Weird West Reviews
Weird West is a brilliant execution of immersive sim principles in an isometric environment.
Look past the murky aesthetic and clunky combat: this is an exciting fusion of immersive sim and CRPG.
A bold, atmospheric yet dissatisfying ensemble RPG shooter, full of untapped promise.
Weird West's five dark-fantasy adventures contain a wagonload of bizarre encounters, twists, and reveals, and its stealth and chaotic combat are challenging but come with the built-in safety nets of unlimited slow-motion and an old-school quickload system.
Weird West has the ambition of a much larger game, and has made smart choices to be able to meet it.
Regardless, developer Wolfeye Studios has crafted one hell of a debut release. Weird West subverts expectations, twisting well-trodden cowboy tropes into dark fantasy vignettes brought to life by immersive sandbox elements.
Weird West slings a few effective yarns, but fumbles when it comes to dealing in lead.
With Weird West, these magic moments appear far too infrequently. Sheer ambition means eventually something special is bound to be spat out by the game’s extensive simulations — a mishap with an oil lamp, for example — although it’ll be a rough and unwieldy thing, all the more crude when compared with the extensive elegance of a Dishonored. Instead of doing what many, myself included, had hoped — converting the spirit of Arkane and the immersive sim into an inventive top-down form — Weird West has stumbled into a more mundane existence as a pared-down computer RPG that’s nowhere near weird enough.
Weird West offers up a world of intrigue with a terrific blend of classic Western fiction and supernatural elements, with a lot of enjoyable story bits and and a world that can change on a whim, but it's one whose awkward combat and bugs make for a bit of an uphill battle when it comes to truly enjoying this world. WolfEye should definitely be commended for their ambition and unique ideas, and the end result is still an enjoyable game, just one that could have used some extra spit and polish.
Arkane founder's first indie outing is a chaotic soup of colliding systems, and that soup tastes absolutely delicious.
Despite some flaws that are too big to ignore, Weird West is an ambitious, intriguing, sometimes unique action-RPG set in a nightmarish world.
You can sense, in Weird West, a developer both returning to his obsessions and toiling on a fresh frontier.
Weird West presents itself as a videogame divided in two, composed of a duality that places it between the experimental and the tried and tested formula, presenting a really appealing proposal in everything that has to do with role-playing and player-world interaction, and attending to conventionalisms in terms of action. I have a bit too much of the latter, but I can't help but applaud its merits. Play it on PC, though.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.
There’s no escaping, however, that “Weird West” is crowded by its own ambition. No doubt, some glitches will be fixed — like mission objectives failing to update correctly — and some control issues are surely more applicable to the PlayStation 4 version rather than the PC. But other problems are more fundamental. It says something that by the end of the game, I’d killed 599 people, and as much as (almost) all of them had it coming, I had no such intention when I set out. The systems felt too brittle to warrant a more considered approach. In this Western, it doesn’t pay to be a master of the quick draw so much as the quick save, stopping to back up every inch of progress, in case your next move pulls the chair from under you.
Weird West isn't perfect but it's definitely a worthy successor to games like Dishonored and Prey and a great debut title from new team Wolfeye Studios.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Despite some of the same minds behind Dishonored being involved, this top-down immersive doesn't live up to its soaring ambitions and often struggles to entertain.
A dark-fantasy western RPG with a compelling world and an ambitious narrative, Weird West is undermined by awkward combat and micromanagement. Weird West's rotating multi-character perspective will be an acquired taste, but makes sense as a method of world-building. It's got room to grow, but right now, it's challenging to build momentum in the early game and to persevere through the mid-game.
While it has its quirks, Weird West is a bit of storytelling spectacle that seems to have been hand-crafted for diehard RPG fans.