made and consequences to suffer that aren't clear cut. Combat is pretty fluid and at times even challenging and there's definitely enough content to romp trhough. My copy never had any significant bugs or glitches so technically the game is pretty pure too. I would've liked the skillchecks not be deterministic and the game to have a bit more creativity with the systems in regards to non-combat skills and activities, but all in all Wasteland 3 is a very solid RPG where a sequel does not need to improve much to make it a top notch experience among the classics of the genre. The 5/5 rating is according to times at hand. I wouldn't put it among games like Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum and such, but it's a very good work from InXile, and hopefully not the last of isometric RPG's we see from them under Microsoft.