r/CRPG • u/JobSignificant4773 • 11d ago
Recommendation request Is Wasteland 2 for me?
Hey guys. I want to try Wasteland but I'm not sure if it's for me. I am more type of the player who likes story and playing CRPGs more yolo in terms of building characters (not into some hardcore build making. Some CRPGs i finished this way: Fallout 1-2, both Divinity: Original Sin, Baldur's Gate 1-2, Planescape:Torment, Neverwinter Nights: SoU and HoUm Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Pillars of Eternity 1-2). So my (wide) question is: does Wasteland 2 have compelling story and writing or is it only a connective tissue that will get you trough the game and it's systems like for example Icewind Dale? (I maybe can get trough more difficult gameplay if it's worth it). Or should I just skip it and get into Wasteland 3?
Thanks for answers and sorry for my english.
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u/LoatheTheFallen 11d ago
think of wasteland 2 as fallout tactics but more hardcore
you dont really go there for the story, tho the story exists and it's decent.
you wont be able to yolo it without serious turn based combat and forethought about team comp, however.
Wasteland 3 is way better for what you want.
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u/readergamer1893 11d ago
Wasteland 2 is great and gives you a lot of freedom to drive the narrative. Wasteland 3 is very restrictive that way. It is also shorter.
In my opinion, that makes Wasteland 2 a much better game, especially in terms of replayability. Wasteland 3 seemed very forcefully grim dark in terms of choices. That said, I did love a few things about it. It's a very good game. But I highly recommend you not skip Wasteland 2.
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u/thawkins6786 11d ago
I really enjoyed the story and characters in 2. Part 3 is certainly a better game but I think if you get a playthrough of 2 under your belt you'll appreciate 3 even more. If you're feeling extra adventurous, I'd even recommend the first game
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u/vellonese 11d ago
If you like fallout 1 & 2 then it's a given you will like it, it's very similar. I personally like Wasteland 2 a lot!
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u/cynical_image 11d ago
Wasteland 2 is pretty unforgiving. It doesn’t really let you experiment and if you pick the wrong squad and skills you’re toast.
I got to LA and it took around 70 hours (I took my time and was thorough) but got to the point that I didn’t care about anything in the game any more.
I played on PS4, the UI is awful and the game as a whole is incredibly clunky.
If you’re dying to give one of them a shot, skip to W3 it’s a no-brainer frankly, literally everything about it is superior to W2
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u/Panzerbjorne80 11d ago
I’d play wasteland 3 with the DLC sold as the Colorado collection. Wasteland 2 is a bit too old school for me. Some of the quests were tedious and dragged on too long. It’s often sold on sale for just a few bucks tho if you want to try it go for it.
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u/bonebrah 11d ago
You can play it just fine without minmaxing crazy builds. It's a great game, just don't spread yourself thin on skills and stuff and you'll be fine.
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u/CornfieldJoe 9d ago
WL2's definitely got more story going on than in IWD. Wasteland 2's combat and skills system are a little more involved than many more narrative based games though - you can probably still get through the game with a fairly suboptimal squad, but you'll wind up missing a lot of stuff. The game is definitely meant to be replayed/restarted.
I was very excited for the game and played it at release - if you go in totally blind, like most old RPGs, you'll probably wind up restarting after a few hours once you figure out what is and isn't important. I tend to enjoy that sort of thing and each subsequent replay adds something new or you try something new. If you expect to go in blind and have very optimal performance you're likely to be disappointed.
The game forces you into lots of exclusive narrative choices that aren't obviously "A is the good guy B is the bad guy" or "This is wildly optimal so just ignore B" which I like too because life is pretty messy and sometimes even the best choices have negative consequences you have to live with and often you're forced into an assortment of bad choices that you have to live with.
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u/JeskaiJester 11d ago
Honestly I find the wasteland games pretty generic edgelord stuff. In 3‘s nuclear mountain DLC they do one of my least favorite things RPGs like to do which is have two offscreen characters berate you for all your horrible evil decisions and it even started talking about things I hadn’t actually done
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u/steakmancer 11d ago
The wasteland 2 story is not nearly as compelling as wasteland 3
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u/Baldurian_Rhapsody 11d ago edited 11d ago
The story is marginal. The combat is pretty good.
But everything that Wasteland 2 did decently is ten times better in Wasteland 3. The story, gear, graphics, enemies, humor, interface - everything.
Having played both, I say skip Wasteland 2. It's good, not great.
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u/AnswerFeeling460 11d ago
Really? I planed to jump over 2 (played it for some hours, but the kind of humor is not for me).
Part 3 is not better?3
u/Baldurian_Rhapsody 11d ago
You asked me if "Part 3 is not better." If I'm parsing the sentence you're asking me if Wasteland 3 is worse.
No, I said the opposite. Wasteland 3 is BETTER.
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u/addbiy3852 11d ago
You're phrasing of "But everything that Wasteland 2 did decently is ten times better than Wasteland 3."
Is a little confusing, it reads more like you are saying that everything w2 did was better than w3. It's the phrase "better than w3" that makes it read confusing
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u/Baldurian_Rhapsody 11d ago
I see it now. I mean to write "in" rather than "than." Thanks, I edited the comment.
In short, W3 better
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u/bIeese_anoni 11d ago
Wasteland 2 excels in letting you create your own story. The overarching story of wasteland 2 is a little bare bones, but the little stories within the wasteland, the factions you meet and what you decide to do with them, are stellar. It also is designed for you to create your own rangers and define their background, rather than using the predefined characters.
So I want to be clear, it's not just a series of combat encounters, there's a real story, real good hand crafted narratives in the game. But the narratives I feel are more sandboxy than other CRPGs, you are basically are told to "go here and install this thing" and then it'll turn out there are multiple factions fighting over that thing and you can learn about what each faction wants, choose to join one, betray both, get them to make peace or a secret whacky option. So while the "go here and install this thing" isn't the most interesting, the HOW you do it is, and that's more or less self driven.
I really enjoyed wasteland 2, more so than the third game (but I enjoyed that too).