From my own experience, this game is great. Lore and story are interesting. NPCs have compelling backgrounds and if you dig deep enough around the game locations, you can find surprising things about them. Many people hate combat. Say it's repetitious. It does become somewhat of a chore after a while. But never dull. My way of dealing with it is to stop playing when I start feeling fatigued, and it works.

Now for your list:

1) Developers never claimed they were making open world game. Backers and people who bought it never wanted an open world game. We wanted something like original Wasteland or Fallout duology. And you get that here. There is a map you can travel freely, finding new locations, quests, etc. Just like in the above-mentioned games. Skyrim this is not, nor does it want to be. If that's what you're after, this is not the game you're looking for.

2) I've found the skill system to be diverse and very satisfying. No matter which skill-set I gave my characters, there was a way for them to use it. My Safecracking isn't on par with that safe? Use a stick of dynamite and some demolitions to pry it open. You might only get some broken glass and splinters of wood afterwards, but that's the risk you must be willing to take. No matter the obstacle, there are always multiple solutions. And that's what many RPGs are missing today. There is no hand holding either. This game treats you as a person who can puzzle it out, not a banana with an IQ of 7.

3) Loot system also hasn't failed me. There are all sorts of weapons. Pistols, SMGs, Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Sniper rifles, Heavy weapons, Energy weapons, Blunt and Bladed weapons. Pick your poison. Every time you get something new and shiny in the weapons department, you'll smile with glee. Most importantly, you'll have to work for good loot. Don't expect to be kitted out in the best armor and guns five minutes into the game. You won't even have access to a decent vendor before you prove yourself.

4) Graphics are serviceable. This is no AAA title, make no mistake. People this game is meant for don't care about texture size and shiny explosions. It's an isometric game, where you'll spend most of your time zoomed out. There is a lot of browns and greys - what do you expect from a post-apocalyptic game? - and the game actually pokes fun at itself for this once you suddenly find yourself in a location overgrown with green foliage and huge plants hell bent on murdering you. This kind of dark humor permeates everything: graphics, writing, locations (press "the button" inside Ranger Citadel Museum, I dare you.). Shadowrun has done better with Unity engine, I'll give you that.

5) People seem to forget that $3 million isn't all that much in game development terms. They've crammed a lot of content into the game for that kind of money. There are multiple paths for every quest. Meaningful C&C. Good writing. Lots of locations... You'll get at least 60 hours out of this game if you don't rush from one quest marker to another. Something I can't say for the AAA titles, which for eight zeroes often run only in single digits of playtime.

6) It's a sequel to the the title which invented post-apocalyptic RPG genre. If you like games in the vein of the first two Fallout titles, you'll be hooked to this as well. Even people who grew up with Infinity Engine will love it. It doesn't try to attract Mass Effect crowd or Elder Scrolls fans. And Wasteland 2 doesn't make apologies for that. It's a game targeting specific audience, funded by such an audience and made by such developer. It's not a "please all" game.

Exactly my method :)

Well I miss the ability to easily run up behind an unaware target and stab them or hose them down with an SMG to start the fight, it is very tricky to do in real-time. Funny thing is I instinctively slam the Spacebar just before I'm right next to the enemy expecting it to pause the game or something but instead... nothing (except for toggling the party control). Just stand around for another second until the enemy turns around and get the first shot in. Yeah ok, not exactly how I wanted it to work but at least we're in combat WOO!

A button to enter combat would be great. The leadership bonus does not seem to apply in real-time mode, so even more reason to have the ability to go into turn-based combat before the first shot or the AI reacts.

[i][/i] Okay...

I'm in!!!

:)

This isn't a fallout clone but it is similar too fallout tactics (I didn't like Tactics but I love this game). It is kinda open world, not in the sense of Fallout 1 or 2 but in the sense that you can come and go when you choice. I must be the only one that thinks the graphics are good and are fantastic for a 3 million dollar game. For the amount of time I've put into this game, I've come to see it as a clone of an very old game called Wasteland and an far better clone at that. I agree that this a game of the year for me too.

I do the same thing, as a matter of fact. It's a compromise, in lieu of an actual "start combat" button and it works most of the time.

Speaking of combat: has anyone noticed that enemies can move 2x or 3x farther than normal if the player initiates combat?

No matter where I place a sniper, an enemy will always reach him in his first move.

Enemies only seem to display this kind of "rocket in their ass" movement on their first move if the player initiates combat.

I find that aspect of combat just silly and frustrating. Enemies should not be able to freely walk up to a sniper's nose like that.
How are you at the prison after 4-6 hours of play? Well at that speed, I'm not surprised the writing doesn't appeal to you since you'd need at least 4-6 hours just to read the material that is from the beginning of the game to the prison - let alone play the actual game.

I just discovered the 'converse' glitch on the citadel nuke. It's not a glitch. Not really. In fact, it's hilarious. Much kudos to the devs for putting that in. Talk about an Easter egg. Wow.

What we have - it's pseudo-retro isometric turn-based squad tactical shooter with light RPG elements. Skill system is not good, it is simply overloaded, with parts that are not properly connected with each other. Weapon is the answer in most cases. Nationality and religion? Why are they here? No theft. No shadowwalking. Crouching? Oh, of course. It's a necessary part of any good RPG system :P

You can calculate the frequency of using word "Fallout" on devs' forum. Yes, nominally it's a sequel to Wasteland 1. But everyone knows who is the King of Post-Apocalypsis. And everyone knows where developers were targeting to. And they failed. Simply like that. So it's why this game is "hopeless". We'll keep waiting for the new King. This one is false pretender.

Average user and critic ratings are pretty damn high so I'd disagree with you about this game being a failure....if you go to Steam or Metacritic you'll see the gamers(user ratings) are more than happy with this game....sure some will always be upset no matter what bu all in all they've succeeded and made a game that's generally loved and accepted as good.

Being honest, this is more Wasteland than Fallout tactics. This game is so similar to the first one but with the formulas polished, heh, even the 1,000 times damned auto-save option of wasteland 1 was remade to 3 quick-saves slots plus auto-save plus your own saves.

The game let you go anywhere, and die quickly due you wasn't ready for that , as the first part. You use skills for everything (but this time, you don't increase a skill by using it, but... was so chaotic on the first game) and if you are careful then you can survive the wasteland with the Outdoors skill (Not Fallout Tactics bug). Your PC don't have personalities, only the NPC (as the first) and yet, the world is well made, there are so many jokes and reference to the real world (and Fallout 1m even a guy from the Citadel confuses the Chasise history as Fallout 1). The history is growing on the battles, you has many stores, even you can hear other rangers doing theirs works.

The way to begin the battles and the turns mechanism make so different than Fallout tactics (at least with the default configuration) that make me to die many times (Stupids giant rabbits plus my curiosity with the nuke).

Maybe my only problem is that you need to have at least 2 * Ass skills for having social solutions, and the ambush cannot be selected before a battle begin.

In general, this a old game game made on modern days, and its good.

Was my method too, but then... I discovered that you can fire with your sniper and assault riffles at same time... now are 3 bullets as my start combat button.

Thanks Rodor, I hear you. You speak for all disappointed people which aren´t blinded by nostalgia and see the game for what it really is. It doesn´t have right to be in the same sentence with Fallout. Fargo failed big time, lets hope he won´t screw Torment as badly.

I really think it's childish and not worth of my time to pay any attention to all of these schoolboyish Internet trifles, like "ratings", "likes", "tweets" and other crap ;)

So "let the dead bury their own dead".

fix old
no new

Just a few things that might make it easier for you. Try using keybindings instead of mouse-clickings for a lot of the actions. The function keys F1-F4 select your characters, space bar groups/solos the movement, X switches weapons, etc. (each action in the HUD has it's corresponding keystroke as part of its label to make it easy.)

To start combat you can simply click on the mob you want to attack and your party will attack it, before entering encounter mode. I usually get everyone into a relatively good starting position and then use whoever has a good shot (whether it is 1 or all 4 or 5 or 6 characters) to start combat. It's definitely taken me a handful of hours to get more comfortable with everything to make it function how I want it to function.

I actually do recommend starting over, depending how far you are into the game. I was wishing I had done something differently with my stats from the beginning after getting halfway through the Ag Center, forced myself to stay with it for a while until I was finally like "nah, it's okay to start over, you'll play through what you've played through relatively fast and you'll be happier for it." Guess what: I would have been KICKING MYSELF hard in the ass during my next playthrough had I not started over this time. I somehow missed Angela Deth at the beginning, probably because I was still getting used to the controls and camera movement (which after a little bit of a tussle with, I now LOVE how it works), not only did she have a bunch of enriching dialogue before she joined the group, but she JOINS the group and enriched the entire encounter at the radio tower to find Ace. Having her along there added so much richness to what was going on, I was taking it as a kind of weak early part of the game before she was with us, and it has largely changed how I felt about it.