

Quests will do what they always do and provide new items, weapons and experience. There are times when the fights seem overly easy, but I’m sure that depends on how thorough you are with side quests. Along the way you’ll partner up and expand your party, which adds even more options. There are three character classes which reference traditional RPG tropes and all are easy to use in a scrap – the menu offers everything from attacking and shooting to first aid and special bullets which add debuffs to enemies. The battles are turn-based and the left stick browses menus for items and attacks, while the right stick targets opponents. Thankfully West of Loathing does its best to remain as simple as its look. This opens the game to those who might feel a little daunted by an RPG, with all those items and numbers. In fact, another interesting decision sees the narrator (the AI) auto level up your stats, but you can choose to do it yourself. Combing your hair in the mirror adds moxie and reading books levels up fighting moves or skills. Walking into cactuses repeatedly ends up giving you a perk of being covered in scabs, which boosts your armour stat. The developers seem to have thought of everything. Little decisions like this, which seemingly feel inserted for humour or for interest have actual consequences.

I went for the latter, which played out interestingly because not only did the game humorously triple check that I wanted to take the man’s life, but when I did, I was given a perk for being ruthless. The watchman who was posted to lookout had fallen asleep and I was given the option to tiptoe past him, wake him up and fight him, or kill him in his sleep. I’d been tasked with helping the sheriff catch some bandits and began sneaking into their camp. Because West of Loathing is an RPG in the traditional sense, you get to choose the rules of your life and how your character will react.Īn example of this is a quest from a few hours into the game. You might choose to be a hardnosed prospector who hates his small-town life, or you could be a young woman setting out to find her fortune, but will miss her family dearly. From the opening moments on the family homestead, you’re given the choice to play how you want. The game takes place in the years of the Wild West and the protagonist, who you create and name, has decided to head out West. It’s rather wonderful to look at for its simplicity.Īway from the looks, the game delivers on every other aspect. At times, the bold black and white imagery leaps from the screen as our hero wanders dungeons holding aloft a lantern which paints the walls with drastic contrasts of light and dark. While the visuals are very simple, they still impress with the use of expression and shadows, making the world of the Wild West come to life. However, the choice here, both fits the game perfectly and should also be welcomed for its use, as it allows the superb writing to shine through. It’s an odd visual style in a world seemingly obsessed with high polygon counts and 4K fidelity. The use of stick figures in West of Loathing might, for some, be a little off-putting.
