Wild Bastards Reviews
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.
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.
Spiritual sequel to Void Bastards, Wild Bastards changes up the formula but isn't necessarily the better for it. Its board game-like maps introduce some strategy, but its basic first-person shooter Showdowns disappoint, as do some of its other underdeveloped elements.
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 feels scaled back and lacks the immersion that its predecessor excelled at. Being a “spiritual successor to the award-winning game Void Bastards” sounds great, but tends to feel like an out-of-body experience. Thankfully, the new mechanics and systems are great to interact with, and assembling a varied and diverse crew of thirteen outlaws gives you a lot of wiggle room for experimentation. Add in the personality layer, and needing to manage relationships is a welcome addition. Wild Bastards is about strategizing and optimizing your not-so-merry band of outlaws for a tactical first-person experience that’s more style over substance.
Wild Bastards adds strategic depth to the roguelite game but sacrifices depth in its shooting to do so. The result is a game that has fun characters and great strategy, but the shooting sections become stale over the course of the campaign.
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.
Void Bastards is a title that I absolutely adored, so it set a lot of my expectations with what I wanted from Wild Bastards. The roster itself has a great deal of charm and personality, but the elements you engage with; combat, enemies, and the environments, where both of those play out, just fell incredibly flat. The character progression to improve the gang works well, and the abilities they have make for some interesting combat encounters. The conflicts between the gang are well written, acted, and executed, making for a compelling drama with the right amount of humor. As I mentioned before, I don’t think Wild Bastards is even remotely a bad game, it just feels like a step back for the team that gave us the vastly superior Void Bastards.
Wild Bastards has a unique take on the roguelike FPS genre that prioritizes strategy. The wacky space cowboy theme is interesting and the visuals are fantastic, but the game is lacking with its story, sound and it struggles a bit with repetitiveness.
Blue Manchu’s Wild Bastards offers a memorable mishmash with a unique setting and diverse characters, but suffers from underdeveloped elements and pacing issues that can detract from its otherwise entertaining gameplay loop.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Cosmic western with collecting bandits brings an interesting combination of action with strategic progress. At first it is remarkable, but gradually the interest in the game declines. Without a proper story, it becomes too long and monotonous.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Playing Wild Bastards was a flawless experience. The presentation is top-notch, with a combination of great music, characters, gunplay, and voice acting. The strategy part of it is quite well done, though you might take some time to get used to it. Overall, the pacing and the difficulty of Wild Bastards are completely well-done.
Wild Bastards is the perfect game for those think-y roguelike fans who are ready to set aside the deckbuilding to slam some shells into a barrel, as well as for the shooter fan who is ready to think a bit harder about it when they start clicking heads. Powered by a cast of characters so fun to watch tear each other to shreds and build back up again, Wild Bastards is the perfect intersection of so many niche interests that it stands out for the ways it solidly represents all of them. The pace wavers, the story is secondary, but nothing feels better than blasting away a robot with a six-shooter, I tell ya what.