Cowboy Stick-men!? West of Loathing Review!

What!? Spencer is reviewing ANOTHER indie game!? It's not my fault that most of the games I play are indie games. It's the mainstream game companies' fault for not making better games. Seriously, the only Triple-A companies that can still consistently make good games are Nintendo, Square Enix, and Sony. Everybody else is either trying way too hard to rip off Destiny or they're bogging down their products with unnecessary microtransactions. But indie games don't really have that problem. Sure, they have smaller budgets to work with, but the fact they are smaller projects means that indie games need to not only be innovative, but of exceptional quality to stand out. And nothing stands out like West of Loathing

 

But what is West of Loathing? It's an indie RPG that can best be described as a comedy-focused version of classic pen-and-paper RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons or BattleTech, developed and published by a small(ish) company known simply as Asymmetric. But if you want to get into the nitty-gritty details, West of Loathing is actually a semi-sequel to the browser game, Kingdom of Loathing. having the same art style (anything and everything being drawn in deliberately dopey sketch-book doodle form) and the same style of writing (50% of it being utter nonsense and the other 50% being cheeky pop culture references).

 

I'll be honest here, the entire reason I got this game was because of the sheer audacity it had for basing the entire concept around sketchbook doodles and combining that with a Western setting. And despite the fact that this game exists solely to poke fun at Western Film cliches, it is unironically the best Western-themed video game out there, to my knowledge. But the thing is, parodying the Western genre is clever since, to quote a certain Ninja Turtle, "Westerns are DEAD!!!". (and no, I am not sorry for bringing in a quote from the oft-forgotten TMNT 3 movie) And to an extent that's true. Can anyone remember the last time anybody put out a high-quality Western film in the last decade? No? Exactly!

When the trailer itself pokes fun at accolades, you know you're
in for a wild ride.

STORY!!!

So what's the story of West of Loathing? Basically, imagine every Western film of yesteryear, melt them together into a fine stew, and then mix that stew with doodles, and what you're left with is a slapstick, pun-tastic comedy adventure about getting your adorably derpy stick-cowboy (or cowgirl if your character is female) as far West as you can. And running into increasingly bizarre situations. From reading a book that teaches you how to walk stupidly (yes, this is an in-game ability), to finding a pair of drunken brawlers who are still beating each other up while asleep, to tricking a demonic cow into giving you a permanent stat boost, to getting a literal silver tongue, this game if filled with absurdities, and you would be a fool to take the wacky world of West of Loathing seriously.

 

Ironically, I played the first 3-hours of the roughly 20-hour campaign with my good friend Vincent... Who, being well, Vincent, actually took the game seriously. I'm not knocking anything against Vince, he's my best friend after all, but this game's sense of humor, which is very absurdist in nature, is completely lost on him. Which meant I had to spend a good chunk of those 3 hours explaining the jokes to him. Which ruins the jokes, by the way. But on my second playthrough by myself, it was much funnier then since I didn't have to stop to explain why a sign reading "DANGER: KITCHEN" was making me laugh like a hyena on a sugar rush. Heck, most of my playthrough was spent with me either grinning ear-to-ear of literally choking on my own laughter.

GAMEPLAY!!!

 

West of Loathing's gameplay is broken up into two parts. The one we'll talk about first is the combat, and I'm getting this out of the way right now. The combat is by far the weakest part of the game. It's not bad, it works as intended, and it is enjoyable, but outside of the silly animations and ludicrous items and abilities, it's a fairly average, turn-based combat system. But to give you an idea how well-crafted the rest of the game is, the weakest part of it can only be described as average. Not really "bad". Anyway, the combat is both turn-based and grid based, with you (and your companion) on the left grid and enemies on the right. You have access to a melee attack, a ranged attack, and a wide assortment of abilities that require AP to cast. These abilities can range from a simple stat buff, to extra powerful attacks, to creating barriers to block incoming attacks. You can also use consumable items, and one criticism I have of the combat is the fact that using items doesn't end your turn, unlike almost every other RPG ever. Now, this does two things. First, it makes items actually useful, since in most RPG's the items are not worth spending a turn using (unless it's a healing item). But at the same time it lets you trivialize certain encounters, by using Dynamite (a consumable item that does a fixed amount of damage to enemies) over and over, it means you can melt straight through a boss's health gauge without once giving the boss a turn to attack. So I feel like West of Loathing went too far in the opposite extreme. Instead of items being too impractical to use, like in most RPGs, in this game they are too powerful to not use.

There are three classes your character can play as, one specializing in melee attacks and defense (known as the Cow Puncher), one focusing on magic and support (the hilariously named Bean-Slinger), and usual RPG tradition dictates that the third class must be an agility-based thief class, right? WRONG! The third class, known as the Snake Oiler is more akin to an alchemist class, and for the folks who have no idea what I'm talking about, the "alchemist" is a very rarely used class archetype with the concept of the class revolving around crafting consumable items and using those items ad infinitum to buff up and/or heal, damage enemies, or both. There are also spellbooks (called Nex-Mex) you can collect that not only contribute to a rather extensive side-quest, but also teach your stick-person dark magic, and the dark mage abilities are so radically different from the three "official" classes that you can think of the Nex-Mex as a kind of secret fourth class.

The bread and butter of this game, however, are it's various scenarios and encounters. When an event occurs, the narrator describes the situation at hand, and you must make a choice based on the situation. The ramifications for these choices tend to vary. For example, early on you can choose one of four potential party members to take with you on your adventure in the starting town, your choices being an alcoholic combat medic, a vengeful cow rancher, a googly-eyed miner, or a literal goblin. You're only allowed to choose one, and your companion of choice opens up a whole slew of side-activities throughout the game. Other choices, like choosing to tie up a bandit and turn in to the authorities instead of killing him outright, don't unlock additional content for you to do, but they do give you a perk that changes flavor text appropriately and sometimes grants new dialogue choices. This system here is why West of Loathing is a fantastic RPG, in my opinion. Not only do the choices add a ton of replay value, but the narration and prose fits the Western theme perfectly, in addition to being hilarious to read. 

Additionally, West of Loathing has a simplified version of the Checks and Saving Throws from Dungeons & Dragons itself. The game's Perks work similarly to Profincies, being passive abilities that give you more interactivity options outside of combat. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, there is no random dice-rolling that dictates whether your Perks succeed or fail in the situation at hand. If you have the right Perk or a specific stat has reached a certain threshold, it will always succeed. And I like that a lot, because one thing I despise in game design is random chance potentially ruining what would be otherwise a perfectly smooth adventure. Of course I don't mind things like critical hits or abilities having a set chance to inflict a status ailment (the only real instances of randomness in the game, besides the Poker minigame). But instead of the Perks being "balanced" by randomness, they are balanced by the fact that each Perk can be leveled up, and some instances will require your Perk to be at a certain level in order for you to even use the Perk in that specific situation. While West of Loathing is by no means a grindy game (you could in theory beat the entire game without leveling up at all), some of the Perk-exclusive options do require a fair amount of grinding put into them in order to use them. For example, during the finale (I won't spoil it here), there's no less than three options that require you not only have the right Perk, but you also have 50 in a specific stat (50 being the highest a stat can be naturally, though equipment and buffs can raise it even higher). Speaking of stats, I love how instead of the stats having traditional names like Strength, Magic, or Dexterity, the stats are given more amusing names like Muscle, Mysticism and Moxie.

PRESENTATION!!!

This game's artstyle is the thing most people notice about this game. Everything in West of Loathing is designed to look like a sketchbook doodle. All the humanoids are stick people, there's little wavy imperfections in the outlines of the more "detailed" objects (anyone who has tried drawing by hand knows what I'm talking about), the only colors used in the color pallette are black-and-white (unless Nostalgia Mode is enabled, in which case everything gets a reddish-brown tint to it) and it all somehow works. The animations in this game are charming and endearing to me, for some reason. I don't know, but seeing a pair of drunken brawlers fight each other for so long they both fall asleep and are STILL fighting each other despite being unconscious puts a smile on my face. The attack animations are just as hilarious, such as throwing a medkit in the air and letting it smack your character in the head somehow healing them or the increasingly bizarre walk cycles that the Stupid Walking perk grants you.

But you wanna know the best thing about West of Loathing? The sound design. The sound design. THE SOUND DESIGN. This game's soundtrack is amazing, featuring playful banjo tunes, awe-inspiring electric guitar solos, upbeat piano jingles, and everything you could possibly need to make a great Western soundtrack. It's not just the music that's so great, though. The sound effects are also on point, from the creaking of floorboards as you walk over them, to the "PWONG!" sound effect every time someone shoots a gun. There is only one other video game that, in my honest opinion, has such a great music and sound design, and that's Hollow Knight. 

CONCLUSION!!!

West of Loathing is an absurd, silly, and outrageous romp through a sketchbook doodle reinterpretation of the Wild West. Combining a distinct yet goofy artstyle with genuinely hilarious  writing and a stellar soundtrack, this game is also a surprisingly good video game adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. Like if Dungeons & Dragons had a Western theme as opposed to a classic High-Fantasy setting, it would look something like West of Loathing. That being said, I give West of Loathing 10 sky-reachin' varmits out of 10.

Oh, and before I forget, there's also a DLC pack called West of Loathing: Reckonin' at Gun Manor. It's already available on Steam (along with the game itself). However, I played the Nintendo Switch port (partly because I wanted more stuff to fill out my Switch's library). I do not know if the DLC pack was ever released on Switch, and doing research via Google wields no noteworthy results, with the most recent info dating back to April. Apparently there ARE plans to bring it over, as Asymmetric openly expressed interest in bringing the DLC over to the Switch, even sending a beta version for Nintendo to play-test. But as far as I am aware the DLC is currently unavailable on Switch. If it is, feel free to correct me.