BUY ON SALE.
$20 is a fair price.
Deviating from my usual "BUY RENT PASS" style of reviews, I've elected to go a bit deeper because man Wasteland 2 is pretty dissapointing. It's not worth the $40 they're asking for -- not by a long shot.
The game seems hung up on being as "oldschool" as possible, going so far as to include things that are a direct detriment to the gameplay in order to achieve this; they don't follow the same design as "retro" style games like Shovel Knight, which took the best of old and new -- instead, this game aims to be just "old", and the result is a lacklustre experience that doesn't even live up to the name of OLD games, such as Fallout 2.
I'm going to say right now -- I'm going to be pretty harsh on this game, but it's overall still a pretty good game; it's just nowhere near worth what they're asking for it, and with all of the hype surrounding the initial release, the game we're left with is nothing short of a dissapointment.
To start, the combat in the game seems designed in a way that it wants to directly hinder the player. It's actually something that becomes a noticeable flaw in the entirety of the game -- the percentages are weighed against the player, having something like a 90% chance to hit an enemy missing, while the enemies seem to have the precision of trained snipers. With pistols. Across the map.
It's a major issue in the early game, where ammo is much more scarce and you haven't developed your weapon skill enough to have a reliable 80-90% hit chance, and so you're relying on the lower 60-70%; being that you still miss often enough at 90%, 70% felt much closer to 40% chance to hit with any given weapon. Adding onto that, weapons have a very low chance to jam -- ranging from as low as 2% to as high as 7% -- but these values are misleading, as your weapons will seemingly jam atleast once every time you enter combat, as opposed to the incredibly low value the percentages hint at.
It becomes even more egregious in the later stages of the game where you'll have a very high skills, but even then you'll still critically fail and fail to succeed the skill checks FAR more often than is reasonable or expected. There were times where I had 94% chance to open a locked safe, with a 1% chance to critically fail -- I critically failed 3 times in a row. I understand this is them trying to make the game "oldschool and hard", but it's a terrible design decision. Your stats are lying to the players; I shouldn't have to hope for 100% chance on all my skills just to avoid the frustration of saving and reloading.
Adding to the frustrations of the game, are the large amount of skills you're privy to, and the fact that very few of them matter. There are a handful of skills in the game with very little use, and some who's use is so flimsy it's worthless; toaster repair lets you fix toasters to find strange items that are more often than not linked to quests. As a reward you usually get a paltry sum of money, experience, and a pat on the head, none of which are worth the large investment required. The same goes for the animal whisperer skill; I found only two or three instances in the entire game where I actually needed to use it, and so for the most part, it was a useless skill. Hell -- outside of assault rifles, perception, lockpicking, safecracking, and field medic, none of the other skills are even worth taking. You'll want to put a few points into outdoorsman to avoid random combat scenarios on the world map, and you might want demolitions to help you avoid unnecessary damage, but for the most part, a single character could house all of the needed skills to complete the game, which is shocking.
The instances where you need specific skills like Mechanical Repair, Computer Science, and Alarm Disarming are so few and far between that you'll often forget you even have those skills. The dialogue specific skills are nice to help ease along certain quests, but I completed the majority of the game before curiosity got the best of me and I used a 3rd party program to re-allocate skill points of one of my followers (I'll talk more on this later in the review) so that I could see what I was possibly missing; the results? Not much.
Getting deeper into that -- The attributes of your character are largely useless too. The bonuses you get form allocating points into your attributes is so paltry you hardly notice it. It got to the point that trinkets which I'd use trinkets and items that lowered my base attributes to boost other skills because I hardly noticed a difference. Speed, Strength, and Intelligence being the few attributes that anyone would bother to invest heavily in for the gain in action points, ability to carry more items, more skill points each level, and ability to move further, get your turn faster, and evade more in combat. Coordination simply provided a +1% chance to hit per point, and I just left Charisma at 1 because it was a useless stat completely. The balancing in this game is so skewed it's shocking.
To elaborate on that point - assault rifles are the only weapon in the game worth using, outside of maybe energy weapons and a melee weapon of choice. Assault Rifles have high damage, high armor piercing, carry more ammo, have a burst fire mode, and have range comparable to sniper rifles. They also have a very low AP cost across the board, making some of the later weapons -- handguns, and submachine guns included -- a terrible choice. I kept a handgun on one of my characters towards the end of the game because I found a higher end weapon with only 4AP per shot; this meant with my 9 total starting AP, I could fire my assault rifle, and my handgun. I had completely forgotten I even had a handgun, because once I finally maxed out my characters Assault Rifle skill, I was able to burst fire on enemies for 100% chance to hit at virtually any range; I was out damaging my snipers with my high burst fire, using the same amount of AP as they were. for 7 AP I was doing over 238 damage at 45m range, while my snipers with anti-materiel rifles were using 7AP to do 115 damage. I kept an energy weapon around for high armor enemies, but even then, an assault rifle still out damaged it going by damage per AP. Energy weapons lose their effectiveness on low armored enemies, while assault rifles have such high innate armor piercing that they can do full damage to virtually every enemy you face.
I finally ended up changing my characters loadouts a bit because it was becoming boring (and expensive) having every single on of my characters ONLY using assault rifles. There is just no reason to use anything else.. which brings me to another point -- the armor system.
In-game, you can find armor that (if you have the appropriate strength -- oh look, strength once again comes into play, why shouldn't I just pump this again?) reduces the amount of damage you take. There is a flip side to this, however -- energy weapons (if your armor is at or above their threshold) will do large amounts of damage to an armored character. Also, for the most part, armor seemed to only hurt me, as the damage reduced wasn't very much due to the fact that enemies weapons had increasing amounts of armor piercing, and when I would have the misfortune of bumping into enemies with energy weapons (which is very common in the second half of the game) I'd get completely obliterated. It's another "back of the box" mechanic that just doesn't seem very well thought out. Sure, you can wear armor, it just won't provide any real benefits except make your character weigh more, slow down your combat speed for some armors, and you'll take hilarious amounts of damage from energy weapons. Sure, sounds great, sign me up!
Oh, and speaking of "items bogging you down", lets go over QUEST ITEMS. There are specific items within wasteland that are marked "Quest Item". These items have their own item weight, and cannot be removed from your inventory.. (except in the first half of the game, when you have access to your ranger inventory. You lose access to this in the second half of the game, however) and so you're forced to carry an additional weight that you can't get rid of. There was a point in the game, where if I didn't use a save editor to delete items from my inventory, I would've had 35lbs extra weight bogging down my characters. To put into perspective how much weight that is -- one of my characters could only carry 81lbs. Your equipment, ammunition, and everything have a weight, so carrying just my ammunition and equipment, I was around 40-50lbs. Adding 35lbs that I can't get rid of would make my character encumbered, and likely unable to move completely. It's the most inane, most absurd "current gen" mechanic they've included, which as of writing just struck me -- it's actually a current generation mechanic they've added, completely ignoring the nature of every other aspect of the "oldschool" rpg they seem so adamant on replicating! Why on earth wouldn't they let you throw away or destroy a quest item? If you lose it, that's your own fault -- it's a oldschool rpg, you're being punished like you're playing one, so why this hand-holding mechanic? It's mind boggling.
Hell, let me give you another example of this -- in the early game, there's a water mechanic. You have to top off your canteens because you use "water" while traveling in the overworld. It's never used anywhere BUT the overworld map when traveling, and is made completely redundant by the fact that every 5 feet there's an oasis that lets you refill your canteens. A mechanic used to make sure you "travel safely", and constantly have to make sure you have plenty of water is reduced to a "Oh, I can't auto-walk across the map now, I have to make sure I stop by one of the 30 oasis', so my characters don't take damage from dehydration before I get to where I'm trying to go. It's a redundant mechanic, and it doesn't even show up in the second half of the game. Once you progress the story and leave a certain area, you no longer even have water as a stat on the mainscreen. Your character stops using it when traveling in the overworld, and it becomes a forgotten detriment tossed to the side. A "Oh, yeah, that." mechanic. It was something they threw into the game, because it "sounded like a good idea at the time" then it gets completely scrapped; hell, the second half of the game radiation is literally a single wall used as a story mechanic to prevent you from progressing. In the early game it was thick clouds that would slowly damage you, but in the second half of the game it's just a line to stop you from getting to places before you "upgrade your radsuit". It's ridiculous.
Another greivance, is the fact that you have to manually walk your character everywhere, and there is no fast travel system AT ALL. It's an "oldschool" game, right? So of course they won't have fast travel. That'd be fine, except for the fact that you have to backtrack almost constantly to turn in quests, visit vendors to sell things, heal your characters, do a variety of things. Towns aren't in the immediate vicinity of where you start on the map, either -- you have to walk a good ways to get to places, and in the second half of the game, it takes a good 5 to 10 minutes just to visit a single npc to turn in cat litter. 5 to 10 minutes of you doing nothing but watching your characters walk to a guy, talk to a guy, then walk all the way back to the beginning of the map so you can go to the open world again. Adding in an option to "exit to the world map" would've just been far too convenient, and having any sort of method to speed up traveling (or hell, speeding past the enemies turns in combat, even) would've been just too much to ask for.
Despite the massive flaws in core design, useless mechanics, redundancies in skills, and other annoyances, this is still a good game. I played it to completion willingly, and for good reason. The humor and overall writing in the game is very good (although the ending was predictable and a bit cliche) and the combat is solid.
It's a typical isometric turn-based RPG akin to XCOM, but despite the deliberate weighing of the system against the player, the tactical play in the game is solid and satisfying. Height plays a direct role in characters chance to hit -- if you're above an enemy, you'll have a much higher chance to hit them and a higher range with your guns, while the enemy will have a harder time hitting you. Tactical placement and a cover system come into play, and you can (usually) position your characters one by one before you engage a combat scenario to give yourself the biggest advantage.
Kill animations in the game are visceral and satisfying, and when you land a critical hit and a guys legs get blown off, the animation of him crawling a bit then dying in a pool of blood is oddly rewarding. You feel like your attacks and weapons have a real power to them, unlike other games where enemies simply ragdoll after they're dead.
There's also a lot of interesting side content in the game, with a lot of areas and simply telling a story by the destruction laid bare before your eyes. There's also some hilarious moments, and a lot of easter eggs and jokes thrown in that really show the strength of the team writing.
I've been very, very hard on this game, and while I definitely enjoyed it, it just didn't live up to what I wanted it to be. We were promised the ushering in of the second golden age of classic RPGs, and the first of these kickstarted monsters ended up being a pretty big mess. A enjoyable mess, but a pretty big mess nonetheless. If you're itching for a fallout style CRPG, then go ahead and pick up wasteland.. but if you're just plain hankering for a crpg experience? There are much better games on the market.
Getting deeper into that -- The attributes of your character are largely useless too. The bonuses you get form allocating points into your attributes is so paltry you hardly notice it. It got to the point that trinkets which I'd use trinkets and items that lowered my base attributes to boost other skills because I hardly noticed a difference. Speed, Strength, and Intelligence being the few attributes that anyone would bother to invest heavily in for the gain in action points, ability to carry more items, more skill points each level, and ability to move further, get your turn faster, and evade more in combat. Coordination simply provided a +1% chance to hit per point, and I just left Charisma at 1 because it was a useless stat completely. The balancing in this game is so skewed it's shocking.
To elaborate on that point - assault rifles are the only weapon in the game worth using, outside of maybe energy weapons and a melee weapon of choice. Assault Rifles have high damage, high armor piercing, carry more ammo, have a burst fire mode, and have range comparable to sniper rifles. They also have a very low AP cost across the board, making some of the later weapons -- handguns, and submachine guns included -- a terrible choice. I kept a handgun on one of my characters towards the end of the game because I found a higher end weapon with only 4AP per shot; this meant with my 9 total starting AP, I could fire my assault rifle, and my handgun. I had completely forgotten I even had a handgun, because once I finally maxed out my characters Assault Rifle skill, I was able to burst fire on enemies for 100% chance to hit at virtually any range; I was out damaging my snipers with my high burst fire, using the same amount of AP as they were. for 7 AP I was doing over 238 damage at 45m range, while my snipers with anti-materiel rifles were using 7AP to do 115 damage. I kept an energy weapon around for high armor enemies, but even then, an assault rifle still out damaged it going by damage per AP. Energy weapons lose their effectiveness on low armored enemies, while assault rifles have such high innate armor piercing that they can do full damage to virtually every enemy you face.
I finally ended up changing my characters loadouts a bit because it was becoming boring (and expensive) having every single on of my characters ONLY using assault rifles. There is just no reason to use anything else.. which brings me to another point -- the armor system.
In-game, you can find armor that (if you have the appropriate strength -- oh look, strength once again comes into play, why shouldn't I just pump this again?) reduces the amount of damage you take. There is a flip side to this, however -- energy weapons (if your armor is at or above their threshold) will do large amounts of damage to an armored character. Also, for the most part, armor seemed to only hurt me, as the damage reduced wasn't very much due to the fact that enemies weapons had increasing amounts of armor piercing, and when I would have the misfortune of bumping into enemies with energy weapons (which is very common in the second half of the game) I'd get completely obliterated. It's another "back of the box" mechanic that just doesn't seem very well thought out. Sure, you can wear armor, it just won't provide any real benefits except make your character weigh more, slow down your combat speed for some armors, and you'll take hilarious amounts of damage from energy weapons. Sure, sounds great, sign me up!
Oh, and speaking of "items bogging you down", lets go over QUEST ITEMS. There are specific items within wasteland that are marked "Quest Item". These items have their own item weight, and cannot be removed from your inventory.. (except in the first half of the game, when you have access to your ranger inventory. You lose access to this in the second half of the game, however) and so you're forced to carry an additional weight that you can't get rid of. There was a point in the game, where if I didn't use a save editor to delete items from my inventory, I would've had 35lbs extra weight bogging down my characters. To put into perspective how much weight that is -- one of my characters could only carry 81lbs. Your equipment, ammunition, and everything have a weight, so carrying just my ammunition and equipment, I was around 40-50lbs. Adding 35lbs that I can't get rid of would make my character encumbered, and likely unable to move completely. It's the most inane, most absurd "current gen" mechanic they've included, which as of writing just struck me -- it's actually a current generation mechanic they've added, completely ignoring the nature of every other aspect of the "oldschool" rpg they seem so adamant on replicating! Why on earth wouldn't they let you throw away or destroy a quest item? If you lose it, that's your own fault -- it's a oldschool rpg, you're being punished like you're playing one, so why this hand-holding mechanic? It's mind boggling.
Hell, let me give you another example of this -- in the early game, there's a water mechanic. You have to top off your canteens because you use "water" while traveling in the overworld. It's never used anywhere BUT the overworld map when traveling, and is made completely redundant by the fact that every 5 feet there's an oasis that lets you refill your canteens. A mechanic used to make sure you "travel safely", and constantly have to make sure you have plenty of water is reduced to a "Oh, I can't auto-walk across the map now, I have to make sure I stop by one of the 30 oasis', so my characters don't take damage from dehydration before I get to where I'm trying to go. It's a redundant mechanic, and it doesn't even show up in the second half of the game. Once you progress the story and leave a certain area, you no longer even have water as a stat on the mainscreen. Your character stops using it when traveling in the overworld, and it becomes a forgotten detriment tossed to the side. A "Oh, yeah, that." mechanic. It was something they threw into the game, because it "sounded like a good idea at the time" then it gets completely scrapped; hell, the second half of the game radiation is literally a single wall used as a story mechanic to prevent you from progressing. In the early game it was thick clouds that would slowly damage you, but in the second half of the game it's just a line to stop you from getting to places before you "upgrade your radsuit". It's ridiculous.
Another greivance, is the fact that you have to manually walk your character everywhere, and there is no fast travel system AT ALL. It's an "oldschool" game, right? So of course they won't have fast travel. That'd be fine, except for the fact that you have to backtrack almost constantly to turn in quests, visit vendors to sell things, heal your characters, do a variety of things. Towns aren't in the immediate vicinity of where you start on the map, either -- you have to walk a good ways to get to places, and in the second half of the game, it takes a good 5 to 10 minutes just to visit a single npc to turn in cat litter. 5 to 10 minutes of you doing nothing but watching your characters walk to a guy, talk to a guy, then walk all the way back to the beginning of the map so you can go to the open world again. Adding in an option to "exit to the world map" would've just been far too convenient, and having any sort of method to speed up traveling (or hell, speeding past the enemies turns in combat, even) would've been just too much to ask for.
Despite the massive flaws in core design, useless mechanics, redundancies in skills, and other annoyances, this is still a good game. I played it to completion willingly, and for good reason. The humor and overall writing in the game is very good (although the ending was predictable and a bit cliche) and the combat is solid.
It's a typical isometric turn-based RPG akin to XCOM, but despite the deliberate weighing of the system against the player, the tactical play in the game is solid and satisfying. Height plays a direct role in characters chance to hit -- if you're above an enemy, you'll have a much higher chance to hit them and a higher range with your guns, while the enemy will have a harder time hitting you. Tactical placement and a cover system come into play, and you can (usually) position your characters one by one before you engage a combat scenario to give yourself the biggest advantage.
Kill animations in the game are visceral and satisfying, and when you land a critical hit and a guys legs get blown off, the animation of him crawling a bit then dying in a pool of blood is oddly rewarding. You feel like your attacks and weapons have a real power to them, unlike other games where enemies simply ragdoll after they're dead.
There's also a lot of interesting side content in the game, with a lot of areas and simply telling a story by the destruction laid bare before your eyes. There's also some hilarious moments, and a lot of easter eggs and jokes thrown in that really show the strength of the team writing.
I've been very, very hard on this game, and while I definitely enjoyed it, it just didn't live up to what I wanted it to be. We were promised the ushering in of the second golden age of classic RPGs, and the first of these kickstarted monsters ended up being a pretty big mess. A enjoyable mess, but a pretty big mess nonetheless. If you're itching for a fallout style CRPG, then go ahead and pick up wasteland.. but if you're just plain hankering for a crpg experience? There are much better games on the market.
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