Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Wasteland 3 starts with your Desert Rangers desperate for supplies and quickly turns that need into a long series of compromises. You are sent to Colorado to help the Patriarch deal with his rebellious children, but the game does not let that assignment stay simple for long. The early pull comes from realizing that nearly every faction has enough understandable motives to make a clean decision feel suspicious.

Combat is deliberate, turn-based squad tactics with action points governing movement, attacks, reloads, and abilities. Cover, firing lanes, and weapon range matter, so a careless advance can leave a Ranger exposed or waste a turn getting into position. It is satisfying when a plan comes together, particularly once your party has distinct jobs instead of six broadly similar shooters. You are encouraged to make those distinctions through attributes, perks, equipment, and skills.

Those skills are valuable well beyond battle. Dialogue, exploration, and object interactions repeatedly reward a team with specialists, which gives character building real consequences rather than making it a private numbers game. Story companions and custom Rangers can join the roster, while Ranger HQ staffing and Kodiak upgrades give the campaign a welcome sense of growing reach. The Kodiak can even enter combat, a fun twist that makes the vehicle feel like more than a travel menu.

There is friction in the pacing. Conversations, inventory decisions, skill checks, and squad development are central to the experience, not quick stops between firefights. If you want uninterrupted tactical action, the frequent returns to dialogue and management may wear thin. But if you like taking ownership of a party and living with the results of its strengths and blind spots, that slower rhythm is where the game gets its teeth.

Two-player online co-op lets you share the campaign with another person, though this is not a couch co-op game. For a useful point of comparison, Fallout 2 shares the darkly comic, faction-heavy post-apocalyptic spirit, while Wasteland 3 puts you directly in command of a full tactical squad.

Graphics

Colorado looks appropriately miserable and strange from its high, diagonal camera. A snowy forest battle frames damaged vehicles and burning barricades against cold blue ground, while a towering yellow-legged robot throws bright blue electricity into the chaos. The contrast makes fights feel sharp and hostile even when the small squad figures are competing with debris and effects for attention.

The game is far more memorable when it leans into grotesque color. One indoor fight surrounds armored combatants with a giant skull-faced clown statue, pink candles, wrapped gifts, floor fire, neon arrows, and pigs strapped with explosives. It is funny, nasty, and exactly the kind of absurd image that keeps Colorado from becoming another drab wasteland. Busy rooms can get visually crowded from that elevated view, but the weird details are worth the clutter.

Story

The campaign works because it refuses to treat Colorado as a problem waiting for righteous Rangers to solve it. The Patriarch offers Arizona the supplies it desperately needs, but his request puts you in the middle of family rebellion, factional grievances, and competing ideas about what stability costs. You can influence Colorado and the campaign’s outcomes through your choices, and the game is strongest when it makes every available answer feel compromised in a different way.

Its humor is dark enough to make you laugh at an awful situation, then reconsider why you laughed. That tone will not land for everyone, especially when the game places absurdity next to uncomfortable moral choices, but it gives the writing bite. Colorado feels less like a checklist of saintly allies and cartoon villains than a place full of people who have learned to justify ugly decisions.

Dialogue is not merely connective tissue to the next battle. Skill checks and faction decisions make conversations a major part of how your Rangers define themselves. Bring a varied team, pay attention to who is asking for what, and do not expect the game to congratulate every decision that sounds noble in the moment. An official launch feature similarly frames this Colorado journey around reactivity, and that promise is where the story delivers best.

Overall Experience

Wasteland 3 is a confident tactical RPG for anyone who wants choices to carry weight beyond a dialogue color wheel. Its best moments arrive when a specialized squad opens an unexpected path, a carefully positioned turn reverses a fight, or a faction decision leaves you wondering whether you fixed anything at all. The game earns its chilly, chaotic Colorado setting through consequences rather than scenery alone.

The caveat is straightforward: this is a talky, management-heavy adventure. You will spend meaningful time comparing gear, developing Rangers, choosing skill coverage, and hearing people make cases you may not want to accept. That can interrupt the flow for gamers who mainly want fast combat, but it is also why victories feel connected to the kind of squad you chose to build.

Give it a chance if you enjoy tactical combat with room for mistakes, black comedy with a nasty edge, and role-playing decisions that resist heroic certainty. The payoff is a campaign where your team feels like a group of people shaped by practical choices, bad options, and the consequences they cannot simply shoot their way past.

Retro Replay Score

8.2/10