It's a game design mistake. Without Angela, the game is ridiculously hard, but you have to know that she exists and you have to know to look for her there. Without her, you spend enough time in combat that you're going to have PCs dieing no mater what you do.

It's not a very gentle way of starting the player off and at least at the easiest level there ought to be something to clue people into the possibility that there's something over there. The goat at least has one of the rangers nudging you towards him and the can. Angela is just sort of standing off screen where you're not going to see her until you've already seen the Citadel door as well as the gateway to the main map.

I like the game, but the difference between seeing and not seeing here is unreasonably large. Especially considering that at that point in the game, players are likely to be raring to go out and explore the wastes.
I couldn't. That's part of the problem, without Angela, I was getting my ass handed to me if I dared to step foot in the Ag Center or Highpool.

Which is why I was complaining, the basic game as designed is really punishing if you're foolish enough to take their predefined characters and not find Angela.

The supreme nature of the skills over the stats isn't something that I expected and when I started to take that into consideration, things did improve, but it's completely counter-intuitive to expect.

re: "...but you have to know that she exists and you have to know to look for her there."

I think that a main part of playing crpgs is looking for things and finding them for yourself. I, in particular, don't want to be told where I have to go and what I have to do. Of course there's a risk I might miss something important. But if the game can't be failed, then it isn't worth playing - in my opinion. Anyhow, that's what saves and restores are for.

I appreciate that there are all kinds of players out there and some of them hate this aspect of a game. I think that people like that should wait a couple of weeks for the walkthroughs to be published.

I can understand where you're coming from and I agree that Angela makes too much of a difference in combat early on. However, Wasteland 2 is supposed to be a callback to old-school RPGs, which were also very unforgiving and fairly luck-dependent early on. That doesn't mean it's good game design, of course, just nostalgia speaking.

I would say, you assume that correctly. ;p

Now, honestly, I haven't lost any of my characters, so far (apart from that one occasion, where I wanted to see, how far I can get through a high-radiation field - it wasn't too far). ;)

Just to give you some cornerstones of my experience, to compare them with your own:

- I'm also playing on the easiest setting.

- First thing I picked up, was the shovel at Ace's burial...there is a lot of useful stuff to be found buried in the ground - all over the game.

- I haven't hesitated a fraction of a second, when Angela asked if she can join my team (of course, I knew who she was from the first Wasteland) - and of course I searched the whole area - but not because I knew, she would be there, but because that's what you're supposed to do in RPGs.

Let me tell you one thing - if you're not looking into every nook and cranny, you'll miss a lot of very useful stuff.

- I haven't created my own characters - I just took four of the pre-made ones (Cold-Eye, Pills, Cherry-Bomb and Fade).
Those have a fine selection of skills, which come very handy in the game.
Though I have to say, I almost regret not making characters with more strength (comes handy for carrying some of the better available armour - but then again...so far none of my team has died - regardless of the armour).

- I'm not very far into the game (just did the Radio Tower, Highpool, AG Center, Railroad Nomads, now at the start of the Leve Lup Mine).

I'd say, the game is far from perfect, there are a lot of things, I don't like that much, but I really cannot share your complaints about "dying is too easy".

I get that, but it does make me wonder why they have a mode that's ostensibly for people that aren't yet familiar with the genre that makes those sorts of assumptions.

Now that I've got Angela and I'm on a bit of a roll, the game does seem a too easy, but I think that they should have provided a bit more clues at that point to get players on board with that idea. At least for that easiest difficulty level.

Obviously, anybody playing on Super Jerk deserves whatever pain they get, but game modes for people that aren't assumed to have a lot of experience really ought to have some form of a hint.

And yes, you're absolutely right about exploration, I was just floored by how huge missing her was and the complete lack of hints about that. Later on in the game, I think that's reasonable, the more I play the more I start to get the logic, but early on is rather cruel.
If we were talking about the higher difficulty levels and/or it were later in the game, I think you'd have a point. But, this is an even bigger problem at the easiest difficulty level for people that wouldn't know to keep an eye out for loot at every opportunity.

I'd still not know she was there because the game doesn't provide any hints that there's anybody else there, she starts off screen and I don't recall seeing anybody hinting about Ace's girlfriend. I'll have to take a look about that, as I don't recall what they said the first time and the last half dozen times I was clicking as quickly as possible to get through the dialog.