Wasteland 3 Review (Steam)

You’re dispatched on a desperate quest from the scorching deserts to the snowy mountains to start from scratch, building a new base, finding a snow-worthy vehicle, training new recruits, and fighting your way through hostile frozen wastes. All the while, you’ll have to decide who to trust in this land torn apart by corruption, intrigue, warring factions, crazed cultists, cutthroat gangs, and bitter sibling rivalries. Build a reputation for yourself by making decisions that will profoundly impact Colorado, its inhabitants, and the story you experience. Will you be Colorado’s savior or its worst nightmare?

Pros:

• Decent graphics.
• 38625mb download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Controller support.
• Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
• Graphics-fullscreen, resolution, saturation, v-sync, quality preset, anisotropic filtering, pixel lights, reflections, real-time reflection probes, texture pool size, decal quality, shadow quality, shadow resolution, shadow distance, shadow cascades, bloom, vignette, motion blur, motion blur sample count, screen-space reflections, screen-space reflections mode, ambient occlusion, depth of field, chromatic aberration and anti-aliasing.
• Text size-small/medium/large and very large.
• Interface settings-mini map, overhead health bars, and combat grid can be turned on/off.
• Four difficulties-rookie, wastelander, ranger, and supreme jerk.
• Friendly fire-on/off.
• Auto save-on/off and set when it autosaves.
• Can skip cutscenes if you wish.
• Pick your initial team of two. Five default ones classed as mentor and student, tech-heads, young rangers, punk lovers, and father and daughter. Each has unique akills/quirks/backgrounds.
• Customize team-create your own team (optional) where you choose-identification, appearance, starting weapon, attributes, skills, and quirk.
• Tutorial tips pop up when needed (optional).
• Choose your own response interactions.
• Turn-based combat X-Com style. You have AP (action points) to use on moving/attacks/abilities/reloading etc.
• Save and autosaves when you want from the menu.
• Strategy gameplay.
• In between combat episodes you freely run around and can trigger target mode to shoot bad guys in the wild, loot areas, and even split your team up to set up an ambush or positions before triggering combat.
• Full camera control including zoom in and out.
• Decent loading times.
• Game-how you interact with people and how you do scenarios will determine how people react to you and more fame means more will be likely to join the Rangers. Each faction will have its own fame bar.
• Full inventory system where you can equip/modify weapons/perks etc. Inventory is shared between all team members.
• Enemies-they are wandering the world and you can see their cone of sight, get a shot in before they see you and you get the first  turn in combat.
• Revive-when a teammate gets downed, you have X amount of turns to revive them.
• Game over-can reload saves.
• Plays like a genre mix up of an adventure game and a strategy game.
• Hotswap between characters.
• Interactions and actions within the world require certain stats or abilities like lock picking, hacking, etc.
• Many different ways to play the game depending on which team you have so it’s very much a play how you want.
• Map uncovers as you play and shows icons for points of interest once discovered.
• Story interactions are delivered like a choose your own adventure.
• Very colorful and excellently voiced characters.
• Strike ability-your weapon will charge up over time and you can then unleash it, each gun has a unique strike ability.
• Level up-earn exp and earn skill, attributes, and perk points that increase in cost.
• Cool terminology like sneaky shit or hardass.
• Handy button (LT) that shows all interactions on the screen.
• Breaks you in slowly and it feels very smooth.
• You can brute force interactions like lock picking or hacking by attacking the interaction.
• Mods-find in the world and apply to weapons and gear if you have the perks/abilities.
• Missions-main and secondary and you can choose which to do and when.
• Team- you can have a max of 6 members, 4 can be rangers and the other 2 slots are for companions (unique NPC). Choose who to hire and fire or even create your own member.
• You can search for buildings and rooms which will reveal puzzle elements.
• Set your own custom markers.
• Shit percent chance shows over the target head.
• After combat, it will group all loot together so you don’t have to find the bodies.

Cons:

• Mouse cursor stays when using a controller.
• Only an auto-detect graphics option and no benchmark.
• You have to enable the controller or it won’t work properly.
• Only one control layout for the controller.
• The tutorial only pops up at certain pops and that is not right at the start of the game and instead, has you guessing what to do.
• Graphics pop in after time in places.
• Slight learning curve.
• Stutters/slowdowns in places.
• The camera can get stuck when in combat.
• Constant up and down difficulties.
• In exploration mode (outside of combat) it’s hard to look around as you navigate the world.
• Missions-main and secondary and you can choose which to do and when.
• No confirm button for doing upgrades and instead it’s quit then apply.
• Needless button presses.
• The map is hard to read and doesn’t use a clear marker system.