Weird West: Definitive Edition Reviews

Okay - time to write this one. I wanted to give this game enough play time before I tried to review, and eventually it felt like a chore. So I stopped. It simply isn't for me. I love alternative wild west settings, adding a wendigo or a meeting at the crossroads to a bit of open-range gothic scratches a specific itch that I have in my brain. I love re-imagining the brutal real history of the American west to be supernaturally dark - a symbolic manifestation of a real-world, historical dystopia. Weird West NAILS this. That's about where my interest plateaus. The real-time stealth/combat system from an isometric point of view is really difficult, and easy to forget how to do well. Skill progression is punishingly slow, and for the most part it feels like we are arbitrarily hobbled in the beginning of the game and just gradually inching our way up to normality. At no point did I ever feel powerful or competent; the great hopes I held for eventually earning a certain special equipment or a specific ability would immediately collapse upon realizing that the benefits of these things were painfully marginal. There's also a problem with the way your decisions impact the story - you're basically either going to be the white-hat or the black-hat and there's very little opportunity for nuance. This is on-brand for the sort of comic-book pulpiness of the setting and narrative, but I almost would prefer to just choose at the beginning of the game to be good or bad and not to have the illusion of making these sort of moral choices be a component at all. Ultimately, I would only recommend this game for people who like real-time isometric action. That's what the game is mostly, and not so much role-playing.

Excellent western game with complex & interesting characters. If you like games where your decisions matter-- there are very few that can rival Weird West in that regard. It's shorter (took 21 hours to finish), but at the same time I didn't exactly 100% it (some sidequests got skipped because I simply didn't know how to finish them lol) The world is fascinating, and highly reactive. Everything you do can have huge impacts on lives. The best, non-spoilery example I can give is that if you kill a man, his wife might remarry, and the wive's last name will actually update to her new husband's. The only other game I can think of that rivals that level of detail & reactivity is a heavily modded run of skyrim or Balder's Gate 3. As for actual gameplay: You play as 5 different characters throughout sections of their lives. Each has different powers, but you can share inventory between them so there's a sense of progression that isn't bound to "this character is X level". Highly rewards stealth & thinking. Don't have lockpicks to get past a gate? see if there's some boxes you can stack nearby to jump the wall. But good news is: it doesn't REQUIRE stealth. If you get spotted, you can dig in and have a fire fight worthy of the western genre. I plan on playing this again soon to make some choices I didn't make in the first (my "outlaw" run) and see how different the game is-- which is not something I usually do. Overall: Top 5 game for me.

Buy on sale. Neet sandbox gameplay and some good ideas with the travel system, world building. Story gets dumb after a while. Along with every time you switch to a new character having to get all your stuff back is irritating.

There's some jank, but if you love the immersive sim genre and can tolerate top down twin stick shooting combat then absolutely play this. Great lore and loads of options for ways to play through missions. 8/10

i was skeptical at first but this game is really fun and a good little rpg. i havnt beating it yet since im only 5 hours in but its pretty good once u get used to the crappy aiming system

It's a really fun concept, and I didn't mind the controls. I found the story to not be as engaging as I wanted, and found the maps to kind of all feel the same. also, about halfway through the game, there is a massive difficulty spike that i couldn't figure out the source of. Don't bother bringing companions anywhere, as they'll just get themselves killed no matter if you upgrade or not. All in all, cool world and concepts, but the rest of the gameplay left a lot to be desired.

A bit between recommended and mixed. The game has some good ideas, letting you play multiple characters whose outcomes all affect the same world. Upgrades can be hidden anywhere, incentivising exploration. Ability to craft and scrounge together your items. A generated world that offers replayability. A reputation system to track your deeds per charcter. An intriguing overarching story that ties it all together. It just didn't all mesh together that well for me. The world isn't as interesting after a bit, only a few things change. Most maps have nothing to offer outside of generic shops if there are no side quest taking you there. Upgrades are impactful in numbers (and higher jump changes how you can play the game) but still don't seem that interesting. Combat was the most frustrating, because it wants to be played like a cover-based shooter but also like an action shooter where you run around and dodge attacks. Neither work well enough. You get Action Points to use character-specific skills which can be pretty cool, but AP are so limited that you're out of them most of the time, unless you feel like going to sleep the next chance you get, just adding more micromanagement and time wasting to it. AP should regenerate when changing maps or slowly over time. To be fair, you can skip a lot of the combat by sneaking past, taking alternative routes, stealth killing or setting up a big initial attack. It just doesn't seem worth it one way or another. The writing itself is alright, kept me interested enough to see it through to the end.

The world-building and story potential piqued my interest. Sadly, the narrative gets chopped up, the progression system is boring, combat is repetitive, weapon upgrades feel meaningless, sound effects will occasionally bug repeating until loading into a new region, and the animations are atrocious. However, the UI is slick (almost too much so) and the NPC dialogue portraits are well done.

This game was super cool. It's a fully realized RPG sandbox where you can basically do whatever you want and solve quests using any means necessary, take a lot of queues from the classic immersive sims. Considering it's from the studio founded by one of the founders of Arkane it's really no surprise, and I think this proves that his touch is what made the past Arkane titles great and explains why their recent titles lack so much of what made them interesting. I wasn't sure how to feel about the 5 protagonists at first but really outside of story purposes you can transfer most gear from character to character as you complete their stories so it serves more of a narrative purpose than anything. There are gameplay differences in the way of unique combat skills but if you've avoiding combat as much as I was able to it's more evident. The story itself isn't anything too groundbreaking, but where this game absolutely shines is the world it builds by way of the factions, the atmosphere, the ambience. The combination of supernatural horror, pulp western and in some instances even splatterpunk is a large factor as to why this game feels as unique as it does. Also, the way the different gameplay systems intersect leading to some really crazy Rube-Goldberg scenarios both in and out of combat. Some minor gripes I have are definitely the janky-ness of the combat. It functions but it's extremely unforgiving, at least on hard and up which is what I played it on, probably to encourage the players to interact with the environment during fights more, which is fine but during ambushes on the overworld this becomes implausible and it turns into a save scum chore. Sometimes stealth can be a bit buggy as well in both your favor and the games. That being said, what they've managed to make here is a game definitely worth more than the sum of its parts and if you're a fan of the early Arkane titles, Deus Ex, System Shock, or even OG Fallout or Wasteland, I implore you to stick with this game. Rarely do I pick a game up, especially a longer one like this and then binge it over the course of a few days but this one hooked me. Highly recommended.

Gave me Fallout 2 vibes and thats one of my favorite games. The storyline was fantastic and the graphical style in combination with the writing created a rich atmosphere.