There’s a new patch out, well worth reading the patch notes because they are very funny.
New Patch is a good excuse to jump back in. Last time I played was mid-October, so I hope I still remember everything that I was in the middle of doing. And that the game is good about reminding me what that was.
I didn’t expect to get back into WL3 after finishing my previous game in October, but nothing had been scratching the same itch. So here I am, playing a second time and doing things as differently as I can from the first to make it seem fresh. I’m finding the combat more satisfying because there’s no learning curve and I’m jumping through a lot of the dialogue that I usually spend most of my time reading (or listening to) unless I know it’s new info. It’s a downside that I didn’t give myself enough time to forget any of the story.
I’m surprised that WL3 is falling into the ‘strategy’ genre (I’ve found mention of it winning ‘strategy game of the year’ for instance). There’s no more strategy in this game than in a typical party-based RPG; each party-member has skills, you move them around to use those skills, you take out your opponents. That strategy is solely on a minuscule level, over in minutes. Anyone get why this would be considered a strategy game?
When was the patch?
December 15th I think.
You can thank Firaxis for that. They dumbed down streamlined X-com to such a degree that it is virtually indistinguishable from party focused turn based RPGs. Unfortunately the game got really popular and this warped players’ perspective on what a tactical squad level strategy game should look like. And most of them will never know what could’ve been or how real tactical strategy games (JA2, the OG Xcom, etc) used to be, and why they are still to this day considered the pinnacle of the genre by people who have experienced them.
The thinking is: XCOM is 85% turn-based tactical squad combat with guns and stuff and it’s always categorized as a strategy game. Wasteland 3 is 75% turn-based tactical squad combat with guns and stuff. Therefore …
(This thinking comes from two different groups: strategy game players who don’t care about story or story-based role-playing choices, as well as the subcategory of RPG players who care only about story and don’t care about tactical combat.)
'Twas ever thus with tactical games with well-developed character systems. One problem the Jagged Alliance games faced in terms of public reception was that strategy game reviewers considered them RPGs and RPG reviewers considered them strategy games.
Gah. As someone who’s two main genres of gaming are RPG and Strategy, I think it confusing to the uninitiated. Defining WL3 as strategy suggests a different type of gameplay to me, where the strategy encompasses the entirety of the game and how you manage it defines the ‘victory’. Tactical combat situations in WL3 are not that.
Thanks for those explanations. Makes sense even if I think WL3 as strategy game is wrong.
Strangely, in the Xbox PC client, in the store, if you filter for only strategy games - Wasteland 2 shows up but not WL3. If you filter for RPG, both show up. Go figure.
I didn’t have much spare time yesterday, so I wasn’t able to play. But since this is the first time I’ve loaded up the game since October, when they had the patch to speed up load times, I decided to time it. Going from launching the game to loading my saved game only took 3 minutes and 15 seconds now, which is way faster than it used to be (I wish I’d used a timer back then so I could compare). It felt much faster anyway, based on my memory of it.
I also installed it on my Series X, where the load times are much faster, but then I remembered, oh yeah, this is NOT a Play Anywhere game. My Xbox saves are completely different from my PC saves.
Wasteland 3 is a great game, glad to see they are still updating it.
Another optional feature will up both the difficulty of all skill checks and the stat requirements to use items by two points, forcing characters to specialize more. By the end of the game my high-intelligence characters had enough bonus skill points to be jacks-of-most-trades, but this option will push you to focus on a handful of skills for each character and make sure none of them double up.
To make that easier, a respec option will be added at Ranger HQ. Your first two respecs will be free, but after that each time you decide to retrain it’ll cost an increasing fee.
Yeah, I start up every time a new major patch has hit, and then decide to wait until the next great patch!
Its really a great game!
I always considered the respec to be, start a new character the way it should be. :)
Love these gems from the patch notes:
Fixed an issue where you sometimes couldn’t save the game after a combat where you hacked a robot or tamed an animal. How does that even happen? Who knows. Well, someone does, just not me. Making games sounds hard.
Rangers at max level (35) no longer “level up” when receiving the requisite XP. Can you imagine if life stopped at 35? Like a Logan’s Run Carousel situation and you’re running around with a gem in your hand and a robot is shouting about sea greens. I need to watch that again.
Fixed some mpre typos.
I played this game through once. I really liked it. I would like to find a reason to play it through a second time, but I can’t really think of one. About the only difference I can think of is to side with the gippers instead of the machine collective, but that isn’t enough to warrant another play through.
You’re right. Aside from a few big choice differences and endings, and perhaps playing a different style (a villain instead of a hero, for example), there really isn’t much that you can do to change the feel. All the important beats still have to happen, regardless of how you choose to resolve a situation. And too, a party-based game suffers from most players balancing their crew. That’s not like the solo-character games where you can only have one particular set of skills, class, etc. It really dulls down the replay value.
Having said all that, I really enjoyed my second playthrough; I was more tuned into how I should manage my party and made enough of a change in my choices that it felt somewhat fresh. Since I avoided brawling in my first game, I had Cordite to add something different to the mix (to outstanding results, I must say).
But it’s uninstalled now so that it doesn’t tempt me again someday, what with all the other games out there. Considering I played it off Game Pass, that game alone paid for a full year of subscription based on the hours I sunk into it. Well worth it.
games on sale for $30…thats more iin my price range
is it any good? I heard problems are bugs, its linear and the camera can be wonky for some people
thanks team
It’s quite good, IMO. I did not have much in the way of bugginess when I played through it at launch, and the patches since then have fixed many of the things that others reported as needing fixing. It is about as linear as the previous Wasteland, in that you have a story to progress through with side missions, but there are different approaches you can take to solving the problems tossed at you. It is a very combat-focused game, and combat is pretty solid. Never had an issue with the camera.
At launch, I was surprised by how much I was sucked into it. There’s just something about a good traditional Western RPG with a mixture of story, quests, and lots of turn based combat that’s just very alluring. I eventually put it away when I was waiting for the patch to make load times shorter, which was the only big flaw in the game at launch. But when the patch did come, I was distracted with other games and I forgot to come back.
I played it until about level 7 and it was great! A lot of improvements on Wasteland 2, I think they really hit their stride on Wasteland 3. The weapons are alot better balanced this time around, (which was my complaint about WL2, assault rifles ruled), about every weapon has it’s place. The story is good, the characters are interesting and you have some interesting and consequential choices to make along the way and at the end. The only reason I’m waiting is because they are supposed to have some DLC and I want to wait for those before I play the whole game.
And I would love to see a Fallout game in this engine, like the old isometric Fallout 1/2.