Wasteland 2

 PC
Metascore
81

Generally favorable reviews - based on 65 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 53 out of 65
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 65
  3. Negative: 0 out of 65
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  1. PC Games
    Sep 30, 2014
    72
    Wasteland 2 invokes the spirit of its predecessor as well as the old Fallout games, yet it probably won’t have the same impact. Poor AI, bugs and annoying waiting times while using skills require a lot of patience from players. Still, there are many wondrous sights to see and interesting people to meet. In terms of atmosphere, dialogue and quest design, Wasteland 2 truly shines. Too bad there is so much grime to wipe away first.
  2. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Oct 25, 2014
    71
    Little by little Wasteland 2 wastes away its charm. It wants to be good, and it tries to be. But sometimes the efforts to make a great game are obvious – and sometimes it’s obvious that someone in the team had really been slacking off. [Nov 2014, p.78]
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  3. Edge Magazine
    Nov 5, 2014
    70
    The astounding breadth of the missions is enough to distract from finicky systems and low-res textures. [Dec 2014, p.120]
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  5. XGN
    Oct 20, 2014
    70
    Fighting in this game really feels great, as well as the interesting conversations and the possibility to succeed in multiple missions simultaneously. Sometimes the game is not clear enough and the balance between missions and difficulty is a bit iffy.
  6. Hardcore Gamer
    Oct 16, 2014
    70
    Wasteland 2 Kickstarter backers will get what they paid for plus a few glitches they didn’t.
  7. Metro GameCentral
    Sep 25, 2014
    70
    It’s a little too zealous in its old school approach, but this is still a great computer role-playing game and a welcome, if unofficial, part of the Fallout family.
  8. GRYOnline.pl
    Sep 23, 2014
    70
    Wasteland is a mediocre game and an excellent adventure rolled into one product - thanks to a great atmosphere I found determination to overlook bugs, ugly graphics and a very weak interface. People who fell in love with Fallout and Wasteland should be satisfied. It's a pity that the developers haven't had the time/will to improve and rethink some things. Wasteland 2 could have been an atom bomb. Instead it's just a really loud grenade.
  9. ActionTrip
    Oct 6, 2014
    67
    While the atmosphere can be great from time to time, on the whole, we just missed the post-apocalyptic sci-fi flavored ambience that’s heavily incorporated into games like Fallout.
  10. RPGamer
    Nov 13, 2014
    60
    If you're a fan of this style of game and have played the best recent releases, look behind you. Because that's where Wasteland 2 is going to be.
  11. Games.cz
    Oct 29, 2014
    60
    Wasteland 2 is wasting your time in all aspects of its design, although all of them are capable of being entertaining, at least sometimes. A story of varying qualities that is full of clichés, sheer stupidity but also of humorous moments and references to for about billions of things manages to hardly hold a gamer's attention. On the top of that, there are tons of bugs in the game. If it were not for Brian Fargo along with other anointed heads who have created this piece, it would have flown under the radar as a cheap Russian imitation of Fallout that have been delayed for ten years.
  12. VideoGamer
    Sep 24, 2014
    60
    It’s not a bad game, and it’s worth playing for the plot and setting alone. But it’s not a great RPG, and that’s a problem, because it’s an RPG. Somehow, it amounts to less than the sum of its parts.
  13. Joystiq
    Sep 19, 2014
    60
    Wasteland 2 is so packed with stuff to do and things to see that the game demands multiple plays, yet its story options are so intricate that replaying the plot never seems like a chore. But all of that is overshadowed by omnipresent bugs.

Awards & Rankings

58
#58 Best PC Game of 2014
25
#25 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
24
#24 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

User Reviews

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User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 1217 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 786 out of 1217
  2. Mixed: 209 out of 1217
  3. Negative: 222 out of 1217
  1. TheThirdEye
    Sep 19, 2014
    10
    One of the best CRpg out there!
    Amazing plot, characters and combat system.
    Very dark, very funny, very mature! If you like RPG's - don't    One of the best CRpg out there!
    Amazing plot, characters and combat system.
    Very dark, very funny, very mature!

    If you like RPG's - don't miss this classic game!

    10/10    … Full Review »
  2. onetime40
    Sep 25, 2014
    0
    I revised my score from a 4 to a 1 (after digging through the game-code)

    1. Attribute system is a joke. Take for example charisma, there is    I revised my score from a 4 to a 1 (after digging through the game-code)

    1. Attribute system is a joke. Take for example charisma, there is no difference from a charisma 1 player to a charisma 10 player (this does not affect dialogue options or anything else you would expect). All it does is change the radius of your "leadership" skill (which you need to spec into) and how much XP you gain. Other attributes are plagued with the same problem. They are "dump" stats, the only one you need to focus on is intelligence as it affects your Action Points and Skill Points, and then coordination if you want to use guns or strength if you want to melee, everything else can be set at 1, because they don't actually do anything substantial (unlike fallout)

    2. Mechanics are broken, things like "initiative" don't actually do anything.

    3. Combat is broken, the enemies are programmed to rush your characters. When one is alerted, everyone near him will then run all the way across the map and stand next to you to attack (every single time and on their first turn, it's how they were coded)

    4. Random events are broken. You will get attacked when wondering the map, except it is always the same fight !! you will be fighting the same 3 enemies on the same map in each random event. At higher levels, you will get a "feral dog" added to the fight. They will have the same items on them which only changes with your level.

    5. Skill system is horrendous. You are juggling back and forth between characters for simple progression. The perception skill for example is not passive (or tied with an attribute), you need to spec into it as a skill. Then you need to activate that skill on a character and use them to search an area, that's when you change over to someone who can disarm traps and then unlock gates or safe crack etc. You are doing this all the time, especially if you didnt max intelligence as you just wont have the skill points to invest in skills.

    Those are some of the major problems with combat and technical skills, then you have the conversional skills, there are 3 of them and they all do the same thing (just with different words). The outcome of each conversational option is coded the same. There are no "dialogue trees", your options dont change how the conversion will play out. You simply click the "next" button to get the next piece of information, and if you have a conversational skill, you could get some extra loot / text to read or avoid combat. Remember the attribute system is a joke? You can have a charisma 1 player who is the smoothest sweet talker in the wasteland because they maxed sweet talking (with all those skills points they got from intelligence), while a charisma 10 player will have no skills to invest in anything and as such, cant pass any conversional checks. It's the complete opposite to Fallout.

    6. Graphics. I can go back and play Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics. They look good and are well animated. Wasteland's graphics are cheap and most importantly, poorly animated (look half finished) Things such as armor don't even change. What you create at the start is how you will look.

    7. In Fallout, your actions changed events in the game. Your dialogue options changed things. In this game, you are just reading a novel in each city and then have some badly programmed combat sequences, rinse and repeat.

    8. Dead-lifeless world. In fallout (baldurs gate etc) you felt like you were in a world. You had interesting NPCs that could join you, there were amazing cities to explore etc. In this game, you are one person (spread out across 4 different people) and you simply go from map to map, read the novel provided and then complete the combat sequence. There is no life or character to the cities or people in them. I can still remember lines and characters from fallout etc, because they had life in them. This game is DEAD and hollow inside. There is some "radio banter" as you travel the wasteland which livens things up, but that stops after about 30 minutes on the map, and then it is just silence. Read the novel, do the combat sequence.

    This game is smoke and mirrors. That's how it was coded. It's like one of those cheap Chinese "warcraft" clones that you see from time to time.    … Full Review »
  3. Enex
    Sep 20, 2014
    6
    I really wanted to like this game, but it's only okay.

    There is no reason to lie to the player, and the critical failure rates are outright    I really wanted to like this game, but it's only okay.

    There is no reason to lie to the player, and the critical failure rates are outright lies (as are the success rates for skills). There is no reason for every other box you find to have a bomb strapped to it. That's idiotic. Resources are supposed to be scarce. Where is everyone getting all this TNT? (To safeguard their scrap and broken gray level junk, no less).

    The game also seems obsessed with wasting the player's time. Skills that you click take a long time to complete, for no gameplay reason but to annoy.

    I strongly suggest anyone reading this review to wait for a sale.    … Full Review »
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