Desperados meets Original Sin meets Cowboys & Aliens – that’s about how we felt when testing one of the most unusual action RPGs we’ve ever played!
“You must deliver more cattle!”, demands the mysterious stranger. But the addressed gang leader does not want to be ordered around and becomes stroppy. Bad mistake! In a split second, the stranger mutates into a siren-like creature, falls upon the outlaw, dismembers him expertly and disappears into the night. Wanna bet that the horrified rest of the gang will soon be delivering lots of cattle?
We secretly watched this creepy scene as ex-bounty hunter Jane Bell. Creepy above all because we already know who is meant by “livestock”: people! Because more and more inhabitants of the dark fantasy Wild West world suddenly disappear, including Jane’s husband. As they search for him, it becomes clear that it’s not just a gang of gun smugglers and rustlers behind it, but much more…
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Wild West with Dark Fantasy
The action role-playing game Weird West mixes a classic western scenario (dusty towns, brave sheriffs, nasty outlaws and such) with Dark Fantasy. You’ll meet werewolves, sirens, witches and cursed pigmen who look like a cross between a minotaur and a bison. The highlight: You also play a werewolf and a pigman yourself, because the ex-bounty hunter Jane is only one of five main characters that you control one after the other in one chapter each.
All five have their own motivation and background story. As Pigman Cl’erns Qui’g (sic!), for example, you try to reconstruct your life before the curse and find out why harmless people are turned into monsters. In doing so, you have to sneak a lot, because poor Cl’erns is often hunted when he appears somewhere. Some of the stories are closely based on real history; for example, you play a native whose people were pushed back more and more by the new settlers. The playing style also changes depending on the character: while Jane relies mainly on a revolver, rifle, shotgun and occasionally a bow, the Pigman-Minotaure is a brutal hand-to-hand fighter.
Familiar and strange at the same time
In the beginning, the story and the world behind Weird West are still discreetly confusing. There are unfamiliar names like “Jeb” or exclamations like “By the floods, get me out of here!” But because the game mixes classic western elements with an alternative (ghost) story, you are not thrown into a completely foreign universe, but come across many familiar things. The sheriff has wanted posters for bounty hunts, the gun shop sells blunderbusses, and the General Store sells shovels, lock picks and hand tools, for example for tanning animal skins, which you can use to make your waistcoat more bullet-proof.
You fight against traditional Wild West villains such as an extended family gang, a power-hungry tycoon with his private army or various gunslingers and their gangs. But also against fantasy monsters like the buried cave beasts that suddenly burst out of the ground – best to stay on rocky ground, like in Dune! And then there are factions like the “Absolutists”, who want to free the Wild West from the supernatural, or the “Wanderers”, who deal in magical artefacts. It’s clear that they don’t see eye to eye with each other.
From ghost town to shopping mall
On a separate world map, you travel freely to the various locations such as towns, bandit camps, a mine or other mission areas. On your route, you’ll uncover nearby locations, such as a small farm or impressive hacienda. And sometimes there are chance encounters along the way, such as travelling traders, fat bears (fur supplies for your waistcoat!) or a bandit ambush. This “half-open” world works great, because you can decide for yourself how you want to play what and where: follow the main story tightly (and miss a lot!), explore the last place in detail, or just spend an evening rattling off bounty missions?
Very cool: Locations also change. When you visit the small town of Grackle at the beginning, there are dead bodies lying around everywhere, the buildings are barricaded or devastated. But when you return after some time, most of the damage has been repaired, the shopkeepers are back in action and the saloon offers gunslingers as companions.
Your actions also influence the course of the game: For example, if you free a prisoner or spare an enemy, he will become a “friend for life” and eventually return the favour by suddenly appearing in a battle and fighting alongside you. The other way around is also possible, because if you kill innocent people or mess with the authorities, you will quickly become a bounty hunter!
Ammunition box collecting mania
And how does it play exactly? Basically like a classic action role-playing game: you use the WASD keys or the gamepad to move your current main character through the respective map. We mostly played in the top-down perspective, which is simply the clearest, and zoomed in closer in buildings or caves, for example, to see dialogue partners better or to search through crates.
By the way, Weird West exaggerates the latter: There are barrels, shelves, chests and boxes everywhere that we have to search through one by one. Sure, we could ignore them, but especially in the beginning, ammunition is valuable, and it likes to hide in the furniture. But instead of rummaging through ten boxes in a house for four shotgun shells, two boxes with two rounds each would have sufficed. Many containers are also empty – although this is indicated before opening, you still have to go there first!
Pull!
The battles also take some getting used to at first, because the controls are more console-oriented and less PC-oriented. You change your weapons awkwardly using the menu wheel, which is also fiddly to use because the mouse pointer scurries around far too jitterily. You can’t switch through using the mouse wheel (which is already needed for zooming), and the number keys are reserved for unlocked special skills, such as booby-trapping or short-term shotgun continuous fire without reloading. You can assign keys to weapons, but since most of them are already assigned, this is a bit of a hassle. It’s better to stick to the lesser evil of the weapon wheel.
The shootouts themselves are also clearly designed for controllers with two sticks: Move with one stick, aim with the other – this works really well with a gamepad, but not so well with WASD keys plus a mouse. After a little practice, this works well, but a PC-optimised control system would have been much better. Everything that has to do with calm, precise aiming or throwing is better implemented for the PC. If you want to hurl a stick of dynamite or a Molotov cocktail from ambush, for example, you can see the radius of effect in advance and can fine-tune the throwing distance with the mouse wheel. During testing, we therefore used the controller from time to time, depending on the situation. The flying change is recognised automatically in an exemplary way, you don’t have to change anything in the options.
Unfriendly Fire
The battles themselves are as exciting as they are tactical, as Weird West implements the strengths and weaknesses of your weapon types well. A shotgun really feels like a shotgun – lots of boom, but little range and agonisingly slow reloading. A revolver is faster but does less damage, and a rifle is great for nasty trick shots at oil lamps and dynamite barrels because of its range and accuracy. Arrows become incendiary or poisonous if you shoot them through open fires or poisonous clouds.
But beware: physics and chemistry are no exception! During testing, we once kicked an outlaw against a stack of crates at high speed. Unfortunately, there was a burning lamp on top of it and we were both on fire. And the usually clever AI cowboys are just waiting for us to take cover behind an explosive crate. Your opponents also like to throw dynamite at you. If you’re quick enough, you can shoot a stick in flight!
Lethal Santa
Also nice: Weird West doesn’t chew everything up for us, but invites us to experiment with different tactics. For example, when we’re clambering around on a roof and take cover behind the chimney, an info pops up: abseil? By chance we have a rope with us, shimmy down – and catch two baffled outlaws on the wrong foot in the fireplace room. That’s what happens when you only guard the door! And that was only one of many house-fighting tactics: You can also get in through the window or place a booby trap in front of the door and then set the house on fire.
The time of day also affects your approach. Bandits like to lounge around outside during the day. They will see you earlier, but with hired reinforcements, good cover and a few sticks of dynamite you can take on a superior force. At night, on the other hand, enemies like to hide in buildings, and if you sneak cleverly, you can even catch some of them on mattress hoarding duty.
Editor’s verdict
I totally like it when a new game cleverly combines elements of my favourite games, but adds something of its own. And when a game changes a familiar setting in a coherent way, I’m also immediately curious. Weird West is one of those cases: like in the Desperados series, I can secretly decimate a superior force by knocking down guards, setting booby traps, burning down entire houses. But without all the fiddly details like character changes, constant unconsciousness gags or pixel-by-pixel, tenth-of-a-second advances. And the physics effects work just as well as in Divinity: Original Sin 2, including broad grins when the combination of oil lamp + dynamite barrel + poison barrel + well-aimed shot turns into a flaming, toxic inferno.
But in addition to the Wild West horror story, Weird West also has its own elements, for example, exciting fights with small but fine details such as the nerve-racking reloading of a double-barreled shotgun that deals out mightily – but only twice. In larger battles, however, with about five enemies plus your own companions, it quickly becomes chaotic. Especially since I hate consistent weapon changes via the weapon wheel, and Weird West doesn’t implement this well either. I shot a scarecrow several times because of the hectic pace! Tip: There is a slow-motion function, but no button was assigned to it in our test version. You can do this in the options, for example with the comma key
