Life is Strange 2 Episode 3 Wastelands Review

-Spoiler Warning-

Life is Strange 2 Episode 3 is finally released, after we had to wait for about 4 months, which is a pretty long time for a story game like this.

It seems Daniel and Sean have met Cassidy and Finn again, after jumping on the train, and they invited the brothers to work together on a marijuana farm. It's not the best job in the world, but they were able to earn a good amount of money after their first month.

Meanwhile Daniel gets more and more jealous because his brother likes to spend time with Cassidy and the others. Sean on the other hand is also not too happy about seeing Daniel and Finn getting along so well. For a while everything seems rather peaceful, but as always, things slowly get out of control and our only option as players is to try to do as much damage control as we can.

Too much time between releases?

One of the problems of having such long time frames between releases is that you kind of have to find your way back in to the game again everytime. It kind of destroys the flow of the story a bit. Also it's easy to forget about the controls, like how you have to press a certain button to make Daniel use his powers. Because of this, I actually missed a few opportunities at the beginning of the episode, where Daniel could have helped Sean doing some tasks.

Another complaint I have about the technical aspects of the game is that there are times when you have to quickly make a decision, while a timer is running, but other times there is no visible timer and the game will still just choose the standard option for you, if you don't act quickly. It is just really frustrating to not be able to tell, if you can take your time or not. Sometimes you just want to really consider all the possible outcomes and make the best decision possible, so I hope they will always show a timer from now on, whenever you have to be quick.

New friends

But lets talk about the positives of this episode. I really liked the setting this time, it was nice to see Sean and Daniel get a new little family for a while and the camp itself also looked really cozy. The new characters were also really interesting, especially Cassidy and Finn.

I didn't know this, but you could actually choose either one of them as love interest, which is really cool I think. I personally chose Cassidy and I was happy to see some romance in the game again. Actually she's not really my type though, I still like Lyla much better, but it doesn't look like we will get to see her again any time soon...

The game handled the first experience of Sean in a pretty mature way though, I think, instead of just teasing us with a little kiss. So I really liked this aspect of the game. It's also interesting that both Sean and Cassidy like being creative, so I think they are a good fit.

Is he a little brat?

One of the most frustrating things about Life is Strange 2 so far is actually Daniel I think. He never seems to learn from his mistakes, even if he's just 9 years old, and he always finds ways to get into trouble. It's just so annoying that he will mess up anyway, no matter what you tell him.

In my last review of episode 2, I actually said it feels like you have more control over the game now because Daniel will make decisions on his own, based on what you taught him before. I thought this was a really interesting way to give more weight to every single decision, but after this episode it feels like you actually have even less control than in Life is Strange 1.

In theory it sounds nice, but in the end all of the major events happen anyway and the game often punishes you for silly things, like spending time with Cassidy. Sure, a 9 year old boy might get jealous because his brother doesn't spend enough time with him, but Daniel is just a really annoying character and he makes it hard to really care for him. In Life is Strange 1 I really liked all the major characters (even people like Frank Bowers or David Madsen weren't so bad in the end), so it's just a bit disappointing that one of the main characters is so poorly written.

I hope we will see more of Cassidy in the next episode because it would be too bad if none of the side characters lasted longer than one episode. It takes some time to get really invested and have a lot more character development, Life is Strange 1 did a great job with that.

Bottom line

Despite everything, the final was still really gripping and I can't wait to see what happens next. I'm guessing that Daniel will try to find his mom and Sean will try to catch up with him, before he gets into more trouble. Tell me what you think in the comment section below.