YMMV / Wasted

• Broken Base: The Purifier in general has quickly become this. Some believe its a necessary addition in order to enforce the game's intended pace, while others despise it for removing player choice and forcing them to speedrun and intentionally avoid exploring and acquiring better loot and gear that is oftentimes critical to survival, not to mention that a mechanic designed to discourage exploration is counterintuitive to a rogulike. Others actually don't mind the Purifier in principle, but agree that his spawntime is way too short.
  • The developer has gone on record stating that the Purifier was meant to be analogous to the Ghost from Spelunky. However, critics point out that Spelunky had short, quick levels so the short timer for the Ghost made sense, while Wasted has large, sprawling, open-ended levels full of gear and items that are usually critical to surviving later coolers, and thus the Purifier isn't as justified.
• Demonic Spider: The Spewmen were this in the initial build of the game, if only because their assault rifles caused massive knockback, lifting you off the ground and preventing you from firing back. Since they are bulky targets with comparatively high health, unless you could break through their tough exterior armor, you'd be pinned to the wall with bullets in no time. Thankfully, Word of God states that the Klash's knockback is being significantly reduced, which should alleviate the frustration of fighting them.
  • Let a Mutamut bask in radioactive goop for too long, and it mutates into a Mutamom, which not only does more damage and takes more hits, but explodes into several Mutapupa Sacs when killed, which attempt to cling to your character and cause damage over time... and not only that, but the mutapupae give a debuff that slows you to a crawl, possibly even worse than a Food Coma would.
  • All of the the different types of robotic enemies you find in CA-2 are this to some degree. Most of them have hitscan energy weapons that will take at least a tenth of your default health on hit, regardless of how well your armor stacks up when you first enter CA-2. To wit:
    • Sentroids are tough-as-nails and are outfitted with a powerful, fast lunging attack that knocks you away. A single Sentroid can bring down a lot of your hit points, if not outright kill you, if you don't exploit their Weaksauce Weakness, their shoulder-mounted radar dish that breaks their armor apart, which is also small and hard to hit.
    • Rotoroids can fly around, evading your shots and hovering out of range of melee builds, and their weak points, the small laser antenna on their undersides, are even smaller and harder to shoot.
    • Ceildroids are automated turrets that are attached to the ceiling, just out of sight of the player. This gives you hell when entering rooms that look perfectly safe, or clearing out rooms of enemies at eye-level, only to be showered with rapid-fire bullets from out of nowhere. If two or more spawn in one room and you don't take them out quickly enough, you can say goodbye to your souped-up character.
    • The absolute worst of these, however, is the Soldroid. They lack the mobility or toughness of the other models, but have pinpoint accuracy in their hitscan projectiles to the point of cheating bastard AI levels. If one spots you, it will get the first shot off, and that shot will not only hurt like hell, but will knock you backwards slightly, throwing off your aim. Just one of these bastards is enough to shave off nearly half your health. Find 2 or more in one packed room? You'll have just enough time to curse the Random Number God before your Waster gets cut to ribbons by a lethal laser light show.
• Disk One Nuke:
  • While they are more difficult, the challenge runs offered by the Accursed Courier allow you to obtain some pretty powerful weapons for your low-level Waster very early on if you're careful.
  • The Ocelot revolver you receive from killing the game's first boss is also one of the most powerful weapons in the game, with heavy damage and a fast fire rate (the unique ricochet ability is nice, if not particularly useful). The only drawback is that revolver ammo is a lot rarer than most other ammo types.
• Goddamn Bats: The Rottymen. Not only does their initial explosion damage you if you're too close, the puddles of radioactive gunge they leave behind also damage you and can cause Mutamuts to mutate into Mutamoms.
• Harsher in Hindsight / Hilarious in Hindsight: The game's currency being toilet paper becomes either (depending on your outlook) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where toilet paper supplies became scarce due to baffling incidents of panic-buying.
• Nightmare Fuel: The S.O.B. Purifier, and its musical Motif when it closes in on you. Nothing's worse than receiving the message that you're about to be hunted down by one... and realizing you've reached a dead-end and have to go back where you came from, towards it.
• That One Level: CA-2 is home to robots that have tough armor and highly-damaging laser weapons, which can overwhelm a player that's fresh out of CA-1, and also holds a difficult boss in B11.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Dick and Kissinjerk, though this is most definitely intentional.