I really enjoyed my time with Weird West. The comic style illustrated art direction is a great choice in visual presentation for something that plays largely like a twin-stick shooter CRPG, and the central conceit for the story is really great. You play through 5 unique short stories as different characters, and they vaguely overlap and affect each other and all contribute to the overarching narrative at play.
"Starting Fresh" is something that could have really brought this game down a lot when it comes to the character builds/progression. But you're never really starting completely fresh. One of the progression systems goes with you across the stories, so you're always getting better at some things across the game. The other progression system is unique to each character, but this potential problem of feeling like your power gets taken away is alleviated in that once you're in a new character you're able to track down previous characters you played as and recruit them to your posse. They bring with them all the upgrades you gave them during their playthrough, as well as all of the items they had on them when you completed the story. In practice it's a system that feels really great, and in some ways made sure I was more connected to each of the characters.
The immersive sim components in terms of environmental mechanics that you can use to your advantage are pretty decent. I didn't engage with all of the mechanics but they seemed pretty powerful when I did choose to use them on the odd occasion.
Something that surprises me with this game is it seems like there's going to be an update roadmap with potential new content. For instance they just added a zombie plague event that I assume with only be around for a few weeks, and perhaps this will just be something that rotates consistently. It seems an odd game for these kinds of events, but maybe it means that if I return to it six months or a year from now, all sorts of weird new events will change how I play the game and give me an almost new experience again.
Buy it if you can, but if you have GamePass you kinda owe it to yourself to play it.
"Starting Fresh" is something that could have really brought this game down a lot when it comes to the character builds/progression. But you're never really starting completely fresh. One of the progression systems goes with you across the stories, so you're always getting better at some things across the game. The other progression system is unique to each character, but this potential problem of feeling like your power gets taken away is alleviated in that once you're in a new character you're able to track down previous characters you played as and recruit them to your posse. They bring with them all the upgrades you gave them during their playthrough, as well as all of the items they had on them when you completed the story. In practice it's a system that feels really great, and in some ways made sure I was more connected to each of the characters.
The immersive sim components in terms of environmental mechanics that you can use to your advantage are pretty decent. I didn't engage with all of the mechanics but they seemed pretty powerful when I did choose to use them on the odd occasion.
Something that surprises me with this game is it seems like there's going to be an update roadmap with potential new content. For instance they just added a zombie plague event that I assume with only be around for a few weeks, and perhaps this will just be something that rotates consistently. It seems an odd game for these kinds of events, but maybe it means that if I return to it six months or a year from now, all sorts of weird new events will change how I play the game and give me an almost new experience again.
Buy it if you can, but if you have GamePass you kinda owe it to yourself to play it.