Weird West Review – Atmospheric Expedition to the Weird West

Let’s go to a slightly different Wild West together. A strange wild west where dangerous gangs, natives, law enforcement and bounty hunters roam, as well as werewolves, witches, ghosts and other strange creatures. Let’s unravel the mystery and decide the fate of the world. Developers want nothing less. What exactly will convince us to accept the challenge and debut Wolf Eye Studios chance?

• Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One (expert-verified – XSX backward compatible)
• Publication date: March 31, 2022
• Developer: Wolf Eye Studios
• Publisher: Devolver Digital
• Genre: Action RPG, immersive simulation
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 16 GB
• Game time: 20+ hours
• Price: 1149 CZK (Xbox), game available on Game Pass subscription service.

Real takeover

Did I manage to attract a unique world and its atmosphere? This is the first thing that the game brings you, and I must say that with success. The combination of western and fantasy is new, and in the field of video games, the strange west is a completely inexhaustible genre. Not to mention that, barring honest exceptions like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Desperados 3, we’re spending way too little on the classic Wild West.

Either way, exploring and navigating a whole new world is pleasantly refreshing, and seemingly disparate facts work surprisingly well. In addition, the authors carefully dose out the presence of supernatural elements and their degree is visibly graded.

Consideration of dialogues at least in the main missions or cutscenes could be considered.

A similar statement applies to the story, which at first glance may seem ordinary, but takes on a different, more global dimension with the increase in fantasy elements. Well-written characters, dialogues and difficult choices, the meaning of which we will get to, will help you to fully immerse yourself in it. There is also a not very complex, but nice and dark stylization and cell graphics. I was most interested in the right music and the overall sound system, which is extremely complex.

It’s a pity that there is almost no dubbing in the game. The only voice that will speak to you is the narrator. With the exception of the intro and ending, he only exchanges a few words during the story missions. I understand it’s a small game, but with Devolver Digital behind it, dialogue could be told, at least in the main missions or cutscenes. Especially when the game doesn’t have as much dialogue as other big RPGs. The random mumbling of characters during conversations does not replace real voices, and as such, players rely on reading pop-up lines.

Every choice counts, every shot counts

Although Weird West is an RPG, don’t expect a lot of text or complex progression trees. Despite the isometric camera and the emphasis on role-playing, it is mostly action combined with fancy immersive simulator a system that authors like to pay attention to. He wouldn’t stab himself when it came to the founder of Arcanum, the king of everything immersive simulations.

The experience of the developers is reflected in the game at every turn. Throughout the five chapters, each playing as a different character, you will very often face the consequences of decisions made in one of the previous chapters. I deliberately write chapters, not campaigns, as the authors call story blocks, as this is a chronologically sequential and coherent plot.

As in Dishonored, for example, from Arkane, the consequences are not only the decisions you make in the dialogues, but also the actions you take during the game. Are you killing the poor of one of the cities? You have the opportunity, but your reputation will drop to the point where bounty hunters will follow you all over the West. Can you save the gang leader? It is commendable, but count on the fact that you will still meet, albeit on a completely different occasion.

Events are often associated with happiness

By and large, even in the region of tens of hours, the dive is impressive. Slightly less fun and sometimes frustrating can be in action. Weird West is basically arcade fighting games. shooter with two joysticks. So it is clear that there will be a lot of running around and a lot of shots will not find the target. You can’t blame it too much. However, due to the large number of interactive objects and not very successful artificial intelligence, chaos arises on the battlefield, which often leads to a disastrous result, up to setting existing allies against each other.

Enemies behave unpredictably, they are often the complete opposite of intelligence, in the same way there are up to two team members that you can take on your expeditions. Quite often you lose them in a big place and then have to go back for your stranded friends. The whole concept of stealth also pays off with the unpredictability of the AI. The authors claim that you can go through the whole game without killing, but in all honesty, this is not true. The deployment and movement of stealth enemies is not recorded, so it’s more of an element you can use to eliminate the first few victims before unleashing Armageddon.

You are not limited in anything and will gladly return to the way of fighting that suits you best.

Even due to the relatively difficult orientation in the environment during the event (and actually outside of it), I especially liked the shotgun shooting, which has a classically wider spread and does not require more complex aiming. Interestingly, I was able to go through almost the entire game.

Although you play as different characters that are very different in nature and each has its own unique and fascinating story, the gameplay is de facto no different. In each chapter, you get some default equipment and character abilities pre-define it for a certain style of combat, but otherwise you are not limited by anything and will gladly return to the type of combat that suits you best.

No moment of rest

The game world is built from many small locations, between which you can travel (after opening them). So we can talk about our kind semi-open world. The plot takes you from one main mission to the next, but along the way you encounter several kinds of side activities.

First, it is necessary to mention the endless possibilities of the sandbox. As you probably already guessed, there are no restrictions here. Then there are rewards written on the heads of criminals or treasure maps. Here, too, you should not look for some intricate plots.

The characters don’t level the game and the game avoids grinding.

Unfortunately, in side quests, we usually do not find complex plots for which one would already expect them. Most of them are limited by the find/kill/bring system, and those that come up with a more interesting theme often end before they can play properly. But we’ll also find some more sophisticated sidelines that mostly deal with the protagonists’ close friends and their potential weapon partners. In addition, there is no need to complete side quests because abilities and perks are bought with collected items, so the characters do not level up, and there is no grinding in the game.

As you travel, you’ll find randomly generated encounters, whether friendly or less friendly. There are more of them and they are usually unavoidable. In my case, this meant that by the end of the game I was already quite annoyed, even with the fact that their content is limited to a few combinations of enemies and cards, so after X hours of play, you don’t expect anything new in these intermezzes.

It works and works as long as you want

On the average of the three difficulties, the game can be completed in less than twenty hours, but only if you strictly follow the story and do not deviate from the path. It would definitely be a shame, because the world directly encourages exploration and experimentation. Even at the end of the game, every now and then I came across more and more new locations, the secrets of which I never unraveled.

I didn’t even have any problems with the technical side of the game. On Xbox Series X, the game ran on the Xbox One version with no issues. While I ran into a few bugs, most of them were fixed by fast loading. The only thing that stopped me from completing the side task was a pointer to an item that wasn’t there – I suspect it’s actually a function I didn’t understand.