Who is playing Wasteland 2?

So, it's a fucking ugly game, but I haven't been able to put it down. I've got like 40 hours into it so far and I'm only just now getting to the "second act". Who else is enjoying it?

Not feeling it.

@airshocker: I wouldn't say it looks beeping ugly. How would you compare it to something like Shadowrun Returns?

It's too bad the game looks ugly. They only had to get it looking pretty from a single perspective.

I'm going to purchase it in a week or so and I don't expect Divinity quality visuals :) Guess it's going to be all good.

I wouldn't say it's ugly. Not as good looking as something like Original Sin, but not bad looking either. It's hard to make a post apocalyptic wasteland look pretty.

I sooooooooooooooooo want to play it, but I soooooooooooooooo don't have the time for it...

Is it as hard as Original Sin?

It looks noticeably worse.

Harder, for sure. It's very unforgiving when it comes to how you create your squad.

I've only put 5 hours into Wasteland 2 but so far I'm finding it easier than Original Sin. There is less confusion around quests - where to go, who to talk to, what to do when you get there. I've also not had much trouble with the combat but I just finished going through the AG Research Centre after Highpool and its starting to feel like the challenge is ramping up.

Really enjoying the game so far, moreso than Divinity to be honest, the world is more interesting and you spend less time running around unsure of what to do next. But yea the game isn't exactly a looker.

The quests aren't particularly difficult if you know how to read, but the combat will eventually get pretty brutal. My first go through I made every single squad member, except two, use assault rifles. Couldn't find enough assault rifle ammo, or buy enough, to keep my squad going. Best squad make-up I've found when just starting out is one AR, one sniper, one heavy weapon, and one SMG. If you explored like you should have, you will get another AR using character before you even leave the citadel for the first time. Then with the characters you add on along the way you can tailor them to how you like to play.

Hmm gamespot gave it an 8/10. But I dont get the comparison between this and fallout 3. Should compared to something similar like fallout 2. http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/wasteland-2-review/1900-6415881/

@Gamerno6666: Woah. That dude writes well. I could've done without the story-points though. Which reminds me, we have a Kevin Van Sword. Isn't about time someone made a Helm of Ed Helms?

Read it over again. He's talking about how he feels like the RNG gameplay mechanic(used in all of the skills in Wasteland 2) is stale and compares it to how Fallout 3 does it. Fallout 3 still uses some RNG but it also gives you a lot more control over the outcomes you get. In Wasteland 2 if you get a critical failure in something, you're done with that item.

Playing it as much as my very limited free time allows, and I'm enjoying it. The game plays great, it's fairly difficult, and it looks fine to me, then again I'm not a big graphics person so...

Overall, it's another Kickstarter project than I am happy to have supported.

Great gamespot review. Convinced me to give it another wack.

Great gamespot review. Who the fucks this guy? He should be writing every review.

He also wrote the shadowrun dragonfall review.

Game has taken over my life. It's an amazing CRPG and InXile look like they're the new Black Isle!

Can only count three flaws: camera is annoying, no stealth and no formations- everything else is classic role-playing and tactical greatness. Visuals are actually good, imo, certainly better than I expected.

Didn't like Shadow Run. Felt too simple, like it was primarily designed with tablets in mind rather than a desktop pc.

I'm really enjoying it so far. The combat isn't as fun as, say, Divinity: OS but the atmosphere is really awesome. The graphics are decent, nothing special but there's a lot of detail. The graphics aren't as good as Divinity but remember: Divinity was only meant to be viewed at a certain angle so when you enable 360 degree rotation you end up seeing flat trees and stuff.

Pros:

• Amazing atmosphere
• So many choices for everything
• Up to 7 party members
• Lots of companions to meet
• Lots of weapon styles
• Bombs are fun, but expensive

Only cons I see:

• Unity engine sucks
• Camera can be annoying
• Combat lacks depth (at least compared to divinity)

The combat is still a lot of fun, but after playing divinity where you could command the elements this feels a bit flat. The weapon diversity and the ability to headshot, ambush and cover almost makes up for it though. Party creation is very important but as long as you balance you'll be fine (ie try to use different weapons for each person, get a good spread of the skills, they're all pretty useful, make sure you have a medic).

right now I'm using 1 sniper, 1 SMG, 1 AR and one blunt weapons dude who can also use heavy weapons (though I have yet to find any). The team worked great until I ran out of ammo for my Sniper and SMG dude in the AG center. I need to go back to the citadel and explore since I just kinda charged off right away when I started playing.

Exactly the same here. (first release haven't checked back since.) Anyway, how are you finding Wasteland 2 now? I spent the whole evening clearing Damonta. Had to discover where to re-stock health and ammo supplies while engaging in epic firefights lacking both.

Game is fantastic, gameplay, writing (dialogue, characters,etc..) and gameworlds are very well made.

This and Divinity are old school rpgs and are not easy by anymeans. I find the writing (dialogue and characters) in Wasteland 2 better, while DIvinity has better graphics and is more polished. Both dreams come true though for me, as most modern rpgs are very dumbed down and hardly rpgs these days. One that reminds me of Ultima (Divinity) and one that reminds me of playing Wasteland 1 and Fallout 1 for the first time.

For all the bad press Kickstarter and Early Access get, I am so glad they are around as we have gotten the best rpgs in ages from them imo.

Didn't get that far into it tbh. Gona give it another try though, it is most likely that "bump" you get with certain games.

I couldn't agree more, and while there has been some complete drek released on both platforms, Kickstarter and Early Acess, an informed consumer can easily mitigate their risks by doing a little research. Out of all of the games I've supported, and there have been quite a few, I have been unhappy with one (and that was a game I never had much faith in to begin with - I more or less pledged a small amount for the hell of it).

Overall, I would have to say that (at least so far) my choices on which projects to support has been rather successful; I've got a pretty good batting average.

Not my cup of tea, I learned my lesson from D:OS. I'm not into the ridiculously obtuse and complex RPGs systems anymore and I'm certainly not a big fan of turn-based combat. Since the narrative doesn't look interesting (which is the major reason I play RPGs) there is really nothing to interest me here. I'll be waiting for Eternity to release in a few months.

Exactly!

I have supported a few games through kickstarter, and early access. None of which I have been disappointed with, however, to be fair some haven't came out yet.

I just started playing Wasteland 2. I named (designed) 3 of my squad members after my 3 guitars. (Ember, Huxley, and Cyan)

I haven't gone very far, not even in my first round of combat yet.

Its good to hear that it's a hard game. Also good to hear that there is little confusion about where to go / what to do.

i am playing

@SerOlmy

You mean Pillars of Eternity ?........ I wouldn't hold my breath for that one......

I have a hard time playing this game when I'm also playing Original sin with it's gorgeous graphics. The key mechanics of the game are set okay-ish and all, but aside from that, voice acting and audio in overall are plain, writing is unimpressive and the video is straight out garbage for a 2014 title (it IS using Unity after all, 90% of the games using that pile of cow sh!t is trash). It is a Wasteland game though ... I just HAVE to finish it, otherwise I would feel bad about the first game -_-

I don't believe everything I read (except when I do.) I am not trying to be little miss hard-to-get primadonna here but should I be concerned by this VERY in-depth user review by OneTime40 at metacritic? I want to repeat these are NOT my words nor my opinions NOR am I trying to direct any scorn at the user-critic. Far from it, I think it's just so well-reasoned that his concerns seem somewhat valid? Here is the metacritic review. Whatca think?

"By OneTime40 from Wasteland 2's metacritic reviews:

"I revised my score from a 4 to a 1 (after digging through the game-code)

"1. Attribute system is a joke. Take for example charisma, there is no difference from a charisma 1 player to a charisma 10 player (this does not affect dialogue options or anything else you would expect). All it does is change the radius of your "leadership" skill (which you need to spec into) and how much XP you gain. Other attributes are plagued with the same problem. They are "dump" stats, the only one you need to focus on is intelligence as it affects your Action Points and Skill Points, and then coordination if you want to use guns or strength if you want to melee, everything else can be set at 1, because they don't actually do anything substantial (unlike fallout)

"2. Mechanics are broken, things like "initiative" don't actually do anything.

"3. Combat is broken, the enemies are programmed to rush your characters. When one is alerted, everyone near him will then run all the way across the map and stand next to you to attack (every single time and on their first turn, it's how they were coded)

"4. Random events are broken. You will get attacked when wondering the map, except it is always the same fight !! you will be fighting the same 3 enemies on the same map in each random event. At higher levels, you will get a "feral dog" added to the fight. They will have the same items on them which only changes with your level.

"5. Skill system is horrendous. You are juggling back and forth between characters for simple progression. The perception skill for example is not passive (or tied with an attribute), you need to spec into it as a skill. Then you need to activate that skill on a character and use them to search an area, that's when you change over to someone who can disarm traps and then unlock gates or safe crack etc. You are doing this all the time, especially if you didnt max intelligence as you just wont have the skill points to invest in skills.

"Those are some of the major problems with combat and technical skills, then you have the conversional skills, there are 3 of them and they all do the same thing (just with different words). The outcome of each conversational option is coded the same. There are no "dialogue trees", your options dont change how the conversion will play out. You simply click the "next" button to get the next piece of information, and if you have a conversational skill, you could get some extra loot / text to read or avoid combat. Remember the attribute system is a joke? You can have a charisma 1 player who is the smoothest sweet talker in the wasteland because they maxed sweet talking (with all those skills points they got from intelligence), while a charisma 10 player will have no skills to invest in anything and as such, cant pass any conversional checks. It's the complete opposite to Fallout.

"6. Graphics. I can go back and play Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics. They look good and are well animated. Wasteland's graphics are cheap and most importantly, poorly animated (look half finished) Things such as armor don't even change. What you create at the start is how you will look.

"7. In Fallout, your actions changed events in the game. Your dialogue options changed things. In this game, you are just reading a novel in each city and then have some badly programmed combat sequences, rinse and repeat.

"8. Dead-lifeless world. In fallout (baldurs gate etc) you felt like you were in a world. You had interesting NPCs that could join you, there were amazing cities to explore etc. In this game, you are one person (spread out across 4 different people) and you simply go from map to map, read the novel provided and then complete the combat sequence. There is no life or character to the cities or people in them. I can still remember lines and characters from fallout etc, because they had life in them. This game is DEAD and hollow inside. There is some "radio banter" as you travel the wasteland which livens things up, but that stops after about 30 minutes on the map, and then it is just silence. Read the novel, do the combat sequence.

"This game is smoke and mirrors. That's how it was coded. It's like one of those cheap Chinese "warcraft" clones that you see from time to time."

So, shoot this guys' points down please so I can bask in some isometric, dystopic goodness. Thank you.

Just finished the game about 15 minutes ago. It was pretty awesome. I never played the original Wasteland but this game made up for it.

As for the guy's review, he's wrong about a few things:

2) Initiative does matter. A character with high initiative will be able to attack twice before an enemy gets a turn. Extremely important. I don't know of any mechanics that are actually broken.

3) Depends on the difficulty you play at. Higher difficulty, smarter enemies. I played on normal and the enemies weren't spectacular, but they did take cover and set up ambushes.

4) The game has a weird progression that I haven't been able to figure out. At some point, though, the random encounters got tougher.

5) You do not need to activate perception. The thing you activate on the toolbar is a radius that shows you where you will be able to detect things. You do have to use that specific character to search boxes and other objects for traps, though.

6) Graphics and animations suck, no doubt about that.

7) Well considering you have a lot of leeway as to how you want to play the story I would rate this one as bullshit.

8) It's a post-apocalyptic world. It's supposed to be sort-of lifeless. With that said, I didn't feel like the world was particularly empty. Plenty of cities to go to, plenty of quests to do.

How long did it take you to finish?

Side-questing or straight through?

Good story? Do you need to know the story of the first one to play part 2?

66 hours was my play-through. I did all of the side-quests up until the late second half of the game. At that point I really just wanted to see the ending.

Good story. I think it relied a little too heavily on what happened in the first game. There were some things I had to look up in order for them to make sense. I don't think you can make a game that takes too heavily from one made 26 years ago. Nobody except nostalgia seekers would have played it over again.

Also, the second area(second part) is much more sloppily made than the first. I accidentally skipped over a lot of content because the game simply wasn't helpful in explaining what I had to do next. I can appreciate a lack of hand holding, but this game basically picked me up and tossed me into the deep end without so much as a swimming lesson.

Best advice I can give for this game is make sure you have a party that is well-rounded skill wise. And don't give everybody an assault rifle. Unless you want to get owned because you have no ammo left.

Maybe I'll try it when it goes on sale.

Not yet at least.

I want to at least play the first Wasteland game before I hop into this one.

Good luck. It's almost impossible to play.

How so?

It's very old. So old that it's more of a chore to play than anything else.

Ummmmmmm. I never heard this criticism before, I always hear a line of good things about it.

Have you played it? What specific things turn you off of it?

I think what he means is that the gameplay mechanics are dated now.

Contrary to popular belief, some older games don't age well. Wasteland is one of them.

Oh. I've never seen much of the gameplay, but it can't be that bad. Right?

I guess your right, but a player can still appreciate the gameplay and see how it affected the future games of today.

That's for you to decide for yourself. All I know is what I think of it.

Picked this up over the weekend (Wasteland 2) and oh man it's awesome.

I like it better than Divinity, although that's partially due to personal preference since I'll take a sci-fi game over a fantasy game any day. One of the things that made Fallout good was the clever writing and dialog, which is something that Divinity completely lacks. Yes, the engine in Divinity is better but art style and setting are a big part of why the game doesn't look as good. Divinity has vibrant colors and a ton of detail in each map with the vegetation. These things would make no sense in Wasteland 2. There are a few areas where Divinity is better from a technical standpoint, but the difference between the two games from a strictly technical standpoint isn't that far apart. People had the same complaint about Fallout 3 versus Oblivion, and those games literally used the exact same engine.

I'm finding Wasteland 2 to be easier so far than Divinity. Divinity had a big difficulty curve early on depending on how you built your party whereas W2 felt a little bit more even.

-Byshop

Glad you are enjoying it, I know you were a bit unsure at one point based on that other thread you made