Wasteland 3

Review

A man who calls himself “The Patriarch” and owns what’s left of Colorado contacted the Arizona Desert Rangers with an interesting proposal. The Patriarch will give all the food and supplies to the Rangers to rebuild Arizona if the Rangers can deal with his three children who are trying to dethrone him! After all, the Desert Rangers previously beat the terrible Cochise AI and its massive army of robots, so putting The Patriarch’s three kids in their place should be a walk in the park for the incredible Rangers! The hitch is that they don’t know who the Patriarch is, how he became the ruler of Colorado, or why his three kids want to get rid of him.  All will be exposed in Wasteland 3!

Wasteland 3 is a party RPG/Strategy game with turn-based combat and choice matters elements developed and self-published by inXile Entertainment. The game is available on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One since the 28^th of August 2020.

After selecting your level of difficulty between Rookie, Wastelander, Ranger (which includes friendly fire on), Supreme Jerk, or your own customised difficulty, you’ll watch a fantastic introduction where the Rangers will have to cross a frozen lake to enter in Colorado. Then you’ll have to choose one of five pairs of Rangers available to you. Each pair has its own set of skills, and you’ll be able to customise your chosen pair of characters from head to toe, from their voices to what they wear. From that point, the game will start and you’ll be in a series of fights where you’ll learn the ins and outs of the combat system.

Soon after, you’ll enter an old base which will be your main Headquarters for recruiting new soldiers in case any of your party of six characters perishes during one of your missions. You’ll also need to hire people to work at your headquarters so you can trade with them when you are there.

At first, you’ll be travelling to Colorado Springs where you’ll start picking up missions, but you’ll also be going back and forth between Colorado Springs and your headquarters as new people arrive. You’ll be able to accept additional missions from other locations so you can level up your party and find out more about the Patriarch and his enemies. You can also travel in the Map World in a Kodiak (truck) and discover new locations, but you will encounter fights with Worms, Mutants and plenty of other enemies during your travel to or from a destination. Depending on the skills of your characters, you may be able to avoid fights, but this will be pretty much impossible early on in the game. Personally, I avoided going out into the world as long as I could and finished as many missions as possible within Colorado Springs so I could level up my characters. I very quickly realised that you have to make sure all your characters are levelled up differently in terms of skills so that your party can deal with all sorts of situations, and also to make sure that you can update weapons, armour, lockpicks for doors cabinets, safes and many more things.   

You’ll come across different groups of people with whom you can converse, and most of them will have missions for you to complete. As you progress within the story, you’ll have to make some choices which will raise or lower your reputation with these groups. In my case, I didn’t have a good reputation with the Patriarch Marshals as I made a deal with a guy instead of arresting him. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

You will have a massive inventory, and the crafting is very simple as long as you have one of your characters well levelled-up in modelling weapons and armour. Each time one of your characters levels up, he/she will receive three skills points and one attribute point. You’ll be able to spend these points on twenty-two skills and seven attributes. Each of them can be levelled up ten times! Every now and then, you’ll receive a perk point which you can use to add a special new attack or increase your armour or health, with plenty of other things to choose from depending on your characters’ skills sets.

As you discover new locations, you’ll also find new pets which you can charm, and they will follow the character who charmed them. The pets are very helpful in battle as they will attack enemies, and they will not cost you any action points whatsoever. In my case, four of my characters had the required skills set to charm an animal. Sometimes I needed a certain level in that skill (1-10) to charm an animal. For example, I had a wolf pet in my party, but I had to have one of my characters with the level 5 in the Animal Whisperer skill before I could charm it. There are foxes, cats, dogs, rabbits and even chicken robots to add as pets.    

The combat phases are cool. The battle will start when an enemy sees one or more of your characters in his/her/its (if it is a robot) field of vision, so it is essential to get as close as you can to them to see not only how many enemies there are but also what they are carrying in terms of weapons. Then you’ll need to place each of your soldiers strategically before you shoot at the enemy. If you are entering a combat phase while travelling in your Kodiak, you’ll be able to use your Kodiak during combat. If you are the one who initiates the fight, your party will start first, but if the enemy sees you first, not only they will start first but on some occasions they’ll shoot or hit you straight away before the first round. Each of your characters will have action points which you can use to move them around or activate other actions, such as shooting. You can rotate the map anytime you want to see where all the enemies are. After defeating all the enemies, you’ll be able to pick up some items from their corpses. Make sure to check every corner after a fight as you might find health, ammunition, grenades and large crates with exciting goodies in them.

The graphics are fabulous, whether you are in a location or travelling around Colorado in your Kodiak. Just a hint . . . if you see the Scorpion robot while travelling, be sure to have plenty of ammunition with you and that your party is well equipped, otherwise it will be a quick death. The soundtrack is excellent and I like the fact that occasionally a new song will start at a specific point or when you discover new places. The story is good and I experienced a few twists here and there during my 30 hours gameplay. It’s a brilliant game if you like the genre. I did encounter a few issues here and there but nothing drastic.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!