It pains me to write this review. I eagerly awaited this game from the moment the crowd funding campaign was announced and I closely followed it's development the whole time. Wasteland, the mother of all post-apocalyptic RPGs, was finally getting a sequel, and all indications were that it would be the Van Buren we should have gotten. After picking it up the second it dropped on release day and having played dozens of hours in the intervening weeks, I can now say that while it has some appeal, it doesn't nearly live up to its potential. The previous review about the 5 stages of Wasteland 2 is spot-on: at the beginning it's nostalgic heaven, but as the problems become apparent, it becomes much harder to defend this game. First up, the many, many technical issues with the game have to be mentioned. For no adequately explainable reason, Wasteland 2 takes up an absurd 25 GB of hard drive space. This is not a cutting edge graphical game by any stretch of the imagination, and it's not an open world with huge areas (other than the main areas, there are a grand total of two random encounter locations with the same loadout of enemies every time), so why is it taking up around five times the space of the average game on my hard drive? Don't even bother buying this game if you are running a 32 bit operating system like Windows XP. It crashes 4 – 5 times an hour, and some areas will immediately crash every time you enter them. Unfortunately my Alienware gaming rig is running a 32 bit version of XP, so the game is essentially unplayable and I had to install it on my work laptop that has a 64 bit operating system but much less graphical power. On the “beautiful” or “good” graphical setting, it runs so slow as to be not worth playing, which means I had to turn the graphics down to “fast.” On “fast” mode, this game is straight up UGLY. Before installing Wasteland 2 I had been playing the 2003 game Spellforce, and the graphics are on par with each other. Is that big ugly gray blob meant to be a truck, a mound of rocks, a building, or something else entirely? Obviously graphics are not the focus of this game, and it shouldn't be judged on that basis anyway considering the (relatively) small budget, the legacy of it's predecessor, and InXile's focus on dialog and story. Speaking of dialog and flavor text – there's tons of it, way more than with the average RPG these days in fact, and that's a plus. The problem is that it's unfortunately quantity over quality. Some of the dialog is great and laugh-out-loud funny, most of it is mediocre and forgettable, and some of it is truly bad. One of the worst offenders is when on a quest to end a years-long feud between the Wasteland equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys. The leader of one of the factions asks why he should stop killing the other group, and with one single dialog option telling him it would be good for his side to stop the killing, he immediately agrees by saying “I, I, - You're Right!” The dialog in this entire quest in particular feels like an outline with some quick text written up by the programmers as a placeholder, and then they somehow forgot to actually have the writer come in and pen the real dialog. This lack of top-notch writing actually terrifies me because InXile is also currently working on the follow-up to Planescape: Torment, and the entire appeal of that game was the outstanding dialog, story, and characters. The pre-alpha footage they've released of Torment: Tides of Numenera looks great, but then again the early footage of Wasteland 2 also looked great, and the end result left something to be desired. To be fair, there are places where the story shines. Very early in the game you are tasked with investigating one of two locations, and while in the process of saving one you hear the panicked pleas for help over the radio as the other settlement is overrun and slaughtered, which was very effective and really makes you think about the choices you make from then on. Another game design issue that takes this game down a notch is the area map featured on the quest screen. There's no ability to click on the map to see information or move the camera to that portion of the location (features that existed in Baldur's Gate all the way back in 1998...). This seems like it wouldn't be that big a deal, until you hit areas like the Highpool water plant. In this quest, one character has to stay at the beginning of the area to flip switches that unlock doors and turn on lights in specific parts of the plant, while the rest of the party explores the maze-like corridors. Since you constantly have to switch back and forth between the two groups – and large swathes of the plant are in total darkness unless you've hit the switch for that area – just simply scrolling back and forth between the two groups all the way on opposite sides of the map is intensely frustrating. Combat is fun and tactical, but it gets pretty repetitive by the time you hit the 10 hour mark or so. Combat occurs constantly – there's little to no ability to avoid it via dialog, although you can avoid random encounters on the map through the Outdoorsman skill – and with only a few exceptions there's not much differentiation between enemies and combat locations. In the early parts of the game the one place that does stand out is the Ag Center, with it's mutated bugs and animals and the need to constantly be on the lookout for exploding infected pods. Besides your base party you have the ability to recruit three extra guest members throughout the course of the game, and the lineup is varied an interesting, from a drunk named Scotchmo who says hilariously ridiculous things to a Native American sniper who can control animals. While the characters are interesting, the AI is awful in the extreme. Normally you can control guest members, but if your leadership is low you will frequently lose control during combat and they'll act on their own – always letting go of basic common sense and using the worst tactics possible (this is especially amusing when Angela Deth screams that you have a lot to learn about tactics, then she runs into melee with a wrench instead of switching to her assault rifle). Beyond just bad AI, losing control of guest party members is actually bugged in some parts. For instance there's one character who will leave your party if you attack animals without being provoked first. During one combat I lost control of her, and SHE attacked an animal for no apparent reason, then got angry at me for attacking an animal – even though I hadn't. Unlike some other reviews I've seen online, I actually don't have a problem with the skill breakdown, and I quite like the interesting and diverse lineup. I'm fine with lock picking and safe cracking being two different disciplines, and I get the humor in “toaster repair” being it's own skill (if you haven't played the first game, this may not make sense). The wide range of skills and limited number of skill points makes you play carefully, ensuring you'll need to spend extra time building your party properly. There are areas where the skill system could be revamped, however. An explosives expert is a must, as essentially everything is trapped, including things that don't make any sense to be trapped. Why the hell is a pile of manure rigged with explosives? Why is a chest sitting outside in the middle of a field rigged with explosives? It's amusing at the start but just tedious as time goes on, as using skills takes time, and the setup basically demands frequent save/loads if you fail. There are also parts where it's very obvious you are supposed to be sneaking past enemies, but unfortunately the sneak skill was removed from the game during beta testing, so it's just more tedious combat in these situations. Another disappointment comes from the gameplay claims that aren't really true. Scroll up to the top of this page and read the first line of the product description: “One Size Does Not Fit All: Don't feel like finding the key for a door? Why not try a Rocket Launcher! Basically the same thing... right?” This is completely inaccurate. I've yet to find a locked door I could actually blow up. This is especially ridiculous when I fail to pick the lock on a chain link fence, then I bring out a rocket launcher or a grenade, and I get a message that says “ineffective.” The fact that I can't just climb a chain link fence is insult enough, but the fact that I can't blow it up with a grenade is just ludicrous. There's also essentially no difference in the story based on what skills you choose. Whether I open that safe or not has no bearing on anything that I've come across so far, it just changes how much loot I get. Despite coming out almost a full year later than what was projected in the crowd funding campaign, it's clear that Wasteland 2 was not fully finished when released, and it needs a lot more polish. Hopefully many of these issues will be resolved with patches in the coming months, but as it is I regret buying it the day of release and wish I'd saved my money. While a decent game if you can get past the bugs or are one of the lucky few to not constantly experience them, Wasteland 2 doesn't stack up against the other classic RPGs that have be resurrected through the crowd funding revolution, and even the much more limited and small-scale Shadowrun Returns beats this out for fun, playability, and value.
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