"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!"
[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!"