Wasteland 3
analyzed 2026-10-20 · sample of 626 English reviews across the whole review history
Players consistently praise the story and writing, with the narrative and characters giving many a reason to keep playing. The dark humor and quirky tone land well, and the branching consequences of player choice draw frequent approval. Combat is often called fun and well integrated with exploration, and the soundtrack is a standout, drawing almost no criticism. Build variety, replayability, and the world itself also come up favorably. Criticism clusters around technical problems. Bugs are the most-mentioned negative theme, with reports of quests that never progress and DLC content disappearing. Performance and stability draw similar complaints, including frame rates dropping sharply and crashes on startup. The interface and balance also attract negative comment, with enemies described as "bullet sponges" in harder fights. Opinion splits on multiplayer, which draws both praise and criticism, and on price and value, where sale pricing is a common recommendation. Game length divides players, some finding it short and others reporting dozens of hours without nearing the end. DLC and developer conduct are recurring points of dissatisfaction, while difficulty, voice acting, and atmosphere are generally received well.
quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 30% · ± is the sampling uncertainty around each share
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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story
107 positive · 20 negative · 12 mixed · 3 neutral
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Good story line and smooth game play
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the storyline and charachters just give it that reason to spend hours in it.
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story richness will keep you immersed and invested in your characters.
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bugs
6 positive · 121 negative · 12 mixed · 1 neutral
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Also it was kinda buggy cause the dlc disappeared at a certain point and i was loved by everybody but the final screen didnt aknowledge that.
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Bugs always happen in combat typically one of your followers "turn" just never ends or progresses so you are stuck forever and have to revert back to a previous save.
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Gamebreaking bugs for the co-op.
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combat
90 positive · 23 negative · 13 mixed · 7 neutral
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Think the humour of Fallout with the battles of XCom.
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otherwise awesome game - 5 stars - great turn based rpg, deep customisation and very replayable.
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you like guns? you like merica?
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writing
78 positive · 16 negative · 5 mixed · 1 neutral
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Think the humour of Fallout with the battles of XCom.
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The writing has the same quirkiness as WL 2 did, and gameplay feels familiar enough too.
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And its dark humor made me laugh, that’s something very rare.
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player choice
77 positive · 14 negative · 5 mixed · 1 neutral
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The plot is good, the voice acting is good, the choices are deep, the party synergy starts off hard but ends up panning out.
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One of the best parts of the game is the quality of the moral dilemmas presented to the players: the options are almost never "good" versus "evil", but in most cases it's a choice between two different kinds of evil, and the choices produce branching effects on the game story.
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Lots of different weapons to try out, lots of enemies to fight, and lots of factions that you have to decide how to interact with to best complete the game.
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gameplay
51 positive · 10 negative · 3 mixed · 1 neutral
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Good story line and smooth game play
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The story, gameplay, and graphics are great, but exploration on the overworld did not feel very rewarding.
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Totally get the comments about outdated humor and, despite that, this game scratches that RPG itch like few can.
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price value
30 positive · 21 negative · 6 mixed · 3 neutral
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worth every penny.
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Its a solid 10-20 Dollar pickup.
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I fully recommend giving this game your time, it's fully worth it.
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characters
40 positive · 12 negative · 6 mixed · 1 neutral
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the storyline and charachters just give it that reason to spend hours in it.
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story richness will keep you immersed and invested in your characters.
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4/5 NPC, Enemies, Dialogues, Environment "the feely touchy stuff" was pretty great imo
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music
54 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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The game has a flawless soundtrack, and you have a broad selection of skills and tactics to use to solve your problems, the game balances well social, exploration and combat skills.
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No doubt, this game is great in many aspects: a deep story, graphics, music, lots of jokes.
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A last note on the soundtrack, that is truly memorable.
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performance
5 positive · 43 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Was like 20 minutes into a battle and the framerate decides to dip to like 4 fps and stay there.
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The other one was getting 20 fps after going into the inventory this would randomly happen and would force me to reload.
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Personally, I ended up buying this game twice because it can barely run on the PS4 pro.
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see more
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world
37 positive · 11 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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lovin the post apocalyptic theme.
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-The story and the settings are great, characters are cool and detailed.
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4/5 NPC, Enemies, Dialogues, Environment "the feely touchy stuff" was pretty great imo
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multiplayer
21 positive · 22 negative · 3 mixed · 1 neutral
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If a game, their words, started development on a co-op basis and it's still in this state after 2 years this people don't deserve your money.
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The game is completely bugged when playing with two people.
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Multiplayer is completely broken as of May 30th, 2022. If one player hosts a game, and the 2nd player runs out of ammo in combat and attempts to reload the weapon the game nothing is responsive, and at that point the only option is to load your game.
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progression
24 positive · 13 negative · 8 mixed · 1 neutral
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Really simplified the skills which was my main complaint about WL2. Love the plot, love the dynamic story summary.
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Character progression offers so many options and provides a great sense of advancement. Combat is seamlessly integrated in the exploration phase and it never feels grindy; actually, the large variety of weapons helps to keep the combat fresh.
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Perks play a larger role in combat that feels seamless to the core gameplay. However, the mechanics of Armor class feel almost pointless at times and feels like it plays only to the …
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replayability
35 positive · 7 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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didn't get bored during the replay, that's something
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otherwise awesome game - 5 stars - great turn based rpg, deep customisation and very replayable.
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I got 40+ hours out of single playthrough and the game does have replay value.
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game length
10 positive · 21 negative · 3 mixed · 8 neutral
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3) The game is short, could be longer with more side quests, and the leveling system is cool, but could have more deep abilities in the skill “trees”.
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70 hrs and still not close to the end.
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On top of that the game is extremely short and makes it abundantly clear that is with the way the story is set up.
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build variety
29 positive · 7 negative · 5 mixed · 0 neutral
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Fun after figuring out how to link up in game and best builds for mains and supporting characters.
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The game has a flawless soundtrack, and you have a broad selection of skills and tactics to use to solve your problems, the game balances well social, exploration and combat skills.
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Love the pyro gunslinger build. Overall a fantastic game I look forward to playing again in the future.
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graphics
31 positive · 8 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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No doubt, this game is great in many aspects: a deep story, graphics, music, lots of jokes.
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The story, gameplay, and graphics are great, but exploration on the overworld did not feel very rewarding.
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Much better production values, good story and most quirks of the old game removed.
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ui
6 positive · 31 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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2) The game does not save your selection mode, if you are selecting just one character or the hole party (with spacebar) and for some reason you quicksave and quickload, the game load the game with the hole party selected, this is kinda frustrating, but does not happen often.
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But in the second half of the story it increasingly became boring and the interface got more and more annoying.
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I also wish I had a quest marker telling you where to go to do the quests/missions.
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balance
4 positive · 29 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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-game is balanced around having a party of 6
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4) In harder fights the enemies are bullet sponges and usually one shot you, I finished the game in supreme jerk, but by using dirty tactics like using Morningstar has bait while I was hidden behind it.
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However, the mechanics of Armor class feel almost pointless at times and feels like it plays only to the detriment of the player as you can have 40 armor and still get one tapped by some …
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quest design
18 positive · 14 negative · 3 mixed · 0 neutral
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That said, the individual quests put you in areas that do, to some extent.
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Really nice TRPG experience with nice narrative driven quests, storylines and conversations.
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Sidequests have a good range, some of them are very crazy while others are very serious, but most have this really nice spilt of crazy and serious, it makes the setting feel so much better.
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content amount
15 positive · 17 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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I also feel like 40-50 hours of content is a little to low for a crpg maybe ive just been spoiled by other cprgs that have given me 80 to 100 hours of content but even with that feeling i …
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- Bits and pieces of unfinished side content
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And too many fights, waaaaay too much loot, there is literally a category of stuff called "junk".
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stability
3 positive · 24 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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A few hardlocking one's that needed to be resolved with a reload.
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It crashed the moment I got control of my character.
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Crashes unless you change your CPU core settings.
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difficulty
15 positive · 6 negative · 3 mixed · 3 neutral
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I love playing this game (on easiest setting).
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+ 4 different difficulty levels, so anyone can play this
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The world, characters, and overall writing of this game was an excellent pairing with its brutal difficulty -- especially on higher difficulties.
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dlc
8 positive · 11 negative · 6 mixed · 0 neutral
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DLC came out as greedy pieces of garbage and just recently they are basically ignoring the bug for current MacOs system (that has been discovered 3 months back) that completely breaks the game.
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If you're looking for a game with a good story, engaging combat (except for the "Cult of the Holy Detonation" DLC part), and enough wacky jokes to keep you entertained for hours on end, then Wasteland 3 is the game for you.
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The base game is fantastic but the dlc blows.
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voice acting
19 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The plot is good, the voice acting is good, the choices are deep, the party synergy starts off hard but ends up panning out.
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Acting was great. Over feeling was great.
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Voice acting is on point, from very funny robot voices, to crazy clowns, to badass characters, voice range is very impressive.
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customization
14 positive · 5 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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otherwise awesome game - 5 stars - great turn based rpg, deep customisation and very replayable.
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I loved the weapons modifications and the synergy with skills and perk. Love the pyro gunslinger build.
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You can be a cute gay punk couple with a pet cat that wrecks face and wears a modest cowboy hat
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developer conduct
5 positive · 14 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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I had big hopes for this game due to my enjoyment in playing Fallout 1 and 2, but it seems to me that this game takes combat aspects of XCOM and mixes it in a world that is Fallout in name only, probably to attracts fans.
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If there was even limited access for console commands some of this could be fixed by the player since it would seem the developer has no plans to fix the game.
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If a game, their words, started development on a co-op basis and it's still in this state after 2 years this people don't deserve your money.
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learning curve
3 positive · 9 negative · 4 mixed · 3 neutral
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All-in-all I enjoyed the game after giving it a second shot and really take my time with how to handle the game as its not very good at giving the player directions.
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Just wish I knew what I was doing.
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Expect to fail at choosing the "proper" skill composition for your team while testing in the first few initial tries - I failed 2-3 times until I started to get the point and created a team with which I completed a playthrough.
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atmosphere
15 positive · 1 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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That game does not forgive mistakes, but is very atmospheric and addictive.
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The game is pretty violent, but in a campy horror movie kind of way that mostly I found funny.
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Some games are still made with a soul, and Brian Fargo's games never lacked the (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy) content, atmosphere and tactics.
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ai behavior
1 positive · 14 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Thats cool, really cool, but then you fight an enemy with endless supply of heals and turrets and bots and grenades.
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… because the game can't follow it's own rules at best, one of my mission critical AI companions decided to kill themselves because this game's AI is atrocious (i have literally watched one of my pets kill themselves before on the damage field from a hacked turret by using their turn to run in …
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3) smarter AI on the pets. Missions where I needed to capture people (not kill them) the pets would just kill everyone.
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animation
3 positive · 9 negative · 3 mixed · 0 neutral
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The combat system is solid, though if there was a way to speed up the combat animations I couldn't find it so it was too slow.
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Slow animations with no options to speed them up.
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-2) [BUG] Sound sometimes cuts out or animations don't play (NPCs slide around the field without animating)
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pacing
5 positive · 9 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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But in the second half of the story it increasingly became boring and the interface got more and more annoying.
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Steeltown's new shielding system and non-lethal combat just slowed down the game terribly, as did the Cult's new radiation mechanic.
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But sadly the main quest is very underdone and halfbaked and has issues much larger than just poor pacing and writing.
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addictiveness
12 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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That game does not forgive mistakes, but is very atmospheric and addictive.
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clicked play then next thing i remember is that its 4 in the morning.
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The game is so addictively fun that I forgot to eat for three days straight.
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exploration
8 positive · 3 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Good combat and plenty of exploration and extra areas to find if you take the time.
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… can be tamed with the appropriate skill, tons of weapons and armours which you can mod, plenty of places to explore (the game always rewards you for exploring every nook and cranny), some lore and collectables to hunt, unique and crazy loot, a crafting system, many encounters and decisions to …
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Nothing beats Wasteland 1 on exploration and replayability.
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sound design
6 positive · 5 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Sounds are also amazing, the weapon sounds make combat so more immersive.
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Sound and voiced dialogue: 9/10.
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Gameplay is fun, story is decent, the sound design is great, and the writing is fairly good.
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controls
2 positive · 8 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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It took me a bit of time to understand that I can rotate 360 degrees the view (in 90 degrees steps) when in fights or just wandering around areas - Q or E as keys for this.
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A lot of commands are not very responsive.
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Once, I also had a huge graphical glitch on the world map and heavily delayed or unresponsive commands.
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level design
4 positive · 7 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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You repeatedly must go over the same places over and over again, even to reach your own HQ.
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This is because theirs not that much of challenge when it comes to the overall layout of levels, most of the time its just the same coverbased level layouts that don't expect the player to learn different ways to handle their team.
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I do wish the game was a little less linear, and while having an entire team of customizable PCs makes for interesting mixed strategies in combat, it encourages making …
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lore
6 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 2 neutral
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I find my self sifting through lore more than playing sometimes.
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has coop, build variety and really cool story and lore options to go thru.
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Amazing lore and gamer friendly script.
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updates
2 positive · 5 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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This is after me waiting months for them to patch this ♥♥♥♥.
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This game has a ridiculous amount of game breaking bugs and even 4 years later they've refused to patch and fix it.
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Too bad this game is abandoned and broken.
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mods
2 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Next installment: fix or warn players that if they mod the low level guns early on there won't be any good weapon mods left for the good guns later in the game.
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The mod system is terrible and discourages you from experimenting with your loadouts entirely.
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I realize now the bad section is a lot longer than the good, don't get me wrong I love this game, I just feel strongly about the two major flaws and I feel they constantly degrade the rest of the experience by being what feels easy fixes if the devs would let people mod the game.
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Review timeline
monthly peak 2,803 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2020 | 1,334 | 1,052 | 282 | 79% | |
| Sep 2020 | 2,803 | 2,315 | 488 | 83% | |
| Oct 2020 | 568 | 469 | 99 | 83% | |
| Nov 2020 | 708 | 640 | 68 | 90% | |
| Dec 2020 | 559 | 464 | 95 | 83% | |
| Jan 2021 | 432 | 361 | 71 | 84% | |
| Feb 2021 | 220 | 184 | 36 | 84% | |
| Mar 2021 | 156 | 130 | 26 | 83% | |
| Apr 2021 | 638 | 530 | 108 | 83% | |
| May 2021 | 269 | 230 | 39 | 86% | |
| Jun 2021 | 291 | 225 | 66 | 77% | |
| Jul 2021 | 335 | 251 | 84 | 75% | |
| Aug 2021 | 150 | 118 | 32 | 79% | |
| Sep 2021 | 172 | 142 | 30 | 83% | |
| Oct 2021 | 323 | 266 | 57 | 82% | |
| Nov 2021 | 373 | 322 | 51 | 86% | |
| Dec 2021 | 727 | 632 | 95 | 87% | |
| Jan 2022 | 610 | 530 | 80 | 87% | |
| Feb 2022 | 334 | 296 | 38 | 89% | |
| Mar 2022 | 150 | 128 | 22 | 85% | |
| Apr 2022 | 223 | 189 | 34 | 85% | |
| May 2022 | 197 | 166 | 31 | 84% | |
| Jun 2022 | 236 | 202 | 34 | 86% | |
| Jul 2022 | 263 | 234 | 29 | 89% | |
| Aug 2022 | 138 | 121 | 17 | 88% | |
| Sep 2022 | 198 | 162 | 36 | 82% | |
| Oct 2022 | 175 | 137 | 38 | 78% | |
| Nov 2022 | 162 | 143 | 19 | 88% | |
| Dec 2022 | 269 | 233 | 36 | 87% | |
| Jan 2023 | 248 | 215 | 33 | 87% | |
| Feb 2023 | 160 | 139 | 21 | 87% | |
| Mar 2023 | 178 | 153 | 25 | 86% | |
| Apr 2023 | 145 | 119 | 26 | 82% | |
| May 2023 | 146 | 126 | 20 | 86% | |
| Jun 2023 | 98 | 85 | 13 | 87% | |
| Jul 2023 | 292 | 235 | 57 | 80% | |
| Aug 2023 | 133 | 119 | 14 | 89% | |
| Sep 2023 | 79 | 72 | 7 | 91% | |
| Oct 2023 | 79 | 69 | 10 | 87% | |
| Nov 2023 | 103 | 91 | 12 | 88% | |
| Dec 2023 | 131 | 108 | 23 | 82% | |
| Jan 2024 | 95 | 71 | 24 | 75% | |
| Feb 2024 | 117 | 101 | 16 | 86% | |
| Mar 2024 | 104 | 86 | 18 | 83% | |
| Apr 2024 | 167 | 139 | 28 | 83% | |
| May 2024 | 186 | 164 | 22 | 88% | |
| Jun 2024 | 90 | 74 | 16 | 82% | |
| Jul 2024 | 101 | 85 | 16 | 84% | |
| Aug 2024 | 95 | 79 | 16 | 83% | |
| Sep 2024 | 105 | 92 | 13 | 88% | |
| Oct 2024 | 160 | 130 | 30 | 81% | |
| Nov 2024 | 95 | 86 | 9 | 91% | |
| Dec 2024 | 137 | 113 | 24 | 82% | |
| Jan 2025 | 115 | 96 | 19 | 83% | |
| Feb 2025 | 66 | 60 | 6 | 91% | |
| Mar 2025 | 85 | 72 | 13 | 85% | |
| Apr 2025 | 63 | 57 | 6 | 90% | |
| May 2025 | 69 | 61 | 8 | 88% | |
| Jun 2025 | 68 | 57 | 11 | 84% | |
| Jul 2025 | 70 | 61 | 9 | 87% | |
| Aug 2025 | 93 | 77 | 16 | 83% | |
| Sep 2025 | 69 | 58 | 11 | 84% | |
| Oct 2025 | 75 | 69 | 6 | 92% | |
| Nov 2025 | 55 | 45 | 10 | 82% | |
| Dec 2025 | 117 | 93 | 24 | 79% | |
| Jan 2026 | 97 | 74 | 23 | 76% | |
| Feb 2026 | 77 | 65 | 12 | 84% | |
| Mar 2026 | 50 | 41 | 9 | 82% | |
| Apr 2026 | 78 | 68 | 10 | 87% | |
| May 2026 | 54 | 44 | 10 | 81% | |
| Jun 2026 | 68 | 58 | 10 | 85% | |
| Jul 2026 | 83 | 69 | 14 | 83% | |
| Aug 2026 | 65 | 49 | 16 | 75% | |
| Sep 2026 | 74 | 57 | 17 | 77% | |
| Oct 2026 | 40 | 33 | 7 | 82% |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- 626 English reviews, time-proportional draw over 75 windows (newest-first within each), taken from an all-language walk and kept English-only — where English is a minority the sample runs smaller than the draw, and every margin of error is computed at 626
- Aspect yield
- 438 of 626 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (70.0%); every share on this page divides by all 626
- Interval regime
- calm: standard margins of error for a share of a sample (Wilson interval), no widening needed
- Fetch paths
- 75 time windows fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,000 fetched: english 628 · russian 95 · schinese 48 · 19 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20261020T202653Z-de68d4df · code 798e06c
full methodology in the milestone write-ups