Wasteland Early Personal Reviews/Impressions

[Onholyservicebound]

Absolutely fuck that skill condensing shit, when Wasteland 3 comes out I hope it has a hell of a lot more skills. I think the skill system in this game is unique and makes making lots of characters more fun. Enough damn games already went the route of skill streamlining, and it's shit, W2's skill system is great, and I hope they don't streamline it because some people whine about clicking.

The argument that there's too much clicking is equally retarded, granted that I don't think waiting for skill checks is that great either, and probably only serves to discourage spamming, but having too many chances for checks is not an argument that should be acknowledged. There is a handful of checks per area, the people whining are those who've made sure their party gets every check and item they come across, likely employing savescumming, yet complain when it turns out that being so thorough takes a while.

Intelligence needs to be fixed, whatever monkey came in at the last minute and rebalanced it needs to go back and fix it, the amount of worthless intelligence points is a joke.

The lack of reaction to gender/race/cigs/etc is lame, especially when they claim gender should have an effect. But it was obvious when they opted to change the theme races into what we have now that it was just flavour, I don't mind that really, but gender on the other hand..
I think people are incorrect when they criticise this game's skill/attribute system, it has some flaws, namely intelligence right now, but I'd say it's a lot more competent than Fallout was. The sim argument for skills is yawn inducing and has been done to death. The game can be better, but some of these suggestions seem like they would make it worse instead.

 

[Volourn]

"Intelligence needs to be fixed, whatever monkey came in at the last minute and rebalanced it needs to go back and fix it, the amount of worthless intelligence points is a joke"

Think they should add a skill point at 6INT.

INT, btw, is FAR from he biggest 'flaw' amongst stats. Not, when other stats can be pushed down to 1. At least INT is useful even if there's a big jump from INT4 to INT8.

Still, overall, I agree with you, in spite of or because of some its quirks WL2 is AWESOME.

\More skills NOT less. If a skill is considered weak in this game ala Barter they should improve it for the presumed WL3. Certainly not get rid of it.

 

[Ignatius Reilly]

Two things bugging me:

• Horrible optimization, runs terribly for what it is.

• The character menus are laggy as hell. Dragging items goes at half speed. It's painful. Drags the experience down.

That probably makes me sound like some graphic whore, but that's seriously the only things that upset me. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying myself. Played it until 1 AM didn't even notice. It hooks you. And I like the combat just fine. I'm just glad to be playing a game like this again. (A new one!)

 

[Achiman]

I'm 14 hours in and really enjoying it. The game definitely has some rough edges, but nitpicking can be done in any game regardless of budget.
Complaining about skills seems retarded when you level up so fast, I normally have character with undistributed points while I am exploring and area which I can use if for example; I come across a toaster or safe that is currently un-openable.
I dunno how to describe it, but the game just has that essence/magic of a true RPG where I get that kick out of opening up the next area, finding some unique shrine or unexpected attention to detail. The lack of hand holding is also a big part of this, satisfaction from figuring something out on your own, or exploiting the games mechanics in a logical and efficient way is always satisfying. No obvious quest npcs, no arrow pointing you in the direction, no glowing way point shit on the maps.

Regardless of any of the games (minor) failings I think Inexile have treated the subject matter and lineage with respect and they truely gave a shit about making a game they would want to play.
How many other developers are out there doing this now? Not fucken many that aren't indie that's for sure.

 

[Phage]

Absolutely fuck that skill condensing shit, when Wasteland 3 comes out I hope it has a hell of a lot more skills. I think the skill system in this game is unique and makes making lots of characters more fun. Enough damn games already went the route of skill streamlining, and it's shit, W2's skill system is great, and I hope they don't streamline it because some people whine about clicking.

The argument that there's too much clicking is equally retarded, granted that I don't think waiting for skill checks is that great either, and probably only serves to discourage spamming, but having too many chances for checks is not an argument that should be acknowledged. There is a handful of checks per area, the people whining are those who've made sure their party gets every check and item they come across, likely employing savescumming, yet complain when it turns out that being so thorough takes a while.

Intelligence needs to be fixed, whatever monkey came in at the last minute and rebalanced it needs to go back and fix it, the amount of worthless intelligence points is a joke.

The lack of reaction to gender/race/cigs/etc is lame, especially when they claim gender should have an effect. But it was obvious when they opted to change the theme races into what we have now that it was just flavour, I don't mind that really, but gender on the other hand..
I think people are incorrect when they criticise this game's skill/attribute system, it has some flaws, namely intelligence right now, but I'd say it's a lot more competent than Fallout was. The sim argument for skills is yawn inducing and has been done to death. The game can be better, but some of these suggestions seem like they would make it worse instead.

If you truly enjoy micromanaging groups of skills that all do the exact same thing, then more power to you. Same thing if you like a sizeable percentage of your playtime to consist of watching skill icons fill up while the same action is performed over and over (minefields in particular are hilarious - enjoy having the game turn into Cow Clicker for 5 minutes) I don't think anyone is complaining that it makes the game difficult or complex - because it really doesn't, as explained, it's quite easy to make a squad that can pass virtually every skill check.

The Fallout comparisons - at least the ones I brought up, were to emphasize that Fallout 1 had a lot of these problems (useless skills/stats) and that it's disappointing that despite over a decade of hindsight and other accumulated experiences that the team didn't tighten that aspect up.

Oh well. I'm mostly hoping that they get enough sales that they can make an expansion that introduces a third location and expands character customization (traits, perks, etc) - there are actually traits in the game's code that can be unlocked with a character editor, they just were never balanced or implemented.

 

[Volourn]

"it's disappointing that despite over a decade of hindsight and other accumulated experiences that the team didn't tighten that aspect up."

Better idea is instead of whining about 'too many skills' how m'bout make suggestions to make those 'less sueful/useless' skills more useful. Like barter: Increase basic cost of equipment, give higher % bonus per point, and use it to complete quests and the like. Stuff like.

Taking away skills never makes a game better or deeper. It just makes it dumber, simpler, and boring. Every single skill in the game could be useful if improved. I could personally make suggestions to improve usefulness of almost all abilities/skills in the game. It's not hard.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Absolutely fuck that skill condensing shit, when Wasteland 3 comes out I hope it has a hell of a lot more skills. I think the skill system in this game is unique and makes making lots of characters more fun. Enough damn games already went the route of skill streamlining, and it's shit, W2's skill system is great, and I hope they don't streamline it because some people whine about clicking.

The argument that there's too much clicking is equally retarded, granted that I don't think waiting for skill checks is that great either, and probably only serves to discourage spamming, but having too many chances for checks is not an argument that should be acknowledged. There is a handful of checks per area, the people whining are those who've made sure their party gets every check and item they come across, likely employing savescumming, yet complain when it turns out that being so thorough takes a while.

Intelligence needs to be fixed, whatever monkey came in at the last minute and rebalanced it needs to go back and fix it, the amount of worthless intelligence points is a joke.

The lack of reaction to gender/race/cigs/etc is lame, especially when they claim gender should have an effect. But it was obvious when they opted to change the theme races into what we have now that it was just flavour, I don't mind that really, but gender on the other hand..
I think people are incorrect when they criticise this game's skill/attribute system, it has some flaws, namely intelligence right now, but I'd say it's a lot more competent than Fallout was. The sim argument for skills is yawn inducing and has been done to death. The game can be better, but some of these suggestions seem like they would make it worse instead.

You dont need to have a ridiculous number of skills to have interesting gameplay possibilities with them. For all WL2's skills, they are mainly there to open loot containers or disarm them. Granted this is anecdotal evidence, but i bet there are 10x more skill checks looting than there are as actual solutions to quests or environmental challenges. Why have skills at all if thats what you will do most of the time?

 

[Peter]

So Steam says I've put 25 hours into this thing. Just went through the canyon. I have some nitpicky complaints, but overall I like it very much. Haven't been this engrossed by a game in a really, really long time. I know a lot of WL1 fans will be annoyed with me saying this, but fuck, someone's finally come close to replicating the magic of FO1/2 again, and I couldn't be happier.

+ I actually like the combat. It's no JA, of course, but was anyone expecting it to be? There's not much to do in the very early game, but once you get acclimated to the combat system and get some nicer weapons with multiple firing modes, the combat becomes quite brisk and fun. The tactical element is light, but for the purposes of this game it works. Encounters are interesting enough for the most part too, save for the fights with lizards/toads/wolves who just come at you on an empty field.
+ Character building is very fun. I haven't really put a lot of analysis into the character system, but it has a lot of variety, and all the skills seem decently balanced for. Skillcheck implementation may be a bit lazy, but at least it's there. No skill feels useless, save for maybe leadership and barter.
+ Very nice difficulty curve and pacing. I'm not powergaming, and had a few moments where I thought that maybe I've fucked up building my party, but I haven't hit a brick wall yet, and the item progression and difficulty increase has been very satisfying so far. I'll have a much better party on my next playthrough, now that I'm more familiar with the game, but it's nice that I can push on decently with this subpar one I have.
+ Story and writing are pulpy and often lulzy, but well done. Nothing grounbreaking, but I very much enjoy the dialogues and am interested to see where the story goes next. The whole story and gameplay is structured very nicely to sell that "Ranger" fantasy. Your home turf feels small, and you're making regular trips to HQ while cruising around it, but going out into uncharted territories feels exciting and dangerous, and is nicely hyped in the story. There's wonderful moments like Darwin Village, which actually quite reminded me of the Glow from FO1 in some ways.
+ The grafix may be meh, but the sound is great. The ambient soundtrack is good, sound effects in combat are nice and meaty, and the VO is full of character.
+ Travelling on the world map is surprisingly cool. The radiation clouds and radio give it a very cool atmosphere (nicely implemented in the gameplay with the hidden caches too).

- Inventory is annoying, especially passing around ammo and consumables between characters. To be honest, though, i don't know the solution for that. Definitely not a shared inventory.
- While I like the combat overall, it definitely could've been improved by less gun jamming and by limiting inventory managment. Should cost APs to look into the inventory during combat, and the ability to pass around items between characters is just plain stupid. Feels like cheating and takes away from the tactical element. And if items couldn't magically teleport between characters during combat, I bet it would help the inventory managment become more thoughtful and less like busywork as well.
- Why can't everyone just auto-unjam and reload once combat ends?
- Some HP bloat (fucking honey badgers).
- Skillchecks are handled lazily. More skillchecks for quests and during dialogue would be a lot more satisfying than the millionth booby-trapped safe.
- Not a garphics whore, the game looks fine imo, but the art design could've been better. Things can get quite weird and inconsistent-looking, and there's a lot of clutter.
- Area design is wonky. A lot of it is very mazelike and unnatural, with little areas of interest or combat encounters neatly snaking away from a main path. Feels very unnatural. And on the flipside, some areas, like RNC or, are so big and empty that they become tedious to traverse very quickly.
- I also wish there'd be some proper town settlements. RNC arguably counts, but that's a pretty lousy area. It's weird that there's not a single intact town in the game besides that so far (I went to AG Center first, so maybe Highpool would've been this). Seriously, am I missing something? Pretty much every area so far has been a "dungeon", even if there's quite a lot of friendly NPCs and quests/dialogues/choices around.
- Slight little bugs and hiccups here and there (wonky controls mostly), but I've had no serious issues, so whatever.

My complaints are basically nitpicks. What's important is that the game just feels like a really nice package. Every aspect of it could probably be executed better, but nothing here is bad, and the story, atmosphere and gameplay have imo come together really nicely. As I said, I've not been more engrossed by a game in a long time.

FFS, getting a proper cRPG that harkens back to Black Isle is not something anyone here expected before the Kickstarter craze, I think. To get one as nice as this is a cause for celebration. Best of luck to Fargo and inXile, I'm super happy with how this came out. Almost makes up for the burn that was Tim Schafer's "old-school adventure game". Almost.

 

[Volourn]

Citedal could basically be considered a 'town' in the sense there's no random combats, stores, and npcs that give you quests, and it is a nonhostile place you can return to inbetween travelling.

 

[Zetor]

Everyone's complaining about the honey badgers, when the REAL villains are the fucking slicerdicers. (are you supposed to fight them so early?)

I have to say though, I approve of enemies that do more than rush the party and melee... or hide behind cover and shoot the same person every round.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Honey badgers are fine, their hp is perfectly in tune with their reputation, this game doesn't suffer from hp bloat outside of the high level rangers.

People are too loose with the term hp bloat, real hp bloat is the kind of thing you see in MMORPGs, or D:OS, or Fallout 3's broken steel shit DLC.

 

[Volourn]

That huge scorpion thing with 3k hit points when the rangers have 200-300 hit points id efinitely 'hit point bloat'.

The badgers are fine. They're meant to be tough and 200 hit points can be taken quickly. The game even gives you 3 grenades as a reward. This tells me they assume that you've used bombs to kill them.

 

[Roguey]

"Taking away skills never makes a game better or deeper. It just makes it dumber, simpler, and boring."

Removing skills doesn't remove functionality.

Lockpicking: Unlocks containers
Safecracking: Unlocks containers
Toaster repair: Unlocks containers and furthermore how why does this skill exist when you have mechanical repair?

 

[Bio Force Ape]

Toaster Repair is obviously a nod to the skill being in the first game. It was a silly skill in that game (3 toasters in the entire game) and I like that they have it in W2. It's silly, a bit nostalgic and can be completely ignored if you're that concerned about min-maxing. And god knows if you are a min-maxer everyone's got 10 intelligence so you're probably drowning in skill points anyway.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

That huge scorpion thing with 3k hit points when the rangers have 200-300 hit points id efinitely 'hit point bloat'.

You don't think that thing should be able to take 10x the amount of damage than a ranger could?
I do think it's a bit bloated, I haven't gotten up to it yet, I thought it only had 1000hp in the screen, but I guess they thought it was too easy. DT buffs probably would have been enough.

 

[Volourn]

"Lockpicking: Unlocks containers
Safecracking: Unlocks containers"

Different containers different lockpicks. Unless you really believe that if you can pick a lot - say on a bike - you'd be equally skilled at cracking a safe. L0LZ


"Toaster repair: Unlocks containers and furthermore how why does this skill exist when you have mechanical repair?"

Obviously toaster repair is more of silly goofy skill'. It adds to fun and randomness. Afterall, the whole point of it is having silly things stuck in a toaster. IT IS TOTALLY OPTIONAL. I like the way they handle it in WL2 since the stuff you find in one gives you an unique item you can turn in tot he right person for a usually cool prize.


"You don't think that thing should be able to take 10x the amount of damage than a ranger could?"

It's hit point bloat. Plain and simple. As big as it is, 3k just seems way out there. But, that's fine. WL2 is far from the worst game when it comes to hit point bloat. Nowhere enar as bad as, say, DA2.

 

[Peter]

Citedal could basically be considered a 'town' in the sense there's no random combats, stores, and npcs that give you quests, and it is a nonhostile place you can return to inbetween travelling.

I guess my complaint was more of a storyfag one. Citadel does fulfill the functions of a town, but I'd like to see at least one of those actual settlements with normal people that the Rangers are supposedly protecting. Everywhere you go to is either wiped out or in the process of being wiped out. The world seems a bit empty and lifeless as is.

sea Very nice to hear! Looking forward to LA a lot

 

[Owlish]

Toaster repair: Unlocks containers and furthermore how why does this skill exist when you have mechanical repair?

Why do you need to repair a toaster in order to pry it open?

 

[Phage]

I have no issue with Toaster Repair since it's obviously meant to be silly.

What I would have liked - similar to what Pretty Princess mentioned is for the skills to effect other aspects of the game. It would obviously need some REBALANCE but perhaps each pip in one of the talking skills could give a tiny boost to your leadership bonus? Maybe Surgeon and Field Medic could give some kind of corresponding benefit to one another. I dunno, this is why I'm a dumbo who isn't a game designer. My point is that it would have been nice for the skills to be more unique. Removing one of the three talking skills wouldn't actually dumb down the game at all, sorry. It removes micromanagement, sure, but it doesn't hamper the complexity whatsoever.

 

[Volourn]

"but I'd like to see at least one of those actual settlements with normal people that the Rangers are supposedly protecting. Everywhere you go to is either wiped out or in the process of being wiped out."

Sure, but it's called WASTEland for a reason. It's not going to be modern New York or even a fantasy city like Athkatala. I love big cities in rpgs too but it wouldn't be so wastey. I think the first big choice involved trying to save normal folk was good. Watertown is avillage. Also, the rail guys is arguably a big village too.


"Maybe Surgeon and Field Medic could give some kind of corresponding benefit to one another."

I'd have surgeon give you a boost to the health you can heal with field medic. And, I'd have field medic help with your % of hit points returned when using the surgeon skill. Maybe even have the surgeon skill take longer (I mean surgeries usually take a while heh) but you can field medic be used to make it quicker since you can have it be sued to show your character was trained to do quick surgery in the field as opposed to an actual operating room.

 

[Owlish]

Damonta

Spoiler

was a big bustlin' city in the wasteland right up until the player's group is about to visit it, so.

 

[Owlish]

There needs to be more merchants, with more monies. And/or you should be able to bring some kind of a wagon to places. I have a compunction to loot and hoard everything. I can't help it, so stop punishing me, game.

Also you should be able to drop and sell quest items you no longer need.

Being a loot hoarder in RPGs is a burdensome sickness.

 

[Volourn]

There is lots of stores.

 

[Zeronet]

My impressions? It was good until i got to LA, then started it to go strangely downhill. There's a inconsistancy running throughout, some areas are great, some areas less interesting by far..but that could just be personal taste and i havent finished playing yet. Some area's are uglier than others, and a lot of the random encounters seem to have the most interesting layouts to them. Which seems rather unusual to me.

If you've not reached LA (and some some mannerite stuff) there's spoilers, mostly bitching about power armor and the Ranger 'base'.

Spoiler

Santa Fe Springs base so far, nothing has been done with it. It's basically a hut for the radio guy to sit in, not a new ranger base that you've set up. It seems needlessly large and takes ages to get from your little locker to the front gate. It's just empty so far (and a bit ugly). I never really expected a full crossroads keep style stronghold, and maybe it changes late game, i don't know, but so far its rather lackluster.

Outside 'the base' there's some random vendor sells me power armour... Didn't the guardians of the old order revere this stuff? Some wasterlander hobo merchant has a stock of it. Later on, a mannerite gives me power armour as a quest reward, that he just happens to have in his back pocket. The mannerites are also running about with a pre-war tank which is never explained and probably should be.

And in hollywood,

Spoiler

The Psuedo-Chitin armor "the best armour pre-war goverment money could buy' according to its rather lackluster description is being sold by the gun vendor. IIRC in Wasteland 1, you got this rare stuff by taking it form the guardians of the old order and sleeper one, because it was rare and difficult pre-war developed tech. Not stuff you find lying about, i don't know whether psuedo chitin was mass produced or whether the wasteland 1 suits are suppose to be it. I find it kind of ruins the atmosphere and i'm puzzled why it's like this. Was there is a big warehouse of this stuff that got raided in LA? It just seems cheap.

The most ridiculous thing, which i hope is a bug, is the barkeep who sells power armor and psuedo-chitin armor alongside the beer

Other than that, i like it so far. For everything that annoys the crap out of me, other stuff just makes me either laugh or smile. The way certain NPCs react to each other, at times there's a lot of cool exposition, where as its lacking in other parts.

Course, the thought that i need to reply the game multiple times with all the different NPCs to see their reactions and stuff, is not going to happen.

 

[DosBuster]

I think California ended up having a lot cut due to time constraints, Santa Fe felt like they had some base building ideas in mind since early on they talked about "building the new Ranger HQ in California", so I think they just ran out of time in the end to really express on that.