A promising first release by Wolfeye Studios, spearheaded by the veteran Raphaël Colantonio and other former Arkane Studios' developers. If you enjoyed titles such as Dishonored and Prey (2017) - which he was a creative director on, this might be a great game for you.

[TL/DR] 🏃

Weird West is a really fun game, although its isometric perspective doesn't allow for the most intuitive of shooting experiences - at first, it compensates this with a lot of player freedom and memorability due to its very chaotic nature. The soundtrack is often gloomy but also quite beat-heavy, which builds up tension when combat begins and you're frantically trying to find any explosive items in your proximity to blow up your enemies with. As a whole the game looks gorgeous, and can leave some truly unique lasting memories through its quests and world-building. It's a worthy title for immersive sim fans, but one that could use more content and balancing to be truly perfect.

[VISUALS] 🔮

The cell-shaded look fits the overall vibe of the game very well, its effects and lighting creating really gorgeous scenarios for you to fight in, but when you zoom in closer you'll notice models on human characters aren't exactly the most detailed, but since for the majority of your playtime you'll be spent zooming your camera out as far back as you can, this won't be much of an issue. Overall, an interesting take on the western genre.

[AUDIO] 🎼

The soundtrack was composed by Matt Piersall and goes from slow distant guitar tones that make you wish you were a cowboy, to frantic techno beats that demand your attention during combat. Its a wonderful little collection of tracks that had me hooked the entire time, it shows the composers' love for psychedelic music and I hope they expand on it in coming updates.

[GAMEPLAY] 🐷🔪🤠

One of the major reasons this game is so much fun to play is the chaotic nature of its combat. You're sneaking around one minute, attempting to choke out several guards until one of them spots you and in a moment's notice you switch from your bow and arrow to your revolver, start aiming at lanterns, explosive barrels and blowing up everything careless enough to get within 20 meters of you. Those that survive the initial flourish of bullets get sent off to hell with a blast from your shotgun and the occasional stick of dynamite, it's fast, it's messy but it's so enjoyable.

The other side of its fun factor comes from simply exploring the world's numerous locations, finding new characters to talk to, taking on side quests, finding better loot and utilizing your character's specific abilities. Each main character, of which there are 5, can get up to 4 unique abilities which are specific to their journey.

The most unique aspect of the game, is that not only do you follow the stories of 5 different characters from often conflicting backgrounds, but also the fact that after you've moved on to the next one, you can return to your previous characters' locations and recruit them to your posse. Although you are basically starting out a new journey with an unleveled character each time, since you can recruit the leveled ones for your group, you're always making progress. This also means any abilities you unlock during your time with them will be used by your posse members during combat, making for even more fun, chaotic and memorable moments.

Another interesting aspect of this system is the fact you can immediately access your posse member's inventory once you recruit them, making it so you can take any loot they're currently holding, which means that any items that your previous characters had on them once their journey ended, can be obtained after you start the following journey, effectively retaining a linear progression despite the 5 separate storylines.

The game includes Revolvers, Shotguns, Rifles, Bows and Melee weapons to play around with, each of them complemented well by their weapon abilities, tying their progression to each character. There is also another skill tree this time shared between all 5 characters, but this one only provides stat bonuses RPG-style, they don't do much to improve gameplay besides functioning as quality of life improvements.

Speaking of the aforementioned memorable moments, I'll never forget burying several posse members that died along the way, and since the game remembers where graves are made, I actually returned to these locations to pay my respects - a detail which I loved. I'll never forget burying several enemies as well, their graves in towns where I got ambushed as part of a silly vendetta brought on me by delivering a bounty target alive (for a cash bonus) to the nearest prison cell, which then led to them fleeing prison and attacking me by surprise. I'll never forget getting caught in a fire tornado because I got surrounded by fire after I threw some molotov cocktails at some oil barrels, and my native american friend deciding it was the best moment to use his tornado ability (which picks up any status effects from the environment as a buff) and caught me in it.

Iconic moments such as these happen due to the systemic nature of the game which makes it really engaging, such as kicking anything in the game which causes objects like barrels containing liquids to pour them unto the battlefield which you can use to your advantage. This works to both create a hazard or to stop one - such as pouring a barrel of water unto fire to put it out or throwing a lantern at tall grass to start one instead. You can also kick people from higher ground for an instant kill, you can grab items to create temporary platforms to reach higher places which will often hide special loot out of view for you to find. You can find keys, important documents, special weapons and all kinds of resources if you look hard enough, so there's always a reason to keep exploring. You can go down a well with a rope to search its depths, you can also enter rooms through a chimney with a rope and you can rob any house at night when no one's looking - including stores and banks, you can also kill almost any NPC in the game even the quest givers and the game will find ways to keep the story going.

The world map is divided into dozens of small locations that you access through a fast travel system, and exploration is really rewarding for those who enjoy looking around every corner and inside every container. Much like their previous work back at Arkane, this game also lets players discover many secrets and interesting facts about the world, its inhabitants and its history through written documents you find across each location. These were often entertaining, short but sweet footnotes on an interesting if a bit shallow world compared to the past titles they've worked on.

[FINAL WORDS] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I enjoyed my time with all 5 characters' story-arcs, since there was a nice build-up until the finale and I was left curious how everything would wrap up so I'm very glad I wasn't disappointed. There are two endings, but they don't require a new playthrough to experience them both, so your replay value will rest on making different choices throughout multiple playthroughs, and if you're like me 100% completing the game, which was fun and allowed me to find out many details, secret rooms and optional paths I hadn't noticed my first time through.

Weird West is a game I had tremendous fun with, it's a testament to how talented these developers are so I'm glad I supported it day 1 based solely on past projects they've worked on. I was also extremely pleased in learning they've announced several content and balancing updates coming in the future, which was exactly what I felt was missing to truly complete the experience.

It's not a perfect game, but it's an amazing game for those looking for unique and immersive sims. I highly recommend it.