One of the games that I’ve been looking most forward to this year has been Weird West. Mixing folklore and the supernatural in an American frontier setting is appealing on its own and adding in a focus on various immersive elements captured my interest. When I played a preview build back in November, I was left with even more excitement. There were some annoying bugs but the core experience was incredibly fun and memorable. My one hope when playing through the release build was that it would have squashed out most of the former and boasted more of the latter.

The gameplay is simple enough. It’s presented in an isometric view with movement and aiming that’s reminiscent of a twin-stick shooter. Your character can be equipped with five different weapon types, armor, and two amulets that provide you with buffs. Pressing the roll button while aiming will take a bar of AP and initiate a Max Payne-like slow-motion dive. Even when I was diving off buildings and missing a shot because an enemy was behind a post, it felt pretty cool.

While there is no traditional leveling-up system, you instead make use of Nimp Relics and Golden Ace of Spades cards. The Nimp Relics are used to unlock abilities for your character and Golden Ace of Spades cards can upgrade perks such as your HP, reload time, or jump height. These can be found in the most obvious or the most surprising of places, which helps to encourage exploration. If you’re the type of player who likes to check every cabinet and crate for items, you’ll certainly feel rewarded and justified playing this.

It goes without saying that there is a wonderful intensity when you’re crouched behind a rock and trading pistol shots against robbers. For those who don’t want to be alone the whole time, you can enlist the help of others to join your posse by hiring mercenaries or simply finding the right people to recruit. Having a full posse of two NPCs watching your back makes everything feel a lot more manageable.

Each NPC does have its own sense of morality though. They have their own opinions on who you’re killing/knocking out, what you’re stealing, and what you’re breaking into for example. This is especially evident in your reputation meter, as some members of your posse may leave if you’re too much of a criminal or more goody two shoes than they thought. Since a good reputation can give you deals at shops and a bad one can make you a wanted target that sends bounty hunters your way, there’s a lot to consider.

This isn’t an open-world game, but there’s still a sense of exploring the vast West with various places of interest such as towns, mines, temples, and other places separated into areas. Each of these can be discovered through story and side quests or simply by traveling around. Whether you’re taking on bounties or just riding around to discover what’s out in unfamiliar territory, there’s a big sense of freedom and a lot to discover.

That sense of freedom does mean it’s easy to come across situations and areas that you’re not explicitly ready for. Vicious wildlife and aggressive gangs are just some of the dangers you can encounter. They’re not just limited to the areas you travel to either, as random travel events can occur as you’re moving to your next location. These can include merchants, robbery attempts, or hostile wraiths. It’s up to you if you want to stick with the story or tackle the unknown.

Something that helps make traveling fun is the French comic-inspired visuals. Everything from the dusty old towns, hot deserts, and the occasional lush oasis are enjoyable to look at. Even though there are only so many types of areas and some are copy-pasted in layout, it’s always a treat to explore the weathered environments.

There are a lot of little details that add variation and liven things up here and there. A mine taken over by outlaws and sporting a few dead miners looks a lot different than the skeleton-filled one inhabited by a wraith. Finding a random caravan of dead farmers might look like the result of a bloody robbery, or a desperate attempt to catch a bounty. There’s a lot of wonderful environmental storytelling that alleviates some of the occasional repetitive areas.

Speaking of story, the main story follows five separate characters on their own journeys. These include a bounty hunter, a pigman, a native American, a wolfman, and an onerist (magic-user). Each has a main questline that takes them all across the West, but it’s easy enough to go on side quests and explore some more while playing them. I was given an estimate of 20-25 hours to complete the game, and my run lasted 40 hours.

Aside from their journeys, what helps to set them apart are their abilities. Each has sixteen generic weapon abilities and four unique abilities. Although upgraded perks are consistent from character to character, you’ll have to keep finding Nimp Relics to unlock abilities for each character. With enough time spent it is possible to unlock every ability for a character, but it certainly isn’t a necessity. Instead, it’s easy to just unlock whatever you want and shape your playstyle from there.

One of the most unique aspects of the game is the immersive sim elements. Story-wise, this is present in the sense of what can be accounted for to progress the story. Kill a character you need information from and you’ll be presented with another solution. You can kill nearly everyone you meet, including key characters, and the story will progress accordingly. Everything one character does will also affect the world that the next character can see for themselves. One character’s actions and decisions may inadvertently create other threats or change some environments.

This goes beyond just the story though. Some of your decisions and bounty hunter accomplishments will make headline news in the paper. Killing everyone in a town meanwhile will turn it into an abandoned ghost town and likely fill up the town’s graveyard. All of this killing can also spawn a vendetta where a character swears revenge on you for killing their boss or loved one. They’ll come back to find you with a posse of their own to return the favor.

On the flip side of this are your friends for life, who are characters you helped or those you traveled with for a while. These characters will come back when you’re in the middle of a tough and drawn-out fight to lend a hand. They’ll leave as soon as all of the enemies in the area are cleared, but it never felt cheap to me. I think having someone you helped pop in guns blazing was just so cool that I was never tired of it.

I also spent some time experimenting and realized that these remain consistent with previously played characters. After you finish one character’s journey, it’s possible to meet up with them as the next character(s) and have them join your posse. What is especially cool about this is that they come complete with all the weapons, items, and abilities you left them with, which makes them formidable allies. An additional benefit to recruiting them also allows any friends for life you made while playing them able to help you out as long as they’re in your posse.

Conversely, any vendettas they have against them that aren’t realized before you move on to the next character, will appear if you have them join your posse. I also couldn’t help my curious self from visiting a previous character and killing a character close to them. To my happy surprise, this led to the previous character swearing a vendetta against me and leaving the area. They returned with their posse while I was traveling and tried to kill me. It was tough because I gave them strong weapons and abilities! It was as if I made my own personal boss fight and it can’t be overstated how awesome it was for that to be accounted for.

The immersion also extends to the actual gameplay elements. Shooting a box of ammo will cause the gunpowder to ignite and start shooting off bullets in every direction. Rain will fill up buckets/barrels of water you’re drinking out of, allowing for repeated drinking and HP-gaining. A tornado going over a fire source will create an intimidating fire tornado.

A lot of these can also be used to your advantage in plenty of ways. Lightning and electric weapons will have a larger and stronger effect in the rain, while dynamite and Molotov cocktails will fail due to the water taking out the fire source. If you need to clear out an area covered in lush green trees and plants, such as to find a secret treasure burial, you can simply start a fire that will spread out and reveal the ground underneath.

I was continuously surprised at how much thought went into the small interactions. This is an immersive sim through and through and whatever you don’t learn from a tip screen or randomly in gameplay, you’ll likely find yourself curious enough to test out for yourself.

One of the tips I saw early on was essentially an encouragement to quicksave before you attempt something risky. My curiosity ensured I used that quicksave function to its fullest and I felt like I just kept learning more about the game with everything I did.

Although I could keep going on with how much fun I had playing the game, it wasn’t a perfect experience. There were a few times when my horse simply disappeared and would only come back at random or if I bought a new one. One completed side quest left me with a key item in my inventory that I couldn’t throw away and had to carry until the next character. Random dialogue that isn’t fit for the situation can be spoken by nearly anyone, including my player character or even a horse.

At one point I had an objective fail to spawn in until I camped out in a new location and came back. One of my posse members would keep shooting me and the other member with their bow which reminded me that friendly fire was a feature. They stopped once I had them unequip the bow, but forever stayed in a combat-ready state.

There were also some controller-specific bugs I came across. When it came to dialogue choices there was no way to move between my options unless I used the W and S keys. I also had a repeated and very annoying problem where my character would sometimes move slowly after I opened the weapon or ability wheel. During this issue, they wouldn’t move at a normal speed unless I did a little wiggle and zig-zag. There may be a less weird-looking method to fixing that, but that’s what worked for me. I encountered fewer bugs than I did in the preview build, but they were common enough that it soured the experience for me a bit.

All in all, the game hit and exceeded a lot of my expectations though. It’s the kind of game that just begs to be played over and over again to make different choices and try out different gameplay strategies. It’s well worth the price of admission in my opinion, and if you have Xbox Game Pass then it’s absolutely worth checking it out as it will be a day one release on the service.

A PC Review Copy of Weird West was provided by Devolver Digital for this review

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Weird West

$39.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Incredibly Immersive Gameplay
• Visuals Pair Very Well With Setting
• Lot of Systems/Mechanics Working Together
• Tons of Replay Value

Cons

• Weird and Annoying Bugs
• Some Repetitive Areas