Wild Bastards Reviews
A sort of successor to 2019's Void Bastards, Blue Manchu's Wild Bastards is a roguelike Wild West shooter that's a tad too ambitious for its own good.
The roguelike and FPS genres haven't been spliced so successfully since Deathloop-and Wild Bastards deserves just as much acclaim.
The novelty of a 13-character cast is a solid hook for Wild Bastards, but a myriad of streamlined and sidelined elements compromise its potential to the point of becoming a trip to outer space that you won't remember for long after hitting credits.
Blue Manchu's spiritual successor to Void Bastards is every bit as complex, challenging, and rewarding as that earlier gem.
It’s tempting to call Wild Bastards an evolution, but that’s unfair to Void, which has its excellent crafting elements and the permadeath of characters (albeit with persistent progress). What’s crucially similar about both, beyond the excellent art and fantastic sense of humor, is that unlike so many roguelite games, they both want you to win. They’re about progressing forward, being able to reach an ending, and then starting all over to try it completely differently. It’s just that in Wild Bastards, there’s so much more that can be different each time.
A mixed roguelike of comedy cowboys and surprisingly tense ghost town showdowns.
Blue Manchu delivered the goods with Void Bastards, but this follow-up is a disappointing effort that can't match its predecessor's atmosphere, charm, originality or strategic smarts. Instead, Wild Bastards is a strangely bland affair, melding boring top-down decision-making and dull first-person sections. The game never really picks up the pace or gives you anything surprising to work with. In a genre packed full of bangers, this one is pretty difficult to recommend on any level.
Wild Bastards has a lot of charm and style, and that’s enough of a hook to want to dive in and see what the game has to offer. Using a sizable roster of characters who are the major differentiators for gameplay as the main motivator to keep going is effective as well. But once you’ve got the Bastards roster filled out and you have combat figured out well enough, that’s about where the buck stops in this sci-fi western. It’s a chaotic and challenging experience, but promises a lot of complexity and nuance that seems bountiful at first, but fizzles a bit given time. Some balancing issues hold it back the most from being truly fulfilling, but there’s a little bit of genre fatigue talking on my part as well. On its own merits, Wild Bastards is ambitious and kinetic, and will definitely put FPS fans’ skills to the test.
In an Autumn release schedule of sequels, hero shooters, and the latest slightly different iteration of a long-running franchise; the uniqueness of Wild Bastards resolutely stands out. This innovative, bonkers, daring, and entirely brilliant genre-hybrid absolutely demands your attention.
Bright colors and low-impact sound design keep Wild Bastards from ever feeling too chaotic. The action stays legible, without too many particle effects crowding your screen. With management, RPG, and unlocking mechanics, there’s a little something for everyone. Wild Bastards is a good hang. Rather than feeling pulled in every direction, you will feel hyper-focused on the next level. I expect to see imitators trying to pull off the same formula before too long. But the real question is, what does the future look like for the Bastards games? If the future looks like this, I’d feel just fine but Wild Bastards is such a leap forward I would hope to see more bold additions to the formula.
I certainly enjoyed my time with Wild Bastards. The blended Wild West and sci-fi settings, together with hybridised strategy and roguelike FPS approach, all make Wild Bastards feel a lot fresher than many of the shooters on the market right now. Sure, the nuts and bolts of its face-blasting might not rub shoulders with the genre's best in the purest sense and the visual presentation is lacking somewhat, but the level of design ingenuity and rough-shackle charm that is on display here ably makes up for such shortcomings.
Wild Bastards is a roguelite first-person shooter that presents itself to players in a superb and very pleasant way, while not innovating the formula and perhaps not deepening the bonds between the main protagonists too significantly. However, this allows you to overcome strategic situations to have an approach that deals with situations brilliantly, composing teams that are always different... Unless someone, in short, is angry with someone else. Which happens. The game design is very pleasant and detailed, also enriched by a nice gunplay system. Recommended for those who love the West, popcorn and Tarantino.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Wild Bastards is good, but it didn’t quite hit as hard as we’d hoped. That said, the studio's fantastic art direction and writing continue to shine through, enough to make this a title worth looking at.
A charming comic book aesthetic and a tight, satisfying gameplay loop make Wild Bastards a worthwhile FPS roguelike, provided you can bear its gratingly chatty cast and often underwhelming upgrades.
Wild Bastards is a sequel that tries to mod some of the gameplay mechanics of the original, but loses steam along the way
While the characters and voice actors add a lot of life into the group of characters present in Wild Bastards, the gameplay falls short of making it a game I would want to return to.
Wild Bastards' bite-sized first-person shooter showdowns were a treat, especially when I was able to put together pairs of characters who complemented each other and made for something more than a simple shootout. A traditional shooter it is not, but its original gameplay loop and striking visuals make it a helluva good time.
Wild Bastards is more dastardly delicious gaming to come from right here in Australia. Blue Manchu Games have done some building upon their Bastards universe to create a thoroughly fun and explosive experience. Though the game can go on a little too long and be a bit one-note, I could never accuse it of not being some of the best FPS and roguelike fusion we've had for a while. What awaits is a weird and creatively designed cast with varied playstyles, quality strategic roguelike thinking and build potential that'll more than satiate you. It's well worth going on your journey across the stars and finding yourself some weird alien outlaw friends. Family found.
Wild Bastards is everything a Rougelite should be: challenging, fun, stylish and deeply engaging.
It has a lot going for it, including a fascinating premise, 13 unique playable characters, excellent moment-to-moment action, and outstanding production design. With a better story and more nuanced strategic and relationship-building gameplay, it would join its predecessor as a GOTY contender.