I greatly enjoyed Wasteland 2 (I still haven't played the original Wasteland or it's remaster), my problem with Wasteland 3 was less with the mechanics and the game itself and more with the strange decisions in world characters make. Those decisions run incredibly counter to the characters and seemed present only to create "tough choices" for the player. Most of them come across as forced. The gameplay itself is not without flaws either but they are generally small and under the '"just annoying" variety. The game does suffer from some unusually long load screens. Overall I'd recommend this game to people looking for tactical RPGs but the overall story writing was very disappointing to me.
This was a small scale crowdfunded adventure game produced largely by two people (with a tiny support staff). Most of the puzzles are well designed and fun, a few of them are complete nonsense which is not unexpected in a point and click adventure doesn't make them any less annoying and immersion breaking. Voice acting is generally good although marred by some poor translations (the writers are not English speakers). The game thinks it is doing hard SF but the science is pretty bad. The narrative itself is interesting enough in places but also takes some rather bizarre turns (and jarring enough that it makes me feel like parts were cut out in production). You go nicely from A to B to C and suddenly everything is at G. The UI is servicable but you will be fighting it in spots. It's not a bad game but it's not a great one either.
Overall I enjoyed this game, it's a gripping science fiction interactive story. There are some flaws, however. The story has some plot (and science) issues in later acts. Not a huge deal I suppose since most games (and books, tv shows and movies) do as well. The gameplay does not have any branching which while disappointing I can understand since it's telling a very specific story. The gameplay also employs some mini-games for it's puzzles, most are okay but some are very difficult to do with keyboard + mouse (to the point of wanting to smash the mouse against a wall). This cost the game a star. Another issue are the onscreen prompts for what keys to press, if you rebind anything it will show the original key. Moreover, for 'back' it says to press "X" (someone didn't change it from controller/console), the actual key is backspace. This is pretty inexcusable. There are other controls (shift while in SAMOS) that aren't even documented. C'mon. The game isn't overly long, average playtimes seem to be between 4 and 6 hours. The full price ($24.99) is a bit high for that so I'd recommend if you want to purchase the game to grab it during a sale.
(I own this game on Epic) This isn't a bad story, although it takes some time to get going, unfortunately the game ends just as things are really taking off. Unfortunately there's no indication if there is going to be another installment or not. Gameplay itself is decent, it's not a combat game, it's a walk around and occasionally run for your life game.
Heaven's Vault is a gem of a game, while not perfect if you're interested in linguistic puzzles and archaeology you are in for a treat. It supports multiple playthroughs and while the story and everything resets, your character's knowledge of an ancient languages does not enabling you to progress farther in your research and perhaps unearth new connections or information that may open a new path for your journey. (I want to note for folks that while GoG has labeled this a "point and click" style adventure, it is not that style. It controls more like a 3D action/adventure using a controller or WASD keys with mouse look.)
An enjoyable game and a good story, however, the keyboard/mouse controls are abysmal so I highly recommend using a gamepad. Even with that, the camera does some *really* annoying things, especially when you're trying to avoid obstacles or hazards.
This is a tough review, overall I enjoyed the game and the story but... I think the story could've gone further, things were even hinted at for this direction (I won't be specific for spoiler reasons). This game has some of the worst animation and character designs I've seen. Part of it is for a reason (which I won't spoil) but since it was applied throught the entire game I have to ding some points off it. There are some typos in the title cards that appear, including an incorrect date which messes the story up.
If you're looking for a serious game, this is the wrong one, but if you want to play something really hilarious and fun, you really can't go wrong with this.
