Weird West Reviews
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.
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.
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.
Impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.
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.
Weird West very much lives up to its name. In each character’s journey, a wide tapestry of dark and spooky adventures play out across the Wild West. Monsters of both the human and occult variety are bound by the decisions you make, and those choices carry on to make each adventure in this take on the dusty unsettled frontier more interesting. I wish that the game didn’t push me to micromanage my inventory so much and that some critical quirks didn’t hamper the experience, but put those issues aside and it’s a deeply interesting narrative with more than its fair share of riveting shootouts and adventure.
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
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 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.
Arkane founder's first indie outing is a chaotic soup of colliding systems, and that soup tastes absolutely delicious.
When it comes to the world, the narrative, and the characters that inhabit the Weird West, there's a lot to love. If you're looking for a game that's well written and where your choices feel important and consequential, then it's likely you'll be able to forgive some of the lacklustre RPG elements that unfortunately weigh this one down.
Weird West is a brilliant execution of immersive sim principles in an isometric environment.
Weird West's astounding world-building and intriguing singleplayer campaign are worth the cost of entry on their own, but the game's lackluster technical performance and polish are huge negatives that prevent it from achieving greatness.