Wasteland 2 - GameBanshee Review

Aubrielle

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GameBanshee's WorstUsernameEver takes on the apocalyptic task of reviewing Wasteland 2.

Wasteland%202%20B.jpg

InXile has done a good job offering a large amount of opportunity to use most skills, either because they feed directly into the game's core systems, or because checks for those skills were handplaced in many areas. Even skills like Outdoorsman, Animal Whisperer and Mechanical Repair can occasionally solve a quest, and, as one might expect, checks abound for skills like Computer Science. As for combat skills, Wasteland 2 has a large number of them, but still manages to make every weapon category feel distinct. The game also does a good job of giving every weapon type a similar progression from low-level to high-level weapons, so every combat build feels viable (if not optimal) throughout the entire game.

I do, however, take issue with some aspects of Wasteland 2's skill system. There are a number of balance problems with combat skills (at the moment, Assault Rifles are the de facto kings of all weapons) and a few of the general and knowledge skills are underused (Mechanical Repair, in particular, becomes useless past Arizona), for starters. The way skill checks are implemented (percentile checks with a chance for critical failure that can otherwise be repeated indefinitely) also rewards players for wasting their time rather than building their characters properly, an issue compounded by the large amount of skill checks present in the game. Finally, too many of the skills boil down to small variations of the same theme: Lockpicking, Safecracking, Toaster Repair, and even Brute Force and Computer Science to some extent, are all used to open containers and doors.​
More information.

More information.
 
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Won't spoil the read, it's a nice review, I love the conclusion.

But there is an interesting user comment below the review:
Fair review and it's mostly what I got out of it as well. This may sound strange, but as I am nearing the end of Dragon Age Inquisition right now, the two games feel like two ends of the spectrum. I almost wish I could combine them, as everything that's positive about Wasteland 2 is neglected in DAI and vica versa:

DAI:

+ Fantastic main plot
+ Great characters (party members)

+ AAA blockbuster game, insane graphics, incredible setpieces
+ Tons of perks, extensive skills trees

- Downright stupid & simple MMO sidequests
- "Hold your hand" minimap & quests "go here" "pick up this"

- Not much strategy or challenge to combat, not even with friendly fire and on higher difficulty

- World feels somewhat empty, not much interaction with it at all.

Wasteland 2
- Dull and generic main plot,
- Under developed partymembers/NPCs (I can't even talk to them)
- Indie look & feel, graphics are bland, camera annoying
- Underdeveloped skill tree & no perks

+ Amazing sidequests with multiple outcomes
+ Let's me figure stuff out on my own, can be a challenge to find what to do in a good way

+ Combat is a ton of fun and quite challenging
+ World feels alive and shapes to events, interaction feels right and meaningfull

Just to correct this. DA3 world doesn't feel empty at all. It respawns mobs every single second.
HOSTILE mobs.
I just hope Wasteland 2 doesn't do that.
 
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No, Joxer. From what I've played of Wasteland 2, once they're dead, they're dead, at least till you leave the zone and come back. In the map I played, things were still permadead even after that.
 
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I've found mechanical repair quite useful to repair safes that I critically fail the first time. In fact I have used it much more past Arizona as you can use it to repair robots under your control.
 
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Yeah, bad call on mech repair there. I used it all the time throughout the game.

I never played the original. Are the skills in the new one the same as in the original? That might explain the pick lock/safe cracking thing for instance.
 
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Isn't it obvious?? Picklocks is for when a key is required while safecracking is needed for a combination lock which has no keyhole!! :)
 
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Isn't it obvious?? Picklocks is for when a key is required while safecracking is needed for a combination lock which has no keyhole!! :)

Exactly. I don't understand at all why so many people find this so hard to grasp.
 
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Won't spoil the read, it's a nice review, I love the conclusion.

But there is an interesting user comment below the review:


Just to correct this. DA3 world doesn't feel empty at all. It respawns mobs every single second.
HOSTILE mobs.
I just hope Wasteland 2 doesn't do that.

You'll want someone in the group with a good outdoorsman skill too. That way you can avoid almost all random combat encounters in the game (only on the world map). On the local maps I haven't come across any respawn after 20 hours of gameplay.
I also felt some of the companions had personality in Wasteland, though maybe not as much as a Bioware game. They often comment on locations and events, and one of them even did something very surprising after a plot event, which I won't forget for quite some time now.
 
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Wasteland 2 isn't a polished title by any measure, which shouldn't surprise anyone one bit given its size and genre. Just off the top of my head: there is a large number of typos in the game text, there's a number of script errors and broken quests…

Hopefully they don't have the same grammatical error, caused by misidentification of subject nouns, twice in the same sentence. Cuz, that's a pet peeve of mine. Another pet peeve of mine is when people who write for a living fu*k up the grammar while accusing other people who write for a living of being sloppy.

PS: I have to admit, though, that it was pretty funny when the uppity protocol droid narrating the Black Talon mission in Star Wars: The Old Republic made this exact same mistake. Two minutes after bragging about how many languages it was programmed to speak.
 
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tons of perks and extensive skill trees from DAI are still less complex than what WL2 has.
The commenter forgot to take into account that WL2 has attributes as well and that those are main character building blocks. A character that has a high life or high intellect or high AP or high initiative is much different than other ones.

In DAI you get fancy UI with talents and skills but it does not make it better.
 
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I've found mechanical repair quite useful to repair safes that I critically fail the first time. In fact I have used it much more past Arizona as you can use it to repair robots under your control.

Oh my god - I never even thought of using Mechanical Repair on things I broke through critical failures. Seems obvious once you mention it but NEVER thought of it.
 
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Oh my god - I never even thought of using Mechanical Repair on things I broke through critical failures. Seems obvious once you mention it but NEVER thought of it.

I noticed lots of people didn't know this. I think it is communicated to the players through that side bar tutorial tips but I guess many don't read that :D

Do you know you can use Computers and Animals Whisperer mid battle? One makes robots be allies and another makes animals run away and leave battle.
 
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Joxer this is a thread on wasteland 2...not biohate.
 
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WL2 lacks production values of the big boys. But the team knows what they are doing. I am happy to see them one day do this kind of RPG but with big bucks. If InXile was making DAI and had that money to make it, it would have been best game ever.

But even without that money, TToN has a real chance to be that game.
 
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