Wasteland 3: a very short review

Wasteland 3 is (obviously) the third volume of the Wasteland video game series.

I played the earlier games in the series many years ago and so I was familiar with the basic structure: you command a squad through various adventures in a post-apocalyptic Western USA setting, completing a series of quests that typically involve a certain amount of turn-based combat. As your team members level up, they acquire improved skills and can scavenge materials from the world and construct improved tools, weapons, and armor.

Wasteland 3 is very story rich, with many many characters and side quests and locations. Along the way, you end up being forced to make various choices, which drives the game toward an overall conclusion. As befits a game with such a bleak story in such a grim setting, the outcomes are pretty unhappy but you do get a chance for an uplifting result here and there (for example, I bonded with the hard-luck characters Lucia Wesson and Marshal Kwon).

I played Wasteland 3 over a period of about 6 months, at times taking breaks of several weeks due to other Real World Issues that were occupying my time. I think Wasteland 3 is best if played in a fairly dense time slot, because keeping all the various characters and storylines in your head is complex and if you forget who's who the game becomes pretty disorienting. So near the end I was just kind of flailing around to finish it.

I also somehow picked up the edition of Wasteland 3 which contained several large add-on features, with large additional map areas and large additional story lines. I rather liked the Steeltown add-on, but didn't have as much interest in the Cult of the Holy Detonation add-on, which I thought was silly and bizarre.

A particularly strong part of Wasteland 3 is the soundtrack, which is full of remakes of various old Americana music from all genres. It's very tongue-in-cheek, and very effective. Each time you face a "boss" battle, the game plays a special song, and more than once I dragged out the battle in order to continue listening to the crazy funny songs.

Wasteland 3 is certainly not for everyone, but it was fine entertainment for me.