As others stated, this game is a lot like HoMM. That's not a bad thing, I love HoMM particularly the older entries, but it's so similar you can't help but compare this game to those classics. The two main differences are in combat and graphics. Hero's Hour has real time combat in which you can drag your units around but they mostly do their own thing. It means there's more happening on the screen which is kind of cool, but it also feels like you have far less control over what's happening. The most immediately obvious difference is in visuals though. Old HoMM games have nice pixel art that still looks good, Hero's hour uses the faux retro 16 bit style that honestly has been done to absolute death and beyond at this point. Some may love this visual style, but to me it makes all games using it basically look the same with no visual identity of their own. So yeah. Give it a try, it's not a bad game by any means, but the game is so similar to classic HoMM and inferior where it differs that personally I'd rather just play more HoMM3.
Compared to its predecessor Wasteland 3 seems to have taken several steps back. It looks good, the soundtrack is frankly amazing, but the gameplay feels more shallow than in WL2. I guess it's "streamlined for a young, modern audience" like most RPG franchises that get dumbed down with every release. Combat feels simplified, and while the idea of building up your Ranger base sounds cool in practice it really doesn't add anything. Moving around the world map is tedious, you need to hold down the mouse button where you want to go or you stop moving and the camera is zoomed in way too far, presumably to make the map look bigger than it is. The setting seems to have dialed up the wackyness to 11 and many factions and quests feel like they belong in a modern Fallout game (that is absolutely not a compliment). The writing really doesn't help, oftentimes being so juvenile I felt several decades older than the game's apparent intended audience. In an RPG where writing is such an important (if not the most important) part of the whole experience that's a problem. It's also buggy with scripted events sometimes failing to trigger resulting in broken quest lines, and I have to mute the audio whenever I'm looking at a map because whenever you hover over a point of interest there will be an audio cue when it's highlighted but the sound itself seems broken somehow, sounds like digital clipping which is incredibly grating at any volume. Supposedly that can be fixed by *lowering* the sample rate of your audio device but frankly any situation where the user needs to fiddle with hardware settings before starting up a game just so it doesn't shit the bed is unacceptable; this isn't the early 90s. Overall I'd say play WL2 instead and check out WL3's OST on youtube. If you really want more Wasteland pick it up on a discount; this game clearly didn't receive the time or attention it required in development so there's no reason the devs and publisher should receive full payment.
First things first: there's no timer that causes you to fail missions. What happens is after spending some time on a mission a storm will appear in the form of lightning strikes setting small patches of ground on fire, and some time after that an enemy will appear and hunt you down. You can't kill him but put enough shots into him and he'll flee, leaving you to continue exploring in relative peace. I feel sorry for the devs because this feature seems widely misunderstood and forms the basis of many of the lower review scores. So here's what you do in the game. Each day you start in your base where you can build upgrade stations either to increase things like air quality and general comfort (important for the health and well-being of both yourself and your companions) as well as upgrading your weapons, crafting consumables and armour, levelling up etc. You then proceed to the mission selection screen. There's no wide open map, it's divided into smaller mission areas. You pick one for yourself and can choose to send out your companions (if you have any) on other, less important missions like scavenging. Once you embark on a mission you're teleported to the relevant mission area where you'll explore, sneak, kill, all that good stuff whilst avoiding highly irradiated areas. You'll occasionally encounter friendly npc's you can have a chat or trade with. Sometimes you need a specific item to get to optional rooms/areas, the most obvious being lockpicks which can be crafted at your base. These mission areas aren't huge but they're big enough to explore without feeling cramped. When you've completed your mission and have scavenged all you can you open a portal to return to base where you'll get an overview of your and your companions' mission results, decide on food rations and prepare for the next day. Sound and visuals are great and highly atmospheric. The game is mechanically quite different from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but if you enjoy those games you'll enjoy this one.
These guns make me feel like an Italian chef who is tasked with supplying his entire town with passata in an unreasonably short amount of time and absolutely nailing it. It's awesome.
