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Wasteland Wasteland 3 + Battle of Steeltown and Cult of the Holy Detonation Expansions Thread

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
hmm.

everyone has same skill points on level up, so you just level up same skills and that's mostly it. a lot of perks feel like your usual perks ie why would I take this instead of throwing grenade.
all quests have carefully written level requirements and rewards ala mmo
items are skill scaled (so somewhat level scaled), and higher level sniper rifle does double damage TM. which probably is helpful because seems like enemies also aquire increasing amount of health in similar manner.
I have millions of ammo even in prologue including grenades and missiles (colony ship demo version had more troublesome ammo management and it was just trader and series of fights).
a lot of flavour options and dialogue checks which seem to end in very similar result
I play on highest difficulty and my character building is utterly retarded. I just given every char 1 highest stat and put rest into +action points but it works and I didn't even plan how would it work. My main can't even wear armor due to +3 ap trait and has 1 strength but has no problems shooting giant missile launcher and also carrying 2 different grenades. his superior brain power means he shoots pistol 5 times per turn and does crits which do 3 times more damage than a nuclear blast.
my tactic relies on standing away, shooting enemies/aggroing them and seeing them leave all their cover and terrain (prepared Divinity 2 style), and then get all killed in 1 turn by my team. I do have 2 tank-style chars, 1 with maxed armor and 1 with maxed evasion but they only seem to tank well regular enemies; I use robot chicken, mechanical lures and turrets to tank instead when needed.

I can't say game is unfun cause there is interesting Exploration and encounter design also seems interesting. So far the best part is mostly exploring world, shooting baddies and collecting new shiny loot. occasionally you make choices that maybe will matter.

also loading screens.
 
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jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,491
Grind in the wastes is very cheap: runnig over stuff, shoot the left overs and repair kodiak with 1 repair kit which can be bought for basically nothing.
 

Haplo

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
6,138
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?
It's an all around improvement over WL2.

So, okay, to be a little more specific, at least mechanics-wise:

1. Skill redundancy has been eliminated
2. Attributes and skills now coexist and affect different aspects, rather then basically being separate systems
3. More perk points, more varied and interesting perks, including active abilities
4. More balanced stats, multiple stats useful for each character
5. Synergies across different perks, attributes, items
6. Combos between active abilities of different weapons
7. Five damage types, greater weapon variety, including elemental variants (supported by various skills and perks; can also modify a regular gun to deal elemental damage)
8. Much better cover mechanics
9. Way more fun combat, varied weapon effects, abilities, special attacks and Strikes!
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,277
The companions seems to be half baked. During my meeting with Angela one of my companions strongly disagree with what I said, and claim she will leave if I actually do what I said.

But when I get back to the HQ there is no new dialogue option. And there is a loyalty system, but you can't see it and have no idea how you action will influence it.


Also it should be a bug, but your car can just crash the huge ass scorpions. Just move your car to it and instant kill. It didn't even do any damage to your car.
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
993
Location
Northern wastes
Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?
It's an all around improvement over WL2.
Fake news. W3 doesn't have any complex locations or freedom of choice like in the Titan Canyon or anything even remotely close to quest line to investigate Mithias manipulations to destabilise LA government. W3 is pretty linear and straightforward compared to W2. Also W3 is a pretty short game considering inXile were talking about 80-100 hours. It takes 45 hours tops.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
Aight, niggas!

I've played this for a fair share of hours now, restarted thrice because, well, the game is just too damn fun, and build diversity and C&C is great! Still haven't finished it yet, but I feel I'm ready to make a mini-review, however, so here goes..
Wasteland 3 is a game I've looked forward to for a long time, which should come to surprise noone at this point. You might say that, well, I was kind of HYPED. So does the game live up the expecations? In short, yes, but let's dig in..

The Good Stuff:
Story, writing and C&C:

WL3's story is nothing earthshatteringly novel and new, but it does work. You got a slew of factions with nice variety in a war with eachother, and you got some big bads with a backstory. The story is defnitely an improvement from WL2, and it seems to harken back to things like new vegas and fallout 2 in terms of having factions and C&C as endgame stuff.
The Patriarch as a dictator feels like it's natural, as a thing that would happen irl, with 1 leader or tribe uniting or subduing the other factions and clans.

The C&C feels great and well implemented, there are numerous tie-ins, call-backs and direct consequences to your actions throughout the game, that either progress or lock you out of content, well done.
The "fame" or "karma" system also seems to work nicely, as it influences trade, quests and flavor in terms of NPC conversations.

The writing is definitely an improvement over Wasteland 2, and I quite liked it. Nothing earthshatteringly shakespearean as usual, but great enough for me to not outright notice any type of "bad" writing. It gels well with the world and the characters, and serves to breath life into different parts of Colorado.
Highlights were things like Aspen and Victory Buchanan, well done overall and super fun, Union Station and "Fish Lips" gave me several chuckles, too. also very much liked the gipper faction and scar collectors.

Character customisation and skill checks:
There's quite a few different ways to build your character, in terms of visuals, attributes and skills and what not.
Feels great, and varied, and lends itself well to replayability. There's a lot of different perks and skills to choose from, too, which also feels useful in at least a handful situations.

There's plenty of skillchecks in the game, which is great, and no more RNG % that Wasteland 2 had.

Music and sound design:
I found the soundtrack pretty damn good, and the sounds and action, too.
The full voice acting is great, most NPCs have varied and interesting voices, which gives the world more vibrance immersion. Weapon sounds pack a punch, and feels great in the different types of weapons, grenades included also.

Combat:
Combat in Wasteland 3 feels great, simply put. There are a lot of different kinds of builds you can try out, alot of different combat perks and skills for each type of weapon specialization, although I wish there would have been more (DLC maybe)..
It's basically well known territory in terms of a sort of x-com style gameplay, with different terrain and covers, different attack styles and such. Nothing too complex, not overly simplistic either, could definitley have been expanded more though, more on that in the Bad Stuff part of this review.
Weapons and explosives feel great and pack a punch, feels meaty in terms of visuals and sound.

Graphics:
The game won't win any next-gen awards, for sure, but it does its job. Still an improvement from WL2, and the unity engine feels stretched to the limit. Wasn't any time during game when I thought, damn this looks fucking low quality and bad.Art direction is also a huge step up, and actually feels vibrant and cool in most areas. I also tried Reshade 4.0, and it definitely also helped bring the game up a notch in terms of graphics.

Armor models are incredibly well done, and weapon models too. There's quiete a few different armors and weapons to choose from, which lends itself to a nice flavour and variety for your squad. Nice.

The Bad Stuff:
It is all sunshines and good vibrations in Colorado, then? Unfortunately, not quite.
The game does have it's fair of annoying and jarring things, which leaves you kind of with mixed impression overall, at least at first glance.

Performance and bugs:
LOADING SCREENS, my god. Please optimize that shiet, holy fuck. I could build a space shuttle by the time shit finished, and I got an SSD. Performance during the game was "ok", but in some areas there were noticeable slowdowns, and sluggishness, even on a powerful rig. There were obvious memory leak during long game streaks, and I found several differnet bugs already. Disappointing, but expected I guess.

Badly tuned progression and balance:

XP, progression and overall balance seems to be InXile's achilles heel. Progression feels very off in this game, I have to say, which is a shame. You overlevel stuff often, and the xp bonus from stuff is out of balance. They should have done a balance pass in terms of xp and character progression through the world before release.

Skills are incredibly easy to obtain, so you never feel like there's any skillcheck you CANNOT pass, which in turn feels bad. You feel super powerful even early on with just abit min max. It's not that hard to tune your ranger squad to be able to handle anything the game throws at you, and that's kind takes some of the charm away.

The UI:
The UI felt very clunky and cumbersome, consolized. Especially inventory management and trade was tedicious and lacked several filters and quality of life improvements seen in most other recent rpgs... sad.

The itemization and item progression:

Itemization is another thing Inxile doesnt seem to get right with every game. There's several tier of weapons, but they feel weirdly gated and locked until some quests have been done, and you can go long streaks without ever replacing a starter weapon, but other weapon you can get upgrades right away.
There's also simple TOO MUCH FUCKING LOOT. Nigga this ain't diablo 5, calm the fuck down, aight.

Simplistic dumbed down mechanics, including combat:

The overworld map and kodiak looks cool, and really gives a good vibe, but it's very very underutilized. Like, alot. There's very few places to visit, and there's absolutely very few random encounters and no penalties for just driving around, like running out of gas or something like that.
I guess it was done to give players less hassle, and just fuck around the world.. eh. Alot more could have been done to flesh out the world traveling to acompany the RPG elements, but alas.

Difficulty is a joke, simply put. I played exclusively on Supreme Jerks difficulty, and while it certainly was a challenge, especially early on, it felt horrible lop-sided and unbalanced. Enemies totally annhilate you right away without any chance of comeback, or you murder enemies instantly at the start of fights.
Armor factor is a joke, and constitution too, as most enemies will simply just fucking one-shot you straight up if given the initiate to it.

Which leaves me to another point, initiative is very poorly handled in Wasteland 3. You can cheese fights by engaging first, and you will always start, and the turn order is all fucked and not transparant.

Combat felt great as I said, but the mechanics feels dumbed down. Rangers can be downed or killed, but without any consequences what so ever, other than just popping resurrect kits and heals... ehm ok, weird. There's no punishment for swapping gear, or doing other tasks during combat.
I guess if you prefer a fast, slick combat, yeah it delivers, but it's very shallow even with some implemented perks and weapon styles, which does feel great though. Armor modding and weapon modding for combat also seems like an afterthought.


Conclusion: So is it GUD?
Overall, well, Wasteland 3 feels like a worthy successor to Wasteland 2, far surpassing it on virtually every front. Wasteland 3 builds upon and improves most if not everything that Wasteland 2 set up or tried to. It's a vastly better game, which clearly shows this time around. This is by far InXile's best game to date, and dare I say feels closer to a real "Fallout 3" type of game than most of what we've gotten in the past 5-10 years time, barring only a select few gems in the same type and vein like these isometric tb ones.

When the Director's cut come out, (and it will) - I expect it to improve and fix most of my grievances with the game and, well, more content and maybe add some more complexity and mechanics to not dumb the game too much for the hardcore strategic combat fans.

Final rating: 7.5/10
 
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DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
They need to tune down the number of skill points per level or reduce XP gain in half. You can pretty much max out three skills per character with books by level 14 and that way before capturing Valor.
 
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jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,491
When the Director's cut come out, (and it will) - I expect it to improve and fix most of my grievances with the game and, well, more content and maybe add some more complexity and mechanics to not dumb the game too much for the hardcore strategic combat fans.
It will not. I expect they'll fix majority of the bugs, then maybe will release an expansion or a few DLCs and be done with this game. Let alone cater to hardcore fans, lol. Come on, items have to weight here, what are you even talking about.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Wow, a game codex actually seems to like, pleasant surprise. I played first few hours and kinda liked it, but decided to wait for inevitable DC edition that will improve the rougher edges.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Late game seems very rushed and lack of content.

Huh, so kind of exactly like Wasteland 2 late game on release?

Looking like this one will be a VEEERY good DC edition to grab in a year or two.
True but W2 had an entire second region and 4 proper Hubs in the last third of the game.
To be fair, you can cut 90% of Arizona from Wasteland 2 and with exception of the Titan canyon, the game would be infinitely better for it, a longer game isnt necessarily a better one besides, there is actual a real reason to replay Wasteland 3. Wasteland 2 only had a proper hub with proper quests after an eternity and by that time, I was so bored that I gave up entirely on the first time I tried. Despite all the Director's Cut improvements, it didnt turn an ugly duckling into a flamingo as some people claim. Yes, you can mine blood from a stone if you mine some enjoyment from the few good bits like the Titan Canyon and the hubs on the second half but I only managed to actually reach the second half for reals after almost giving up again on Ag Center and the later hub factions with exception of the Mannerites arent really that interesting.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Wow, a game codex actually seems to like, pleasant surprise. I played first few hours and kinda liked it, but decided to wait for inevitable DC edition that will improve the rougher edges.
A rebalance patch from a DC edition would be really nice, this game is stuck on easy mode after you reach midgame, after that, it is just a competition for how faster you can annihilate enemies, even on Supreme Jerk, at least Supreme Jerk demands some min maxing. Unfortunately, Supreme Jerk doesnt slow down the XP gains and the stat checks that are really nice on the begining of the game become no brainer automatic successes sources of XP farm later on. Do a full charisma character + lockpicking and watch your levels fly, lockpicking in terms of xp gains is so crazy that I got the equivalent of the experience for an entire secondary quest by opening a door, this game needs a balance patch. It is still fun if you play on Supreme Jerk, right now, I still give it 7.5, maybe the DC will fix the issues.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2013
Messages
226
Location
Calgary
PCI4 M.2 storage the load times aren't bad but still there even with all that speed. Hitting more bugs the longer I play.

I love the selling junk and getting "I can't afford this" message, or the NPC's not being clickable, or just the general batshit dumb AI. Yes user the flamethrower on yourselves thanks.

Also the smoke grenades can go fuck a donkey dick, people sitting next to me have almost a 100% miss eat ass.
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
993
Location
Northern wastes
Late game seems very rushed and lack of content.

Huh, so kind of exactly like Wasteland 2 late game on release?

Looking like this one will be a VEEERY good DC edition to grab in a year or two.
True but W2 had an entire second region and 4 proper Hubs in the last third of the game.
To be fair, you can cut 90% of Arizona from Wasteland 2 and with exception of the Titan canyon, the game would be infinitely better for it, a longer game isnt necessarily a better one besides, there is actual a real reason to replay Wasteland 3. Wasteland 2 only had a proper hub with proper quests after an eternity and by that time, I was so bored that I gave up entirely on the first time I tried. Despite all the Director's Cut improvements, it didnt turn an ugly duckling into a flamingo as some people claim. Yes, you can mine blood from a stone if you mine some enjoyment from the few good bits like the Titan Canyon and the hubs on the second half but I only managed to actually reach the second half for reals after almost giving up again on Ag Center and the later hub factions with exception of the Mannerites arent really that interesting.
I personally enjoyed a lot in Arizona. Ag centre, rail nomads, Damonta, prison..... Also W3 has just as much of trash combat as W2 if not more. I m also not 100% sure they are even going to do DC for W3.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
batshit dumb AI.

Also the smoke grenades can go fuck a donkey dick, people sitting next to me have almost a 100% miss eat ass.
don't see a problem, just stand furtherand all ai does is throws grenade under them 1-2 times and then runs out of their smoke cloud under your fire.

i spent more hours killing rednek raiders, raider clowns, clown raiders with pigs, crazy fallout 4 raiders of crazy, on semi linear levels, while upgrading my gear to another, level scaled gear, in inspired quests like, kill, raiders and porcupines.

either game is very uninspired, rote and formulaic or im too old for rpgs at this point.

inxile writing wasn't great before but it feels like it falls to obsidian tier.
 

Sranchammer

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
20,399
Location
Former Confederate States of America
im too old for rpgs at this point.

.

DoN2.gif
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
is all the zany clown stuff and other stuff is supposed to be amusing, or bizzarre or satirical? or like grimdark twisted? is humor in the game like some american thing?

any time I find more "bizzzzarr" stuff in game I just look at it with sort of stone like expression and my face doesn't even twitch. it's like bethesda stuff. (or outer worlds writing)

just give me more radfrogs to drive over with tractor.
 

jackofshadows

Magister
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,491
All mexican-clown-gang related stuff is at too high cringe level, indeed. When I saw big circus tent on a global map I didn't even want to enter first, by having vietnam ATOM flashbacks and being afraid that it's a full-fledged location with quests etc. Thankfully, it was not. The whole Denver was meh at best in that regard, too. Edginess over the top in general was fine to me but they could tone it down easily.

But some of the writing bits were genuinely good for my taste; dialogues with the gunslinger girl from 100-families for instance, especially towards the end. Although I'd prefer much less wacky/zany overall but won't repeat myself.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
I found gunslinger girl quite boring for a starting companion, but then I found beginning city even more boring. Running around for so long around its loading screens felt like a total chore. It felt better when you finally get some snowplowing action and loot forgotten bunkers in rad clouds.

Also how is it I just began exploring the world and I already feel overleveled O_o
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany
I give this game 8 snake squeezins out of 10
-will replay this once the DLC gets released.

Wasteland 3 is so good it even made replay Wasteland 2 which I hadn't touched since 2017.
 

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