Wasteland 3

Wasteland 2 was the turn based successor to Fallout, when Fallout stopped being turn based with 3 and was turned into an FPS RPG. This is more of Wasteland 2, along with overhauls to some things, such as UI, and dumbing down a few things, such as having a shared inventory and having no weight limit, but replacing that limitation with limited quick slots per character instead. If you liked Wasteland 2, chances are you'll like 3. Similar to W2, 3 also has some technical issues, (2 generally ran like garbage, even on minimum settings with a perfectly capable PC.) 3 seems more optimized in a general sense, except for when the memory leaks happen (after a few hours of play usually), causing the game to run terribly until rebooted. Then there was this terrible glitch that started happening in the last 30% of the game, I think it has a chance of happening after battle, not sure. It was like the game thought I was holding right click or something, and wouldn't let go, I could even move into dark areas (with fog of war) and it would stay dark, if I tried reloading, it would load infinitely. Again, only rebooting the game fixed it. Really nasty bug. Unity isn't a particularly terrible engine by default (I guess), but it is if you're careless with optimization. I've played at least a few Unity games that ran well (Oddworld remake, Outcast remake) I dunno, maybe inXile would utilize Unreal 4/5 better with their next game. I just have a feeling if they use Unity again, similar technical problems will happen again. And it's going to suck. Again.

I really loved the game, I put in 152 hours of gameplay and you can replay and chose different scenarios, outcomes etc... Where I did not like it is the DLC's. Again, they are super fun but at some point you reload a saved game and it is impossible to have a dialogue with NPC's or interact with an object. You have to quit the game, close the GOG client, restart everything and it works... one time ok, but after about 15 times while I am in one of the DLC... very annoying. And then you finish them both, but they tell you to go do the DLC like you did not do anything. It was like that all the way to the end... but I did do both of them. POSSIBLE SPOILER HERE: At the end of the game, the last conversation, an important NPC tell you that you have ruin everything because you did not do that "DLC", even if I did do it and I was very careful not to mess everything up. Conclusion: it was very fun, but one possible ending was ruin because of that, so 3.5 out of 5.

Wasteland 3 is probably the last of an odd line of games that are defined by the succesor of the first. To put it simply these games are defined and designed to be the continuation of not only the orginal Wasteland, but of the first two Fallout games. While this isn't initially a bad thing, it does mean it illicitly draws a comparison with their predecessors. Overall, this game feels like a mess, but not an inherently bad one. The setting, an 80s flavored post-apocalyptic Colorado, provides ample opportunites for interesting adventures and oddball scenarios. if anything, I could say the games side content provides memorable encounters and moments that make me remember it years after I've finished it. However,the story feels boiler-plate, and none of the supporting cast feel developed in any way that feels believable. Your main benefactor/potential antagonist is probably the only one I felt was decently developed, and even then the game goes out of it's way to make the player feel bad for even considering liking him. Weak story aside. what this game does have is solid tactical combat mechanics and fun encounter design. So while you aren't going to really care for why you are fighting, nor are you going to care for who you are fighting as, you'll still probably end up enjoying the act of fighting itself as you go through this 35-40 hour romp.

Poor Co-op implementation is made worse by constant game stopping bugs. My wife and I just gave up even trying to play it after 2 hours of trying to figure out how to zone out of the tutorial -- after over an hour of trying to get connected to begin with. I recommend anyone wanting to play this game to wait for several patches to be released and possibly for a sell because given the failed launch I imagine it won't be too long before we see this discounted.

It's not quite Bethesda simplified and dumbed down, but the charachter build is a bit stripped back and there's some odd choices in the way stats affect gameplay. The map is disappointingly small and even with the extra $$ DLC I don't think the game is as big as Wasteland 2, to the point I was thinking a new map would be unlocked before the finale. Speakling of WL2, it's painfully clear assets have been reused, with poor detail on NPC models and terrible character customization. It's not well optimised, with increasing ammounts of frame drop as the game progresses and poor CPU utilization and a few crashes and in game mission bugs occurring too. It's not a bad game, it just suffers from meh writing and an overall lack of effort to improve in any standout way over the previous game.