Wasteland 2: Directors Cut

I have been pushing this review for weeks because I just didn't know how to sum everything up, so I decided to use a list format to make it concise.
Immersion
You lead a team of fresh recruits of the Desert Rangers, one of the biggest & most esteemed factions for preserving order in post-apocalyptic Arizona.
Like most RPGs, some NPCs will say cheesy things or act in ways you can’t relate to. But generally speaking, most dialogues are good enough to make the Wasteland a believable place.
The Wasteland’s believability largely stems from the world’s consistency. Actions you take in this game and that players canonically took in the original 1988 Wasteland have long-lasting ripple effects that shaped & continue to alter Arizona and the Desert Rangers’ reputation in it.
Most central characters are voiced. General Vargas (the Desert Ranger commander, whom you will talk with a LOT) has a rough voice like Will Arnett’s (BoJack Horseman).
Every time you travel on the world map, you will hear General Vargas talking on the radio. Sometimes he will address fellow Ranger teams working alongside you, while on other occasions he’ll address you directly to update your assignments.
You will come across tons of characters with HUGE dialogue trees that could easily take 5-10 minutes to go through. Most dialogue options are unique, but some are recurring, like their thoughts on the Desert Rangers, which further complements worldbuilding.
Wasteland 1 events involving the player are often referenced. An angry man told me that we (the Rangers) shot an orphan and his dog in his village 15 years ago. I googled "wasteland orphan dog" and got the article about the boy with his original 1988 animated sprite from Wasteland 1. Turns out we killed his dog who had rabies, then accidentally killed the boy as he attacked us too. Now that's some serious world-building material for lore enthusiasts!
You will come across tons of these difficult choices in Wasteland 2.
Frustrating Mechanics
Like many RPGs, there’s a fair degree of imbalance. Loot and economy related skills and perks become obsolete as soon as you have Weaponsmithing & access to the Ranger Citadel (about 2 hours into the game) and some weapons have large power gaps (with assault rifles and snipers at the top).
Whether intended or not, the first quarter of the game is best passed with one weapon skill and two non-weapon skills per ranger, which makes it difficult to get all the core skills before skillpoints become plentiful later on.
While world-related challenges have soft skill checks (% success chance with possibility to retry), dialogue-based challenges have hard checks (min. skill level to pass in one of the three dialogue skills: Hard Ass, Smart Ass & Kiss Ass) for better or for worse. And you can’t predict when you’re gonna need which level of which, so...
Most choices have no right answer, but some have only wrong answers. You will come across a sick, incapacitated woman that asks you for mercy killing. Leave her be and she'll live in perpetual agony. Or kill her, instantly triggering an event where her caretaker miraculously reappears after a long absence.
General Thoughts
Overall, I think that the game is a rather good take on the RPG elements found in other isometric, turn-based RPGs.
As with many RPGs (esp. classless ones), perfectionists will have to do a lot of research and/or do a test run before (re)starting the game with viable builds (I got 100 hours on rec and am only a quarter in because I tested, restarted & went about 1/6 in, then restarted again on Ranger difficulty).
There are a lot of routes. Often you’ll be able to walk through the front door or break in from behind, with each route making checks for different skills.

Good quarantine game. Lots to explore and decent writing

This is a game that you really need to invest your time in if you want the best experience possible. I played this before the directors cut was released, so if you play this version of the game, you have to be aware of some of the differences such as no perks, quirks, and voiceover, graphics, and bugs. If you haven’t played this before, but played some of the old school fallout games, then most of the menu layouts and concepts from those games will be immediately recognizable to you in this game. There really is a lot to explore and uncover in this game, as you won’t see every outcome of a decision you make on your first play through. The gameplay is pretty straight-forward, kind of annoying at first since you will always be weak and low-skilled, but as you progress you become a death squadron and basically destroys anything in sight. I will say that the gameplay and the side quests really make the game shine, but the pacing of the main story is slow, with the second half of the game being much more enjoyable and different from the first half. Overall, it’s a fun experience and definitely something to own if you are into old school rpgs. If you can play the directors cut, but this game is still fine.

OK, I've got three cows and a chicken following my group of rangers. All of them give me magical bonuses in my search for broken toasters. Thank god I've harvested enough bat feces to buy more ammunition from the headquarters since these horse sized fruit flies are killing my troops.

Wasteland 2 is an awesome isometric turn based rpg and the successor to the original wasteland and the turn based fallout games. If you love those original fallout games then there is no doubt you will love this.

Game is really fun, but corrupt saves and save losses really put a damper on the overall experience. If you make sure to regularly back up your saves you'll be fine, otherwise you'll lose dozens of hours of progress.

If you are a fan of turn based strategy games where your characters get a bunch of different skills and abilities, and use actions points while in combat, this is a game for you. This is probably one of the best I have played in a long, long time, and I would highly recommend it.
The first Wasteland inspired Fallout, so that is what you are getting into here, setting-wise. It is the post-apocalypse, the world has ended, and now that things have started to be rebuilt, it is all coming up radiation soaked and screwy. This game runs the gambit from legitimately sad, scary, and uncomfortable, to crazy clever and laugh out loud antics. All of the characters in the game are great, including villains and antagonists. There are roving gangs of raiders, insane radiation cultists, machine-men out to transform humanity, and a faction of militant Catholics which field nuns with guns as foot soldiers. It is a great mix that, while sometimes stretches the belief, always works, and is always great.
The music is fantastic and fits the setting, with different tracks for different areas. You also don't get bored of where you are, this is not a grey or brown wasteland where nothing has grown for over two hundred years because it would require making more models and textures. It is Arizona, and California, so yes there are some desert areas, you start off in one, but the setting are so diverse and so fun, like I said before, you never get bored. From 'Old West' desert towns and mining villages, to rivers and lake settlements, to lush forests, to swamps, city-scapes, underground caves, tunnels, facilities and more. It has all been worked on to both make it believable, and fun to play in. The cliff filled maze-like area home to the insane radiation worshipers is one of my favorite locations.
They did an excellent job with the skills. Most of the different guns you can equip your characters with feel really good and well balanced. At first you may not really like energy weapons due to the way they function in the game, but later on they will grow to be your best friends. I say most guns, because I felt that pistols and shotguns kind of lagged behind. Rifles, sniper rifles, heavy weapons, and energy weapons reign supreme here, due to their range. Giving all of your characters pistols as backup weapons in case they don't have time to reload and enemies get in quick, or the same for shotguns is recommend. Not really for primary use. I found Rose and her pistol skills quickly lost any kind of effectiveness, especially with the lack of armor piercing, the same went for a shotgun main I used once. If they could rebalance these weapon types for the third game a bit to make them all just as useful that would be great.
As for your skills, I found most of them to be useful. You can give a character one of the Charisma based skills, but don't go putting points into all of them. This is not an early Fallout game, you cannot talk your way out of everything or avoid combat, you will need to fight, and gimping one of your characters to make them a speech master isn't worth it in the end, so I found at least. The Charisma skills can be useful, but I hope that for the third game it is improved upon. I also kind of hope that they combine safe-cracking and lock-picking. I know there is a distinction, but I found it painful using up skill points on two different skills which are ostensibly the same. As for toaster repair, it was fun and unique. Everything else works really well, and I think they have built a great system for this game.
Play this game. It still looks and sounds great six years later, and still 100% plays just as well as it did back when I first tried my hand at it. I would have a lot more hours on this game, but they were kind and gave me the Directors Cut for free, (I don't know why but maybe because I supported the game early on) so my hours are split almost down the middle. Get this game if you are looking at it and reading reviews, don't wait for a sale, it is so good and worth it. Highly, highly recommended.