Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition

I was very excited for release well before this game came out. I never beta tested or anything but I eventually got around to getting the game no Steam and went through the standard process of creating elaborate back stories for my 4 characters. And then... you kind of just walk around. The overworld is just a pointer on a piece of paper with random encounters and a couple oases and then you get into the map. Combat starts and there's practically no cover at all so you just shove 3 people behind one car and another guy behind a box 4 tiles away. I'm not claiming to be a tactical genius of any sort but compared to similar games like XCom I feel as though this game had little strategy in battle. You couldn't outrange anyone or ambush them since they could run up to any place you hid behind since everything is so close. There also aren't any abilities so there isn't much team building in battle other than just making sure your character's guns don't all use the same ammo. But then again if you want non-combat skills then your characters can't even shoot guns practically so you're just stuck with low level skillpoints everywhere or you just miss out on half of everything you come by (which you will fail those checks half of those times anyways because your skills are too low). In short, I just can't stay interested. I've tried many times and I get bored in 20 minutes because every aspect of the game is just slow.

This RPG is not a true sequel to a masterpiece. It plays quite average and the lack of true inspiration is blatant all across the range. Average fights, averaga characters aside a couple. Inventory is messy, combat system is not so interesting and so enemies. Skills progression is not very exciting and many skills seems quite useless from the beginnig while others are not clear what they do or interact: Bad Ass, Strong Ass, etc... The main gripe is that everything looks a bit old and already seen. Few interesting novelites and something that will keep you really fascinated.

Right before I bought this game I tried reloading fallout tactics to see if that would satisfy me (having already replayed fallout 1 and 2 so many times...) It didn't... tactics is a buggy and unfinished mess with brain dead AI. About 2 hours in I'd totally penetrated it and there wasn't any challenge left, just a lot of naked flaws daring me to get upset about all the missed potential. Fallout 1 and 2 were buggy as hell too but you know, you stuck with it because you loved it or you bailed because you didn't. I'm about, I dunno, 20-40 hours into Wasteland 2 and I have at this point totally penetrated it. That makes it 10x better than tactics but at this point only my interest in the story is carrying me forward. Needless to say I'm playing on the "supreme jerk" setting, but despite the colorful name, even terrifyingly impossible battles are easy enough to blow through at this point, and the real shame of it is that 3 of my characters are basically useless for combat and my conservative skill point commitments ( at least 70% unassigned ) means I'm basically only at 30% capacity of how much I could be tearing through these baddies. I could 6 people with maxed out weapon skills but I'm destroying everything with only 3 gunners with minimum skills, 2-3 points here or there. The bottom line is that the game is too easy, I'm not trying to be a badass or something, you just can't argue with those numbers. Everything else is great but damn... unless you're like hopelessly bad you will learn the system and have it pretty much cornered after your first couple major quests are complete. After this point only the cheapest of surprises will even have REVIVING a fallen party member, outright deaths are so rare its just ridiculous. That and the economy is already breaking pretty bad as well... I have almost no supply stress whatsoever, even for freaking bazookas. What I find is that I'm basically playing a rather gimmicky and violent adventure game, which is cool and all, but the gameplay, which is awesome, just runs out of challenge way too early in. That's my honest opinion and I don't regret buying it.

I think the skills are more cluttered than they need to be. Fallout had this down 15 years earlier (I do appreciate the first Wasteland pre-dated Fallout 1). The combat isn't bad, but not particularly good either. I moved between being interested in the story to simply not wanting to fight another group of same-y raiders, realizing that's how the gameplay flow would probably be for 20 hours. I got it as a freebie, so I don't feel too gypped.

I've been playing video games for 35 years. I'm guessing I've played close to a thousand titles. This is the most frustrating game I've ever played. It is the kind of game that is fun 75% of the time but is so mind-numbingly bad the other 25% it doesn't really matter. The things that really stick out (difficulty spikes, ridiculously long encounters, massive sections of the game with no variety in combat/enemies) are all design flaws. It is absolutely infuriating.