Wasteland 3

Wasteland 3 is a party-based RPG with turn-based combat and classless character development system in a post-apocalyptic setting. The story follows a group of the Desert Rangers from Arizona trying to secure the support of the leader of Colorado, Saul Buchanan, also known as the Patriarch. There are several factions, numerous roleplay options, and meaningful choices. It is also possible to murder most, if not all, NPCs manually. The player’s characters (there are two) are fully customizable - from name and appearance to abilities and equipment. All non-combat skills are used during exploration and some are used in dialogues and combat. There are companions to recruit and pets to find, while it is also possible to create the whole team yourself. The combat is turn-based. Combat encounters are reasonably challenging and engaging, the loot is satisfying and meaningful, despite light randomness for non-unique items. The inventory is limitless, though there are no options for manual sorting, by default the equipment is sorted by type and level. The locations are of reasonable size and accessed via the world map, which is open shortly after starting the game and becomes easier to explore as the party’s vehicle is upgraded. The controls are rebindable and comfortable. The game lacks an option to pause without quitting the game. The graphics are pleasant to look at, while the system requirements remain adequate. The save files are very small and located in Documents/My Games. As far as I can tell, there is no limit for the number of save files. The game itself takes about 26GB of space, and runs smoothly. I have encountered FPS drops only in one area and it did not affect the game much. The soundtrack and voice acting are excellent and the former is possible to purchase separately. Highly recommended.

Streamlining for once is not a bad word. You do not need a spreadsheet to allocate all of your skills necessary to reach the end. Wasteland 2 was a good game for different reasons, the same as Fallout 1 and 2, but this is Wasteland 3 and should be judged on its own (well-deserved) merits.

Pros: -Voice Acting. I think many other crpgs could take a leaf out of wasteland 3’s book. An investment in high quality voice acting does so much for the immersion, character charm, and the tone of a game. For instance the visuals are nothing special, but once I settled into the game I still felt immersed thanks to the great voice acting. -Dark Humour. The game balances its dire apocalyptic setting with a healthy dose of dark humour that had me chuckling to myself more than any other game in recent memory. -Quest chocies.The quest choices aren’t your generic rpg good or bad, but often have you trying to find the lesser evil based on your own values (or the greater evil for those psychopaths that love playing the bad guy). -Addictive Xcom style combat. Completed on hard but found it a little easy. If familar with xcom, play on the hardest. -Punchy combat audio and some great music sprinkled throughout Cons: -Bugs. For a completely patched game I was surprised to run into some bugs. No game breaking ones, but they did hurt immersion and were annoying. The worst bug occurred during nearly every play session, after about an hour of gaming the fps would tank. A restart of the game fixed this bug. Other bugs weren’t as frequent, or annoying. For example: Once I got locked into combat mode after defeating all enemies, I had frozen characters that would not move, the screen would sometimes just randomly scroll to the side of the map, and sometimes certain parts of audio were missing. I’m not sure if these bugs are limited to the GOG version of the game. -Game mechanics are not that well thought out. Flamethrower builds are weak and have issues with too much friendly fire (especially with the uncontrollable companions). Some special weapons and armour are walled behind very specific character build requirements (weird science I’m looking at you). -So so visuals (some nice particle effects during combat though). All up a very enjoyable CRPG. Highly recommended.

How is it possible to release this? It is almost impossible to even start a coop game. The multiplayer lobby doesn't ever load, so you are forced to alt F4. Then we tried the direct connection, and nothing works there... I don't know where to begin! You cannot click "launch" most of the time, you can try any IP when joining and you'll just end up in empty lobbies with no error whatsoever. When you use the correct ip, you still don't see anyone and you can edit the difficulty. Finally, we found some obscure workaround in the gog forums and were able to continue a game created in solo mode... Only to get disconnected after. DO NOT BUY if you want to play coop, wait for fixes (i applied all existing patches). And this comes from a WL2 fan that preordered the collector edition of WL3.

Wasteland 3 is easily my favorite release of 2020 thus far - a big achievement for the small, talented team at inXile. Other than a handful of moderate loading screens (from an HDD), performance was flawless. Only two bugs that I can recollect - a quest which didn't 'complete' upon finishing, and an event in another quest which didn't "trigger" until I reloaded and tried again - out of 65+ hours of playtime. Writing, characters, combat/mechanics, atmosphere (music! voice acting!) are stellar. Graphics are solid if unremarkable. Role-playing, choice & consequence are FANTASTIC. I haven't been this drawn in and hooked by a modern CRPG since inXile's own Torment: Tides of Numenera. I'm sure I'll play through this again at least once. If you're seeking a CRPG that marries old-school sensibilities and aesthetics with modern quality of life features and finesse, look no further than Wasteland 3.