Wasteland 2

aka: Wasteland 2 (Digital Classic Edition)
Moby ID: 69005
Windows Specs
Included in Special Edition See Also

Description

Wasteland 2 is the sequel to the 1988 title Wasteland. The game lets the player take control of a squad of rangers, in an attempt to explore the surrounding world, solve quests and defeat enemies.

Just like the original game it is a post-apocalyptic turn and party based RPG with tactical combat. The action takes place fifteen years after the end of the first Wasteland, kicking off with the player being tasked with finding out what happened to an experienced ranger who died in mysterious circumstances. Throughout the story, the player encounters enemies, quests, and different puzzles. The game lets players choose their own way to approach any situation they encounter, with skills, items and quests having an important impact on the surrounding world.

The party can consist of seven characters, up to four designed by the player with specific statistics, skills, opinions and traits, and three or more NPCs. The game puts a large emphasis on choice and consequence permanently affecting the characters and the game world.

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Credits (Windows version)

500 People (449 developers, 51 thanks) · View all

Executive Producer
Directed and Designed By
Engineers
Additional Engineering
Design and Implementation
Additional Design
Lead Writer
Highpool and Ag Center Design
Angel Oracle Design
Rodia Design
Additional Writing and Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 18 ratings with 1 reviews)

A synthetic experience

The Good
This sequel does have a way to keep you playing even though you might never be quite sure what the outcome of your actions may provoke. Having finally finished it after more than ninety hours of play, the game told me what happened to all the places and persons my ranger team was involved in. Maybe next time I'll do it properly, or so the developers thought.

At first I had not expected the game to be as complex as it is. I had the suspicion that, like in many other modern role playing games, I got my characters to a halfway decent level of skill ratings and all of a sudden the game would come to an untimely end. But fortunately, this isn't the case here. There seems to be no level cap, and once solved your characters will be exported for reuse, too, which is great.

There's not much voice-acting overall, but when there is, it's great and nice to listen to. The writing is generally good and throws in lots of black humour and crude language to boot. At times I found myself laughing out loud! And of course there are references to the original Wasteland storywise, which will give you an insight into what had happened before. These are the more enjoyable moments of the whole experience.

The Bad
It will probably be quite a while before I feel like playing this through again. This is because there are so many annoying and frustrating elements in the game that merely thinking of them makes me shudder and feel happy and content that I've finally solved this bugger.

And I'll tell you why that is. System requirements seem to be high, as my Dual Core 4 GB system did not allow for fluid graphics or animations at even a moderate level, and also the loading screens took an awful lot of patience away from me, but I can live with that.

It was incredibly tough to get into this game, I haven't made it at Seasoned (normal) difficulty level which was supposed to be the most balanced. But all I got was extremely tough fights over and over where the opponents could take ten or more bullets each to finally go down. I like it turn-based, I really do, but here it's just aggravating and not much fun. I mean it's simple enough which I very much appreciate, but where's the point of pipe bombs when you can't even throw them over a wall? Also taking cover behind objects is often quite useless, opponents just shoot through cars and walls, no matter what. And the fights just drag on and on without offering much variety. You get your gunners, sprayers, lobbers and melee guys and gals of whatever factions you will encounter. Fighting just takes ages here, and it does feel like it, too. It doesn't help that the red silhouettes give you eye-strain and generally do not allow you to make out much difference between your opponents unless zoomed in at maximum level which in reality you'll rarely use because it's impractical for gameplay.

Another thing which annoyed the hell out of me was the inaptitude of some skills under circumstances when you most need them. I can only stress bringing up the lock-picking, animal whisperer, safe-cracking, demolition, alarm disarming, and science skills as fast as possible because in the second half of the game you will not get by with a level of 5 any more, most of the time the locks will be "impossible" to pick or crack, or at least at a high improbability of 12% which in fact means you'll find yourself saving and reloading quite a lot to avoid a critical failure, and each time you'll have to sit by and watch the aggravating progress visual. Make sure to get up your mechanical repair skill, too, for the many cases you'll critically damage a lock. I don't want to know how many hours went by just disarming traps, cracking safes and picking locks. At least it is a relief that there's no need for lockpicks in this game.

What's funny about it is that in many cases highly secured safes don't even have much of worth in them anyway, but you still do need to try and crack everything you see because sometimes there may be crucial quest items in them. But I guess that's just part of the experience. It just doesn't feel like I've got the freedom to do what I want, rather it feels like I have to go through the ordeals of picking, hacking and disarming in order to progress. In the beginning I found it relaxing to watch the progress bars to fill up and hope for a positive outcome. But after several hours into the game, it just ended up being a nuisance, particularly the saving and reloading bit, and I mentioned the loading times, didn't I.

Another complaint is on the graphical side of things: the character portraits of non-player characters. They should have left them out altogether because the portraits are generic and don't match the text descriptions of the characters. This is particularly ridiculous if you're facing a black person yet the portrait displays a white person. What were they thinking? Fuck those portraits! Away with them, they spoil my imagination, and the proper person I'm talking to can be seen on the screen, anyway, albeit only perfectly at maximum zoom level.

Yeah, and in case I haven't said it before, it took me a lot of goodwill and perseverance to take a real liking to Wasteland 2 because it was so frustrating to start with. I think it only really started to get interesting after the Prison chapter and acquiring the more potent level 4 rad suits, the chance to get to see other locations. That was after ten or more hours of play, but I think from then on there was no holding back and I could not let off.

The Bottom Line
If you enjoyed Fallout 1 and 2 (and forget the original Wasteland from back in the day), chances are you might like this, too. However, it does not convey the menace and darkness of those titles. They tried to make it dark by way of the soundtrack and excellent descriptions, but it all still looks a bit too much on the bright side, if not to say cartoonish.

But be prepared for having to wade through a lot of text! It feels to me like they've put the content of a 200-page novel into this game. Of course you can ignore the reading bit and just click your way through the keywords, but you will surely miss out on entertainment. Also, quite a lot of backtracking is necessary, and of course, very much in the tradition of the old Bard's Tale games of yore, fighting takes up another big deal of your time trying to beat this bitch.

As advertised by the developers, your actions do indeed have consequences here, and you will feel them right through to the end. This certainly makes for repeated gameplay if you should then still be up for it.

Windows · by CoffeeCrack (20) · 2014

Trivia

Kickstarter campaign

The game was partly funded by a Kickstarter campaign in March/April 2012, raising $2,933,252 from 61,290 backers (with a requested goal of $900,000).

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Hypercake.

Additional contributors: Plok, Jo ST.

Game added October 27, 2014. Last modified February 13, 2024.