Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Digital Classic Edition

If you played and loved the original Wasteland your in for a disappointment with this title. Wasteland was the first RPG game my parents ever purchased for me on a computer and it hooked me instantly. Wasteland 2, sadly, is not the spiritual successor to the original it is billed as. It uses some of the same place settings and steals a few of the original mechanics but that's about it. There are no real moral decisions to be made here, no real consequences. All the best bits of the original game are missing. The unique story line that dragged you in, the imaginative places (like inside an androids brain), and NPC's that felt real have all been left behind. This frankly reminds me of what would have happened if Michael Bay decided to remake a computer game. Half the story, four times the explosions! If you haven't played the original then this isn't such a bad game in it's own right. It has far less freedom then promised and the technology is certainly dated but it could be a fun way to kill some time. It certainly has more RPG-like aspects then many modern games and is a definite throwback to the early games of the genre. There is a large world with tons of stuff to explore (if you like random loot and scenery), plenty of people to talk to and TONS of things to blow into a fine red mist. At the end of the day Brian Fargo (the director of both Wasteland 1 & 2) is a giant in the field and does put out a decent product. I just wish this game had been done by Interplay and not inExile; or at the very least given a completely new name not linking it to Wasteland.

For someone like myself that grew up with games like Arcanum, Baldur's Gate and the other often-brutal CRPGs of yesteryear, this game is near-perfection. The developers had some design choices that some do not care for, and not everyone likes a game that sometimes is as brutal and unfair to the unwary as the actual Wasteland might do. One major fault that most pepople, myself included, have with the game is the unbalanced nature of the weapons system. Heavy MGs are essentially useless, seeing as theyre unmoddable and jam frequently, and early game can chew through ammo. SMGs are good early, get weak later, which is frustrating to someone devoting a character to an SMG build. There's little reason to use Snipers, because modded assault rifles had nearly the same range and power. And shotguns are only useful for getting up close and having a tickle fight. HOWEVER: There is an absolutely brilliant weapon mod on the inXile forums (their mod site lacks organization, its buried at the end of a long post about the original mod, some guy posted a link to the DC version of the mod at the end of the post) that solves that infuriating issue. All weapons now have their uses, and none, including the once ALL powerful Assault rifles, are perfect for every situation. Better yet, MGs are moddable, and fill an amazing support role, particularly if you play on Supreme Jerk difficulty. Everything else about this game that you'd wanna know has been covered in other reviews here. My only reason for docking this game before was the crap weapon system, and so upon finding this obscure mod I decided to reboot and give it another whirl. Most of the bugs and quest breakers have been patched, I havent came across any on my last 3 runs. You'll still come across 2 year old posts about having to talk to people in a certain order or a quest breaks, and that is no longer the case. There are some minor annoyances, such as your team having the same choice of "Titan? Who or What is Titan?" to every single denizen of a town, that just seems a bit lazy. You should only havce the option to ask about a subject once or twice, not of every single human beingh in the godforsaken wasteland. True bugs and such seem to be mostly eradicated. Anyway, if the only thing holding you back from trying this out is the lack of a good weapon system, DL that mod and you've got an amazing, dense, hilarious, extremely open and unforgiving Wasteland to explore

There are a couple of choices where you have to decide how to go further - and you cannot reverse it. This makes the game compelling, a bit more "save frequently" than it should be. Nevertheless if you like its precedessors (including Fallouts) then you definetely have to try Wasteland out.

Make a mistake when setting up your squad and you'll end up suffering every combat situation without being able to pull through because you miss 90% shots and punches while the enemy kills your rangers one by one, and you just get stuck. "Great" balancing and totally non-engaging plot

The very first "quest" left my party out of ammo, out of healing items, eternally poisoned (which ultimately results in seemingly unpreventable death), and completely lost in a dimly lit complex. Half the map is blocked off with barriers that require "heavy artillery", which of course I don't have 'cause I literally just started the game. The components of a great game are all there. They just didn't play test it from a new person, "doesn't know the game inside and out" stand point. Go get a Fallout 2 mod pack or something. This isn't worth the money.