I liked the surival mechanics, the looting and the crafting. Although the combat seems simplistic, it actually requires tactical thinking and decision making. There are encounters with characters you can speak to and places where you can trade valuable loot. All in all it's better than most early access survival games. I only have one problem with it. I was 3 hours into a run where I made lots of money and had pretty good gear. And then I died simply for selecting the wrong option in one of the story quests. There was no battle, no chance to survive, no indication as to what was the right thing to do. Simply a line of text saying I've been killed. And since it's perma death I need to start over and lose my 3 hours progress and gear. I don't think I'll be playing it anymore because of that.
I've never been a big fan of Classic RPG games. Then I saw some gameplay of Wastelands 2 and thought I should try it. I've now clocked in 17 hours in less than a week and loved every second. Most of the mechanics are a bit simplified and mainly based on RNG, however you can improve your odds by upgrading your skills. The combat system has a certain tactical depth to it. You gain advantages from cover and flanking. You use the Field Medic and Surgeon skills (both are very important) to keep your people alive. There's a wide variety of ranged and melee weapons. The characters and quests are interesting for the most part and everything from the sound design to the visual aesthetic and game mechanics make it quite an immersive experience (at least for me). You can pick locks, unlock safes, hack computers, disable alarms and disarm bombs if you have people with these skill sets in your party. The game has its quirks, however. Sometimes navigating to different areas to find a specific person can be a bit difficult. The User Interface needs some getting used to. After leveling up a few times the requirements for upgrading a skill become progressively larger, which means that you might need to level up 2 or 3 times to get enough skill points to unlock the next tier. Not all the NPC's are fully voice acted. Sometimes the RNG can be ruthless (like missing shots with 92% chance to hit), but it's a give and take as sometimes you can crit for massive amounts of damage. The enemies' AI could use some refining. Sometimes they almost kill one of your characters, just so they can focus on another one in the next turn for no apparent reason. Other times they spray and pray and end up damaging or killing their own friends with friendly fire (which you need to keep in mind when shooting btw). However, they do use cover when possible and sometimes go for the obviously optimal attacks. It's a great game and I'm having a blast with it. I think I'm gonna play more CRPG's after this.
