"Swell." Nemlich to samé co West of Loathing pouze místo westernu se, alespoň tedy na papíře, jede v hávu klasického horroru; o tom však později. Dalo by se slovo od slova zopakovat vyřčené o předchůdci, a byla by to bezezbytku pravda i o následníkovi. Jedno zda by to bylo zrovna o kladech či záporech. Obojí je platné.

Tratí to, paradoxně, na zmíněném horrorovém hávu. Kde minule propojení "RPGčková parodie na westernový žánr" fungovala, tam nyní "RPGčková parodie na horrorový žánr" nefunguje. Ono se to totiž přetvařuje, jak se to ponese v poetice gotického horroru, aluzí na Lovecrafta, Poea apod. Jenže skutek utek. Jsou zde dílčí elementy zmíněného, nikoli všeobjímající pojetí, které by horrorový žánr protklo napříč celým titulem od mechanik po humory. Jmenovat se to West of Loathing 1.5: A Fleeting Forays Into the Horror Waters bylo by to příhodnější.

Že na titul, který hodnotím natolik kladně, kydám tolik negativ? No ano, ale nezapomeňte, že platí, že klady si to ponechalo. To znamená hravost, fenomenálně napsané texty, humor, který není na sílu, každá kapitola se hraje trochu jinak, skvělé objevování nepovinného obsahu (toho je tradičně více než "hlavní linie") a... A viz komentář u předchůdce.

Doufám, že autoři v sérii budou pokračovat. Ovšem ještě více doufám, že půjdou s oním konceptem ještě o krok dále a nebudou jen přešlapovat na místě. Protože ve zdejším podání přešlapování sice mrtě baví, ale potřetí by již nemuselo.

Sights & Sounds
- Honestly, the game isn't much to look at, but impressive visuals have never been the focus of KoL properties. That said, I've enjoyed the visual design since playing the original browser game back in high school in the early 00s
- It's actually impressive how much character and personality the devs were able to infuse into the game despite the simplistic visuals
- Music is pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but there was a decent variety that kept the game from sounding too stale

Story & Vibes
- True to the all entries in the series, the writing is once again creative, witty, and very amusing
- In that same vein, don't expect the game to take itself very seriously. The overall tone is intended to be humorous
- The story is very simple but serves as a nice framework for the rest of the game's writing. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. You're going to be doing a lot of reading

Playability & Replayability
- The mechanics of the game will feel familiar to anyone who has played Kingdom of Loathing or West of Loathing. For those who haven't, it's a simplified 3-class turn-based JRPG
- There's also a lot of puzzles. Like A LOT of them. Some of them are pretty fiendishly difficult, but very satisfying to complete
- I'm definitely smelling a replay in the future, mostly because there's so much depth in the game in terms of exploration and hidden side quests. I feel like I touched on 60% of the game in my 20+ hour playthrough. Hell, I didn't even get an achievement until hour 14
- The only real knock on this game I can think of is the combat. It's shallow even by JRPG standards and begins to feel very stale even a few hours into the game. Enemies aren't spongy and I feel like the encounters are well-scaled (even skewing a bit easy), but all you'll ever be doing is spamming your most powerful skill and attacking to end your turn

Overall Impressions & Performance
- If you feel like solving some challenging puzzles and chuckling at your computer screen the whole time, this is definitly a game to put on your radar
- Playing this has really gotten me eager to go back and replay West of Loathing
- The "Deck Verified" rating is well-earned. It ran flawlessly the whole way through, but this shouldn't be surprising giventhe game's very light system requirements

Final Verdict
- 8.5/10. The humorous writing, devilish puzzles, and seemingly endless depth make this a game well-worth paying full price for. If the combat weren't such a chore, I would be recommending Shadows Over Loathing to everyone who likes RPGs. If you're a KoL fan or liked West of Loathing, buy with confidence

Played this the second it came out but I'm not completely sure whether or not I believe it's better than the first.
The writing is great as of the first. Although the main thing that nags me is the number of trivial additions it has. Most of the things they added could have been taken out and the things they changed just made things more muddled. (Also although the main story lead to a lot of funny moments it did not particularly grab me although it's personal preference). With that aside if you liked West Of Loathing like me you will find a lot to love here it's just not all of it is my exitential fear flavored cup of tea.

Very similar to West of Loathing, with the same good writing and style of gameplay. The combat didn't feel great - most of the interesting things to do were on the first turn, and by the end of the game many encounters just were played out the same way over and over. I also felt that the over-abundance of equipment made it tricky to figure out the best equipment for any one time. One final issue was that the game dragged out in the end for me, there were a few places where the RNG caused some items I needed to advance to not spawn for a long time.

It feels like if the game was a bit tighter and shorter that it would have been better. The writing is fun - and that's the primary reason to play this one.

Great writing and vibes, with some obvious limitations. SoL is consistently funny and clever, and surprisingly effective when it touches on the horrific and otherworldly. There's a lot of charm and energy to the presentation, despite/because of the constraints of a black-and-white stick-figure world. Exploration and puzzle solving are fun, and contextualized by the strong writing. Combat is meh: There are a few fun ideas, but it's a pretty simple system and the game can't really challenge you consistently. The game's biggest problem is that it kind of runs out of steam in the last chapter, but the early game is well worth your time.

i mean... its more loathing i guess.
i dunno i bought this game as soon as i saw it cause im stupid and forgot that i didnt like west of loathing. but man. this game is just wildly ok.
the dialogue feels a lot more long winded than before, which is a lot more annoying because the jokes themselves arent as good either. combat is really frontloaded, everything interesting happens turn one, and even then its not that interesting. progression via books is whatever but i chose cheese wizard and that class feels like it has a hard time dealing more than 3 damage to multiple targets.
art is a lot better, and some jokes did in fact get me to laugh. however naming myself "michael rackpipe" made me laugh a lot harder than any of the jokes that the game made. formula is pretty annoying, i liked how west was just one big world instead of 5 or so small ones. i feel like if i watched someone else play this i would have a lot more fun.
i guess i just got tired of it. for a black/white rpg the battery consumption is pretty massive on my deck too for some reason, though i may be too used to trails being able to last for like 8 hours on a full charge, lmao

"A shadowy figure emerges from the corner of the website. It screeches, and shouts some incomprehensible gibberish at you. Upon further inspection you realize it's a wannabe backloggd reviewer, on account of the Vitamin D deficiency. How you can detect that by looking at it, who knows. In its hand you see a small book.
[TAKE THE BOOK] (Muscle 10)
YOU: Gimme' that.
You steal the book from its dainty hands with expectably low effort. It appears to be an English-GameReviewer Dictionary. It's mostly buzzwords and extreme takes. Not the worst thing you'll read today.
(You have gained the Dewtongue perk)
You explain to the book why Silent Hill 2 is an underrated masterpiece. It flees in horror.
The reviewer gets closer, this time with a small paper in hand. You take it and start reading."
Shadows over Loathing is the followup to West of Loathing, a comedy rpg… "You zone out, blocking out the reviewer nonsense and skipping ahead. Hope it gets good."
After four hours of my playthrough, something was bugging me. I wasn't enjoying it as much as its predecessor. Was it not as funny? Was it more tedious? Or was my memory playing tricks on me?
I booted up West of Loathing. "I'll play it for a bit. For science.", i thought.
Well, dear (potentially zero) readers, i was wrong. I come to you after finishing my second playthrough of West of Loathing, six years after my first. And i can say, with certainty, that Shadows over Loathing is a considerable step down from its predecessor.
The prologue is fun. The way it spreads out your character creation "diegetically" was pretty entertaining. And that's about it.
The crux of Shadows failure, like this very review, is pacing. Dialogues and narrative descriptions are longer. This bogs down the humor quite a bit, mainly because it can't maintain the snappiness of West. There are many merry japes to partake in, but more than a few get lost in the walls of text. The story and characters aren't any better either, so most of the text feels useless.
Combat falls prey to the very same problem. It's more complex than in West, but not any better. It simply takes more time to get through it, and much of that time you're not doing anything. In West you control your character and a Companion, with most of the weight of combat resting on your character. Shadow boasts parties the size of 4 creatures, cause that's how many they have. You, your companion, your familiar, and the ever opportune friendly spider join the fray to help defeat the not so lovecraftian menace. One of the problems is that you don't control the familiar or the friendly spider. And between them and the enemies, you spend most of combat looking at the game play itself which, while charming, isn't anything to write home about visually. Changing Action Points (the resource you spend to use your more powerful abilities) from a per combat resource to a per round one is a good choice, but it isn't followed up by any other interesting design choices.
The game is also way too broken up. The hub based world makes it feel disconnected; especially compared to West. A minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.
Character progression feels less impactful and, you guessed it, slower.
Quests follow the same progression style of West, but they take more time.
I could get into more specific examples, but then i would be a hypocrite. That would make it too long. And besides, i know none of you got this far. I see the reviews you upvote. I see the word count.
"You finish reading the review. Now you can be sure you won't read anything worse today.
The creature takes a step forward.
GAME REVIEWER: Everything taking too long!"

Muy divertido, sorprendentemente largo y con una cantidad de opciones, contenido secundario y posibilidades asombrosa.

Combina muy bien el humor finísimo con los puntitos de terror cósmico y, si bien no hace gran cosa distinta a West of Loathing, es muy recomendable si te gustó el anterior.

El combate es lo menos interesante del juego y la mayoría de objetos están enfocados a ello, lo cual es una lástima porque lo verdaderamente brillante está en resolver todos los entuertos posibles de forma pacífica y disfrutar de lo gracioso que es absolutamente todo.

Quizá se vuelve algo obtuso en algunos puzles y un pelín repetitivo hacia el final, pero lo compensa con lo sinvergüenza que es todo el rato y con lo ingenioso que es cada trocito de texto, desde los diálogos hasta las descripciones de los objetos.

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Hilarious, surprisingly long and with an astonishing amount of choices, optional content and possibilities.

It's a great combination of sharp comedy and bits of cosmic horror and, even though it doesn't do anything that different to West of Loathing, it's strongly recommended if you enjoyed that one.

Combat is the least interesting part of the game and most items are tailored towards that, which is a shame because it really shines when you try to solve any issue through the pacifist route and enjoying how funny everything is.

It may become a bit obtuse in some puzzles and repetitive toward the end, but it makes up for it by being so shameless in what it does all the time and how clever every piece of text is, from dialogue to item descriptions.

Shadows over Loathing is a great sequel to West of Loathing. The writing continues to be very high quality, and the battle system is still fairly solid - albeit very simple. Graphics aren't anything to write home about as it's all just crude drawings and stick-people (which are still pretty charming, mind you). The game doesn't try and take itself seriously and ends up benefitting from it in the long run.

However, a huge problem with the game is that 70% of the items you find are completely useless. This is tends to be because you already have something better, because you already have something else that does the exact same thing, or because the item is essentially useless. With so many unwanted items being picked up, I often found the need to head to a store and sell as much as I could just so I could find the things I actually wanted to use. Although, that in of itself ended up being somewhat of a pain as you can't sort by item type when selling in stores which led to each selling trip taking longer because of the time it would take for me to find the stuff I wanted to sell in the first place.

Another issue has to do with the effectiveness of companions and pets. Whether or not they will actually be of any use tends to be a 50/50 as the enemies either die before they get their turn, or the enemies kill your allies before they can do anything. With how little health your companions/pets have in comparison to the damage a lot of enemies can dish out, you end up having to pray that they don't get killed before you can even act. While you can boost the health of pets by bringing them into battles, they still struggle to stay alive even more so than your companions. It just makes me wish your allies had a little more health to balance everything out.

Regardless, I still had a wonderful time with my playthrough (I even got the Alphonse ending, mostly on accident). I would absolutely recommend this game to someone, but I also wouldn't go in expecting this game to blow your socks off. It's just a fun experience. What more does it need to be?

I was extremely excited to see this released unceremoniously, free of hype or expectation weighing down ankles to pitfalls of modern game discourse. Given the simplicity of West of Loathing's design, I thought that a genre switch with more of the same seasoning and core ingredients as before would be enough to carry this 'sequel', but unfortunately either the recipe worked despite itself with WoL or the team has lost their sense of taste. Nothing that worked in the first game really works here: the combat is fiddlier with less player expression, forcing builds to be simpler while also demanding more bland item use to simulate 'breadth' of combat; the writing is less cohesive around the Lovecraftian setting, causing both the sincere characterisation of its cast to be weakened (with nary a useful or interesting team member in sight) and the humour to hit weaker because its broadness accentuates less the setting or expectations of genre; the world design feels less like exploration is rewarded (which it wasn't really in WoL either, but the larger map evinced a world to be explored whereas SoL has hubs which must be Mass Effected through for story drips: a pain) and more like you're linearly being pushed from one non-cohesive beat to the next; the puzzle design, which was at times almost a joke itself in how difficult it was in WoL, is simplified to mush here - nothing is rewarding and every time I had to rub my two brain cells together for a fetch quest, it felt like a chore.

I wanted to love it, and I'll definitely be wary to see if WoL is worse in estimation after this has to be considered as where that game goes in hindsight, but the product is so bleh.