There's a talking car that begs you to kill it so it has a chance to see Ronald Reagan in the afterlife... this game is rad! and you better believe I jumped at the chance to kill the AI Ronald Reagan and all his followers.
The world/lore is interesting, the characters are fun and distinct, the dialogue and voice acting are superior to most games, and the story is compelling and frequently funny. This is how you make a fucking sequel; improves the already good bits of Wasteland 2 and streamlines most of the BS that held it back.
This would be 4.5 stars if not for a couple of significant gameplay and performance issues. While it is nowhere near as buggy as its predecessor, it does feel decidedly unpolished in certain technical areas. The game is prone to crashing, and there is one particularly annoying bug that will cause the game to crash anytime you attempt to load into a new area if you have too much in your inventory.
Many of the combat maps feel a little unfinished, like 90% of the way there. There are random unmapped tiles that you cannot move to for no reason and objects/architecture pieces that are clearly intended to function as cover but don't. Most combat zones have these same issues.
Some lines of dialogue (especially on the world map) will display strings of code instead of the intended text. I don't know how that was never patched even two years later. There are also some bugs regarding the game tracking which characters are in your party. For example, I had Lucia Wesson in my squad while rescuing her father, but she was silent during the dialogue exchange between the rest of the squad and her father, and when her father asks if I have any idea where her daughter Lucia is, the only dialogue options I'm presented with are "don't know, don't care" or "haven't seen her in a long time, she's probably back home."
Targeting with throwables is flat-out broken. Just straight up doesn't work, target an area within your throwing range with a clear line of sight and you inexplicably won't be able to throw it at least half the time.
The only other seriously frustrating issue is some of the difficulty balancing. There are some fights, including story fights, where the enemies can completely squad-wipe you on the first move before you have even have a chance to put your units in cover. It is often the best move to position your team in advance and make sure you strike first to hopefully gain the initiative advantage, but this isn't an option for many of the story combat encounters (and being far above the suggested level doesn't alleviate this issue). There is also no indication of an enemy's level or danger before engaging them, so there's always a chance you may be walking into a battle where your characters do approximately 0% damage while the enemy is able to one-shot you. Frequent quick-saving is pretty much a necessity.
The world/lore is interesting, the characters are fun and distinct, the dialogue and voice acting are superior to most games, and the story is compelling and frequently funny. This is how you make a fucking sequel; improves the already good bits of Wasteland 2 and streamlines most of the BS that held it back.
This would be 4.5 stars if not for a couple of significant gameplay and performance issues. While it is nowhere near as buggy as its predecessor, it does feel decidedly unpolished in certain technical areas. The game is prone to crashing, and there is one particularly annoying bug that will cause the game to crash anytime you attempt to load into a new area if you have too much in your inventory.
Many of the combat maps feel a little unfinished, like 90% of the way there. There are random unmapped tiles that you cannot move to for no reason and objects/architecture pieces that are clearly intended to function as cover but don't. Most combat zones have these same issues.
Some lines of dialogue (especially on the world map) will display strings of code instead of the intended text. I don't know how that was never patched even two years later. There are also some bugs regarding the game tracking which characters are in your party. For example, I had Lucia Wesson in my squad while rescuing her father, but she was silent during the dialogue exchange between the rest of the squad and her father, and when her father asks if I have any idea where her daughter Lucia is, the only dialogue options I'm presented with are "don't know, don't care" or "haven't seen her in a long time, she's probably back home."
Targeting with throwables is flat-out broken. Just straight up doesn't work, target an area within your throwing range with a clear line of sight and you inexplicably won't be able to throw it at least half the time.
The only other seriously frustrating issue is some of the difficulty balancing. There are some fights, including story fights, where the enemies can completely squad-wipe you on the first move before you have even have a chance to put your units in cover. It is often the best move to position your team in advance and make sure you strike first to hopefully gain the initiative advantage, but this isn't an option for many of the story combat encounters (and being far above the suggested level doesn't alleviate this issue). There is also no indication of an enemy's level or danger before engaging them, so there's always a chance you may be walking into a battle where your characters do approximately 0% damage while the enemy is able to one-shot you. Frequent quick-saving is pretty much a necessity.