The next episode in the History of Isometric CRPGs will likely be Age of Decadence. Timestamps for this video: Intro - 0:00 History - 1:12 Wasteland 1 review - 14:30 Character creation - 26:08 Combat - 38:11 Atmosphere - 47:30 Story - 54:07 Quests - 58:37 Conclusion - 1:09:20

Ah, manual based DRM - calling your friend's parents' house phone to tell you the 7th word on page 43. :D

"... percentages for hitting which I swear regularly lie" Me (a XCOM veteran): First time hmm.

Your work is giving me so much comfort these days. Thanks man

Wasteland 2 and 3 are now in my top favorite games along with underrail. Fallout 1 and 2 are my top favorite games and I didn't even grow up on them. I started with fallout 3 and New Vegas.

"everyone who wants a nuke, probably should not have one" AMEN, BROTHER :D

I have never played an isometric CRPG and I have still watched every video in this series and been thoroughly entertained. I LOVE the history and background you give at the start of these videos, it’s something other critique channels never do that I think is so cool. Thanks for making quality content during these hard times. Chris Davis rocks.

What a behemoth of a task you've put upon yourself, covering all these games. Great work so far. Looking forward to that Wasteland 3 video sometime in the future!

I can't watch right now, but Wasteland 2 and 3 have been the best two games I've played all year. Stoked to come back later.

Thank you for always putting out quality content. Much appreciated during the great boredom.

I sunk hours and hours into Wasteland back in the day. Still suffering from PTSD going through the sewers and eventually Base Cochise. Even after I finally beat the game I kept playing it over and over. Such fond memories

Thanks for these insightful videos Chris, these are like hidden treasure. Loving this CRPG critique series. Looking forward to your next projects :)

The Desert Rangers were already in Fallout 1 where you could find a follower that is one and tells you about them and were a nod to Wasteland, Fallout New Vegas just picked them up again saying they fused with the NCR Rangers, though i guess its easy to miss. Just wanted to point that out.

Just wanted to let you know I MASSIVELY appreciate your commitment for covering CRPGs. It will be incredibly useful for younger gamers to get a history lesson on CRPGs through your videos. Can't wait for your coverage on Pillars Of Eternity series.

I really appreciate how well researched and structured your videos are. You deserve far more views/subscribers than you have! Well done, great content :)

I rewatched this after seeing your Age of Decadence critique, and I noticed you haven’t made mention of Wasteland 3. A lot of your issues about this game is corrected in Wasteland 3 such as a distinguishing iconography. The combat in Wasteland 3 is a joy! The humor is outstanding. I would go so far as to say it’s my favorite of all the contemporary CRPGs, as evidenced I’m on my third playthrough on Supreme Jerk difficulty. I’d love to see a critique of Wasteland 3. It’s really one of the best CRPGs around, and I’ve played most of them.

Such a great watch! Going to binge the rest of the videos now

DaaMontaa! Aaaoooh! I bet Wearworlf Wolly would be hyped about the blue moon this Halloween.

Can't wait to play 3, I played nothing like 2 before and was hooked, great vid too

I remember backing Torment: Tides of Numenera, and getting this while doing so. Then of course I never finished either of them. They just never seemed to grab me like some of the other isometric RPGs in this series did. Still, pretty cool that both of those games exist!

So excited for this one!!! Love your critiques!

Great video. I just recently beat Wasteland 2. It was so well done. Tried to go back and play the first one and I just couldn’t get into it. Can’t wait for your next video!

I love your videos, Chris. Thank you for sharing

Speaking of Wasteland will you cover Wasteland 3?

Accourding to the wiki, Vargas dying at the end is the canon ending, which explains why you get an achievment/trophy for doing it in the console versions

You make great videos, hope you return to making more of them!

Another great episode!

Heck yeah man. Just what I needed

I love how you can end the game right when you gain access to ranger hq by interacting with the nuke launcher in the museum

Love your videos , keep it up!

That obscure password that you have to look in the museum for is just given to you if you save AG Center and have Rose.

I've completed this and Wasteland 3 in the last couple of years and despite their flaws I did enjoy both of them very much.

Next to Baldurs Gate 2, Wasteland 2 is my most loved CRPG ever made. It's just straight forward without being dumbed down. Great humour and a setting that's not used a lot in it's genre. I just love it. They did a great job with the third one too in my opinion

enjoying the content! Subbed!

amazing episode. those vast empty spaces are amazing atmo-building elements that many AAA and AA devs (and tbh many gamers alike) often treat as a nuisance and filler content, clumping everything around w stuff and content instead. and those level design choices (or capabilities) make perfect sense in wastelands world-building

That winking guard made anxious every time he was on screen

"CLASSIC" (=SPECIAL)... i never realized that. Mind blown.

I'm pretty sure Bobby and Rex are a reference to the post apocalyptic film "A boy and his dog" (which is based on a book with the same name). In Wasteland 2, Sean Bergin comments on their grave: "A dog and his boy, together forever".

Great video! Thanks a lot

Thank you so much for this video. It definitely helped me decide if I should get this or not.

You really did this series justice considering how old it is. I have older books (Alternity) on creating table top scenarios for sci fi stories like this and I would love to see a d20 style adventure in this vein one day but maybe with space travel and such. Perhaps a wasteland style table top is just waiting to explode in popularity, the remake of the original basically looks like you moving a figurine across a table top map. I have to look into this deeper, but would love to see you relate the old school system that wasteland used to avoid using SRD and having to go through the licensing costs of making a game with that system. Very cool stuff. I believe a video discussing the issue of speech in fallout being overpowered talks about this and I find it fascinating. There was so much they wanted to bake into the dialogue and cities systems to gamify them that has been scrapped over the years. Still to this day we have this static speech skiil dominating a large chunk of these games because of this early design limitation of the computers running Wasteland. Pretty funny really. But you see in the new Wastelands there are multiple speech skills I have yet to try this out. I think a lot of speech checks in games like this would be better if they had to be unlocked by certain interactions with the game world. But I digress, the success of Wasteland shows there is a hunger out there for a classic table top style experience in a scifi setting and I hope more devs get into the style, hopefully not cloning, but innovating on these unique complexities. Fun fact: a nuclear waste containment facility had an emergency leak once because the manager had changed the cat litter to an organic brand that did not have the proper amount of a certain rock type to contain rads. I love realism in video games.

I find there to be a surprising lack of quality Wasteland content on KZfaq, this was absolutely great, well done man!

Funny you make a joke about your "Boring voice" in the video where I found it the most engaging. I mean, the quality of your scripts has always been incredible, but your voice, or more like your tone, is actually getting better and better.

glad to see how wasteland 3 fixed or changed most of the problem you talked about I would say the skills become too easy now (20 and easily spread across 4 main rangers), but as an OCD, it does sooth me when I can basically open everything in 1 go (and I didn't care about replayability so this doesn't bother me)

I thank you for your unrelenting devotion to this series despite its mediocre view count. I cherish every episode of this and I can't wait for you to play the upcoming games like DOS2 and Disco Elysium. DE is a top 3 game for me and I have a feeling you'll take a liking to it as well

El mejor género de video juegos de la historia y le estas dando una serie de videos ejemplares. Sos un genio, saludos desde argentina

so, I just realized that the gol of this series is to examine rpgs chronologically... does it mean Wasteland 3 review will come around not soon?

It's funny that a lot of your issuess (guaranteed success on skill check when level is high enough, modding weapon with fire or energy weapons) were implemented in wasteland 3

yooooo im so early love ur videos keep up the good work!

This was my first introduction to a isometric crpg I had never really played one like this before this game is definitely going to be a classic in the years to come there is not one other title in the Xbox One library that can compare to this game a modern-day Fallout 3 Midas a lot of the character and backbone that made Fallout great but it is still a great and worthy modern successor

Another thing I kind of enjoyed were the ebooks the gog version came with, kinda helps you getting into the setting.

I love these games because I grew up in the tri state area around Needles CA, Bullhead City AZ and Laughlin NV/Las Vegas.

I liked this game. After a false start at the 2nd difficulty level, I played at the highest one, as a trade for the concession I made to myself when I used a build guide for min-maxing my team through characters creation and possible companions selection later. This last element was a bit tricky, but I managed not to spoil the game for me, as I didn't need to use a guide beyond the characters creation screen by opting for a formation that left me with multiple available choices, in order to complete my team with the roles I had left to fill (basically brawlers and/or energy weapons users and/or hackers). Based on what you say about your playthrough, I think that's the way the game is supposed to be played, at the highest difficulty. Given no personal time constraints, without consulting a guide to build your team, when you can afford to fail multiple times on your own: basically upping the combat difficulty to the max level, when min-maxing is required if you want to also benefit from the other skills available (utility skills in particular, that give access to the best gear you can get in the game). For me, on the other hand, the "worst" part of the game was its length: I'd have liked it more if both the Arizona and the California parts were around 2/3 of the length they were. When played as a completionist, the cobination of the two halves of this game takes too much time to run through, and the gameplay started to drag a bit too much even for someone who's used to play RPGs this way, as I am. Thanks for this series!

Hate to be that guy, but the Rangers in fallout made their origins in Fallout 1 not New Vegas. One of your companions was a ranger in that game and he was one big Easter egg to this series basically

Discovered your channel via deep diving for CRPG content. I then noticed you're a Peep Show fan...El Dude Brothers unite!

Only vaguely heard of Wasteland. This game looks really good. I always liked the turn based gun combat in games like XCOM.

Fucking LOVED wasteland 2 directors cut. Such a well executed game. Satisfy's the okd school rpg thirst

holy shit best vids for sleeping

I can’t wait for a video on that Planescape torment spiritual successor

Im so fucking ready. Thx chris

I was a backer of Wasteland 2. But I never played the first one. I was more interested as a disappointed fan of old school Fallout games who did not like the direction Bethesda was going with it

Lol The Desert Rangers are basically the Minutemen form fallout 4 done right.

You seem to like these sorts of turn based combat systems, so I wonder if you would enjoy something like Jagged Alliance or the X-COM series. You know, stuff that isn't exactly an RPG, but uses a similar stat derived, turn based combat.

Out of curiosity I've checked how much time I've spent in Wasteland 2... it was 127.6 hours (pre Director's Cut) - that's quite a lot! Thank you for this video and bringing back the memories.

You sound rather young given your first gaming experiences, I might be younger in age but still got to try the C64, the Atari 2600 and some Pongsoles from relatives. Love your videos and well done research, good CRPGs pop back every now and then (hoping you eventually get to play Disco Elysium) but living the first days of OG CRPGs and early home consoles was something else for sure.

58:00 he's not the only one you can sacrifice. By the end I still had the Topekan chieftain with me and he volunteered to flip the switch

Radioing in for level ups allows you to restrict your level and keep you from overleveling or even going beyond level one, which leads to some interesting challenges

Do you have a list of games you're going to do for the series? Wondering if UnderRail is on it? It's best Fallout successor there's ever been imo

Ah, Faran Brygo and Bryan Fargo. What a bloke. 😂

In my first playthrough I kitted my team with great weapons, cheap as chips too. Thought I'd been so smart and made great choices. Then I went into combat and my guns would jam like every time I fired. Then I looked at their stats and they said like 99% chance to jam. I think that was the moment I fell in love with the Wasteland games 😂

To what you said at the 8:30 ish mark, yup. I was a backer & proud of it, well worth the 25 year wait. If Wasteland 2 had a weakness it was that the 2nd half of the game was less developed/fleshed out then the 1st half. I wish they'd remake the original Wasteland as opposed to it being a remaster. With regards to the Highpool & Ag Center, there's actually a 3rd ("hidden") option.

I'm looking back on this after Baldurs gate 3 release where crpgs are starting to get more notice again and I've had a few friends borrow my copies of wasteland 2&3 after playing bg3 so we're starting to see the genre pick up steam again and I've been helping people play through divinity 1&2 as well who knows maybe we'll get a wasteland 4 or something I'm hopeful that I'm on the precipice of a new golden age of crpgs

Dam need more

Pillars of Eternity 1 + 2, Tyranny, Disco Elysium. Got a big list left.

Wasteland 2 is my favorite in the series.

"Servants of the Mushroom Cloud", the password is "NRC", "Big Boss" being the big shot in Las Vegas.... seems kinda familiar

Welp I'm done with this series(so far). I appreciate you doing this. I'm a JRPG guy but like you am wanting to play Divinity Original Sin II. Also like you i like playing stuff from before so playing new games won't age classics. I think I'll play Fallout planescape and possibly baldurs gate 2. Anyway i was camping while watching most of this. That said I didn't notice before but I keep hearing a bird noise. I musta accepted it as..well birds outside my tent bit i watched the last two videos at home and still hear it so i gotta know what it is lol. Anyway thanks again I'm excited to browse the rest of your channel.

I played Wasteland 2 after Divinity and Pillars and it felt very tame/flat compared to them and I only made it about halfway through before I got bored and gave up, Wasteland 3 does look a lot better so I might give that a chance when I am done with Kingmaker. I look forward to hearing what you think of Divinity 2 and Disco Elysium, some of the best games I ever played.

Was wondering if you planned on covering this one..

you have to get around to make the Wasteland 3 video some time ;D

I totally see what you mean on the faults on wasteland 2, and one hand totally agree with your list, and at the same time- like the faults. Its wierd... i don't know, i think i really like the fact it makes you really work and think around its limitations and lay outs, i don't know, its not often that i actually kinda like faults lol. The quirks are definitely weird, but can be fun

I gave my hacker/medic way of the squeezins, and she was dead weight for a lot of fights, but when I got to damonta all I had to do was pop a snake squeezins and hack half the robots

I missed this oldschool back in the day as was pretty poor only had a spectrum then went straight to sega megadrive. Recently played wasteland 3 and despite how short it was really enjoyed the world. I remember playing a game called fallout tactics 4. Is there a link creatively?

hell yeah

Could you imagine if Project Zomboid 2 has these graphics? I swear the combat phase looks like a 4k hd version of PZ

Damn, I can see how they fixed some of the critisisms in this video on Wasteland 3.

+1 for having a character named Super Hans haha

Im on my second playthrough and i cant believe i forgot how much of a pain the Whitier ambush was. This playthrough is on my Switch so its not like i can use console commands to cheese this one part

okay, a history of the Dark Alliance and Norath games?

I dunno if you realised this at some point, but intelligence is only the most important attribute for the skill monkey character. Essentially, the character you dump most utility skills onto. (Lockpicking, safecracking, toaster repair, etc.) The actual most important attributes are coordination and speed. Coordination for Action Points, Speed for how far you can actually go in terms of movement with said action points. So basically, a medic, close range weapon specialist and brawlers/melee users need both as much as they need air to breathe.

Chris Chris Chris Chris !

rip irvine. currently on fire rn as we speak.

Question Chris, is Disco Elysium going to be part of this series? After all is pretty much a crpg but without combat

Woo! DX:HR!

I found Wasteland update on Xbox to be nearly unplayable.

I would pay out the nose for a modernization of the original and wasteland 2 to bring it up to wasteland 3 graphics.

Edit: "5 years to make, of which 3 years of development" perhaps? From concept/Eureka! moment through financing and getting to the start of programming isn't always done in a fortnite. Snake Vargas is no Minuteman, he has scripted missions - none of this "radiant" 2nd rate Minuteman malarky. Pah.. Nice to see this getting some love, deserves a place in any isometric collection.

Could you do uh... Tyranny a Isometric CPRG by Obsidian? Sorry to bother you, but thank you for looking at this and giving me the time to bother you about it.

Did anyone check out the switch port since it got the most recent patch? Is there still a huge delay after button inputs?

I have zero interest in these games, but I enjoy hearing you talk about them 😊