Wasteland 2 (for PC)

Choose Your DestinyThe core of any good CRPG is choice, and Wasteland 2 embraces this wholeheartedly. Right from the start, you can either choose from a list of pre-made characters or create a more-specialized and customized party by allocating skill points and attributes. There is no single protagonist; instead, you control a party of Desert Rangers (the wasteland's peacekeepers) from the very beginning of the game, which is a nice change of pace.
The wasteland is free to explore once you create a party and get through in the opening sequence. After the first mission, you must make a vital decision: Save either the AG (agricultural) Center or the Highpool settlements from a vicious attack. That's right, you can only save one. This choice greatly affects the relationships and quest-lines of the people involved in each community.

For example, I decided to help the AG center, since it was closer to my position at the time. As I attempted to aid the researchers, I learned that a mutated plant pod within the facility had poisoned a man named Matt, a long-time friend of the Desert Rangers. The antidote was stashed away somewhere within the central basement. Not knowing where to look, I never found the antidote, and Matt died as a result. He was the only merchant in the facility, and that had a tremendous impact on my game. Wonderful, weighty choices of this nature are commonplace in Wasteland 2.
You can, of course, save-scum to get the most favorable outcome possible by saving and reloading before engaging a person in dialogue or entering a new area. Doing so feels like cheating, though, so I opted to stick by my decisions and let the adventure play out from there.
Fighting Makes the World Go 'RoundWasteland 2 gives you branching dialogue options and conversation skills to intimidate, negotiate, or sweet-talk your way out of many sticky situations. Unfortunately, diplomacy can only carry you so far. There are times when you simply must fight. Combat is reminiscent of the XCOM$8.99 at Amazon games. You spend action points to position the party on the battlefield and attack enemies or aid allies. Player and enemy turns are displayed on the top of the screen, and action points are displayed alongside a character's weapon and ammo on the bottom of the screen.
Wasteland 2 also has many smaller combat facets that enrich the overall experience. Armor ratings, which range from zero to ten, dictate how much damage certain weapons inflict on their targets. Controlling range is also critical, as some weapons—such as sniper rifles—do terrible damage at medium and close distance. Status effects come into play as the game moves forward, and they can gravely cripple a party's effectiveness.
There are a few more subtle elements to Wasteland 2's combat, but the overall fighting is relatively straightforward and simplistic. As an RPG, Wasteland 2 could have benefitted from a greater range of combat modifiers. For example, you can opt to take a headshot to improve the chance of a critical hit, but a system that enabled a larger selection of targetable body parts would make the combat more strategic and interesting.
The same holds true for the cover system. Characters can take cover to reduce and avoid damage, but beyond crouching, which increases evasion, there isn't much else to it. Partial and full cover bonuses, or bonuses for standing near cover, would have made combat more dynamic. The ability to shoot at cover would have been nice, too, since a handful of cover options are destructible.
Nonetheless, Wasteland 2's combat does what it does well enough to be engaging.
Diamond in the RoughWasteland 2's visuals are a mixed bag. The environments, from the arid and urban wastes of Arizona to the overgrown cityscapes of Los Angeles, are interesting and thoughtful. The character models, on the other hand, are simplistic and largely uninspired. Despite having fantastic art assets and portraits, the in-game models are generic and bland. This creates a disconnect between the art style and the graphical style, and makes Wasteland 2 look like a confused, brown-tinted chimera of a world.
Developer InXile is still ironing out a few of Wasteland 2's bugs. Certain scenarios, particularly in the California portion of the game, don't update or end correctly. A recently released patch corrected some of these bugs, and InXile has been working closely with the community since launch to address technical issues with the game.
The only really annoying bug I encountered during my time with Wasteland 2 was a camera glitch, in which the camera spun around my party uncontrollably. I had to restart the game whenever this issue arose. Another minor issue I encountered was an audio bug that made certain sounds—particularly gunfire—not queue correctly. The camera would occasionally get stuck behind a wall during event scenes, as well.
An Enjoyable RPG for RPG FansStill, InXile Entertainment has crafted a robust and engaging RPG with Wasteland 2. Aside from the occasional direction or tip, the game is thoroughly open-world, and the decision-heavy approach to storytelling makes for an amazing change of pace from less-flexible and radically more-linear modern RPGs. Whether you're following a tortoise for hidden loot or gunning-down gun-crazed priests in the overgrown streets of L.A., Wasteland 2 offers RPG a rich and intriguing game world to explore.