Wasteland 2

...is fucking awesome.

It's $20 on the Humble Store for the weekend.

I played Wasteland 1 back in the day, never finished it but I fondly remember it's ball-breaking difficulty.

Wasteland 2, to me, feels like Fallout meets Baldur's Gate, and if you have played either of those games, you'll be right at home. The combat system is reminiscent of the old Fallout games, funny enough because Fallout came to be because of Wasteland, so wouldn't have expected anything else.

The attribute/skill system is also pretty much like Wasteland 1. You get a plethora of general skills, weapon skills and such to choose.

I could rant on about how awesome the game is, because it bloody is. Seriously, this is $20 well spent. Get this game, and get it NOW, because inXile has done a stellar job with this one.

Hell, I just might do an intro let's play if the mood strikes me.

The game is good, don't get me wrong I really like it but it has some flaws.

Balance in this game is all over the place. It may not be a huge deal for a single player game but in practice it makes things needlessly convoluted until you realize that as long as you focus on Awareness, Intelligence and Speed you can't go wrong.

Charisma and Luck look good on paper but they are wasted on most builds. Compared to more essential stats luck would only be moderately useful on a sniper for critical hits (and even then the difference is just too small to make it worthwhile).

Charisma is more useful for a skill based character who will level up faster and get most of the XP from skills and quests but will end up being almost useless in a fight (terrible combat initiative when it's the most important combat score and less action points) so all in all it's not so hot (getting an XP bonus is only good if XP is scarce and even then it could be argued that the trade off may not be worth it).  

It seems they are mostly focusing on making it pretty which is not a bad thing but far from essential. Still, they are planning on making the character system better (hopefully reintroducing perks which are sorely missed) and the engine update also means some easier access for modders. In any case I'm waiting for this patch to get back to the game.

A patch would fix the rough corners, but even in it's current state I am having a blast with the game. I skipped sleep one night to keep playing and it's been quite a while since I spent that much time on a game that isn't MC/Terraria/Starbound. The game is by no means perfect but when it comes down to enjoyment, this is a hard one to beat.

I am about 75% through the game now, and I'm doing pretty good with this party. Zarak is pretty good with SMG (modded with a laser sight, long barrel and high capacity mag), and has a shotgun (modded with a full choke to increase range at the expense of spread) for backup. Demolishor uses heavy weapons and blunt weapons, and I'll be honest, until I got my hands on a minigun, I wasn't really impressed with the skill. WX has a 50cal Sniper rifle which is almost ridiculously powerful (Especially moded with a tactical scope and long barrel) with Bladed weapons as secondary, and Crimson uses handguns -- a Wasteland Hawk modded with a long barrel, sturdy mag and laser sight.

Zarak is a well-rounded char, he has Demolition, Smartass, Perception and a few points in Medic/Surgeon. Demolishor is a pure tank has Brute Force, Hardass and Weaponsmithing. WX is the "nerd", and has Computer science, safe cracking, lock picking. Crimson has Kissass, alarm disarming, Medic and surgeon. Some parts got me red with rage, but overall I feel this is a well-balanced party.

I saved Ag Center instead of Highpool, and I'll do a second playthrough to see what I missed.

I stand by my original thoughts -- Brian Fargo and inXile have done a stellar job with this one. Well worth $20, and even $40 would have been worth it. I love this game, if you haven't already guessed.

Finished the game yesterday after roughly 45 hours.

The final battle was more annoying than difficult. I have to say, it felt good tosilence that Matthias twat. If there is one thing I willknock the game on, it is those asinine and annoying radio broadcasts. His religious rantings as well as the choir music garbage had me rolling my eyes in annoyance and irritation quite a lot. Thankfully there is a button to shut them the fuckup, but this is noise pollution.

Definitively will do a second playthrough. Also, probably just wishful thinking but the ending kind of leaves a slight crack open for a possible W3. Which would be amasing. Or a remake of W1 with the W2 engine would be amazing.

Spoiler:

The Director's Cut is out and it is definitely an improvement especially in terms of visuals.

The new Quirks system is an interesting addition on paper but it can also mess up a game (the Circus one makes your character look like a clown which is pretty stupid) so tread lightly.

I'm starting a new game following the adventures of my ragtag band of rangers. My main guy is a thief and a pistolero, my second guy is a gal who is a sniper and the team medic, my third ranger is a heavy weapons and machines specialist and my last ranger covers the rest and especially blades (which is rather apt considering he is a Russian who goes by the name of Santa Claws and wears a bonnet and a skirt).

Is it just me or is heavy weapons just not that good? I gave one of my rangers the skill and it seems he was always lagginf behind in raw damage until I got to Hollywood and got the Minigun

My main dude uses assault rifles and he's ridiculously powerful and Crimson is absolutely lethal with the .50 sniper

Assault rifles are the best all round but I like variety which means I don't always make the "best" choices.

In certain situations a bit of flexibility can be useful and it's good to have a contingency plan with a backup weapon.

Edged weapons are not considered to be all that either but I'm fond of the idea of a crazy Santa Claus with a blade.

My assault rifle dude also uses SMG and is pretty good with them but the low armor penetration can sometimes be an issue hence why I put a few points in AR. I modded an AK-97 and it's almost cheesingly powerful. My heavy weapon wielder has shotties as secondary skill, my Sniper has handguns and my other sniper has energy weapons as well. Not the best build but it's worked for me so far and I only have Supreme Jerk difficulty left.

Haven't played the DC yet, prolly will do later tonight after I get home from "work", get massively blazed and munch on some leftover pizza and some spicy chips

You're in for a treat. I've been waiting for a long time for the DC so I plan on making the most of it.

My main is a gunslinger who will also use energy weapons and I gave him the quirk that gives ten ranks of Hard Ass for free! My sniper is using SMGs to pray and spray at close quarters and I'm thinking of giving shotguns to my heavy weapons guy as a backup (he is using blunt weapons since he is also the smith of the party). Lastly, my last guy covers blades and AR (always a good choice). He favours blades so he can get close and personal.

The only technique missing is brawling which rocks at higher levels but it would only fit my sniper/medic because she was raised in a monastery.

I'm having fun. The only thing I dislike is the camera (and the clown outfit from the circus quirk).

The improvements are huge both visually and in terms of gameplay. Playing with a gamepad is surprisingly enjoyable as well.

That. sodding. camera!!

I like to be able to plan my route ahead, and being dragged back to my party members everytime I click on a place for them to move PISSES ME OFF. Is there a way to disable that nonsense? It is seriously dampening my enjoyment of the game... enough to make me play the old version instead.

I like the other changes they did, but the camera stuff was unnecessary. It is clunky and seriously pissant.

I guess someone is going to come up with a fix hopefully sooner than later. I can't see myself going back to the old version. Truth is, the camera has always been the one bad thing in this game...

It's the Wasteland 2 free weekend so if you've been on the fence regarding this game you can try it out now.

Just make sure you avoid the clown quirk (it's meant as a joke).

The only drawback is that every time a game gets a Steam free weekend a large group of entitled assholes who get off by acting like overgrown ugly preschoolers start rating it down just to fuck with the system.

Bloody morons.

Speaking of Wasteland I read an interview and Brian Fargo flat out said Wasteland 3, so it really is happening. I'll be backing that one, absolutely.

I've just started over:



Hopefully this time I will manage to stick to this party.

It's a bit unbalanced but I've been feeling like messing around and I need to finish 2 before getting on with 3.

I've run into a terrible bug. I can't load any save. I've tried everything I could think of and I looked online for a fix for quite some time to no avail.

That's a very anticlimactic end to my party's adventures.

Move on to 3 then

Maybe later. I'm a bit frustrated right now.

Then let W3 be your rebound

The lowest current price is €30 on the Microsoft Store and 60 everywhere else so I think I'll be waiting.

I've updated my OS to W11 and thought what the hell, let's see if that can help with my problems with this game and interestingly enough I was able to get back in the game, save and reload.

Looks like I may be able to complete my run after all (fingers crossed, I don't want to jinx it).

Only problem is I have no idea what I was doing or where I was since it's almost been a year but there is no way I'm starting from scratch.

You upgraded to 11? Are you mental???

Is 11 any better than 10???

I'm glad you could get back into your game, Cara.

I was bored so I thought why the hell not. Plus I knew it could (would?) be a major pita if things went wrong but hey I still did it anyway.

The differences are really minor (the ones that are noticeable). The good thing is that Cortana is no longer a part of Windows (I had to jump through hoops to disable it with W10). The weird thing is that W11 is trying to make you feel like you're running Android on your computer... The start menu is at the centre of the screen (which doesn't make a lick of sense) and you have some different fonts and visuals (and sounds) to make you feel like you're using a different OS (the corners are round which is great if you've always hated regular squares but rather inconsequential if you never objected to these).

Once I did push back the start menu to the left where it belongs, disabled Windows sounds, enabled the good old right click menu (that got superseded by a silly newfangled and unpractical options menu) and created a shortcut for the task manager on the taskbar (because for some unfathomable reasons right clicking the taskbar no longer gives access to the task manager) all I can say is that it's hardly different.

I do feel like the computer starts a lot faster (it wasn't slow before, it's just really fast now) and I have nothing bad to report (but I've heard some people have had a hard time with the upgrade -can't hurt to make sure your system is compatible and more precisely that your machine is equipped with a Trusted Platform Module 2.0).

The added bonus is that I'm now able to run Wasteland 2 so that's definitely a win in my book.