West of Loathing Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/15/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

West of Loathing

Developer: Asymmetric Publications

Publisher: Asymmetric Publications

Genre(s): Adventure/Turn-Based RPG

Platforms: PC

Release Date: August 10, 2017

What’s an irreverent, ironic way of saying “yeehaw!” because West of Loathing, a game developed by indie studio Asymmetric, is attempting to scream it from the mountaintops. West of Loathing is yet another western odyssey in the gaming medium, but Red Dead Redemption, it ain’t. One can immediately tell from the game’s minimalistic presentation that West of Loathing’s initiative is not to compete with the likes of Red Dead Redemption or any of its ilk but to subvert the tropes of the western epic with lo-fi silliness. I’ve always admired games that verged in the direction of a tongue-in-cheek borderline parody of popular video game genres. Earthbound lacked the polished RPG mechanics compared to its more orthodox JRPG contemporaries like Final Fantasy, but its quirky, absurd sense of humor and irreverent mechanics separated it as something unique to the genre. Judging from the preconceived notions one might have while looking at West of Loathing, we can infer that the game borrows more than a spoonful of Earthbound’s essence. West of Loathing’s intent is to have the player grinning from ear to ear with jaunty absurdism. As I expressed in my review of Earthbound, this directive often tends to be grating, and I found this to also be the case for West of Loathing. In fact, West of Loathing grated so hard on me that I loathed it. Okay, perhaps that’s too harsh a word in an effort to express my feelings on the game while attempting to reference the game’s title cleverly. Still, West of Loathing is still bogged down with a myriad of flaws.

As the adage goes, minimalism is a legitimate art form. In gaming, it’s usually indicative of a smaller or non-existent budget made by a one-man developer or a modest coalition of people. Indie titles do not display the magnificent frills of triple-A production, but they still compensate with an endearing, humble art design with some unique mechanics to boot. West of Loathing takes the deprived budget of an indie game and revels in it, like accidentally stepping in a puddle of mud on a rainy day and then deciding to swim in it. West of Loathing cranks the minimalistic aspects of indie games up to 11, or rather, it twists the knob of visual decadence down to negative 11. The black and white, doodled setpieces and stick-figure characters are about as minimal as a game can look. The developers could’ve commissioned one of their kindergarten-aged children to craft this game’s visuals. West of Loathing’s style reminds me of a flash game from the pioneering flash website Newgrounds, which included a bevy of flash games involving anatomically-sparse stick figures. It recalls a wondrous aspect of those flash games in that one didn’t need expensive equipment or a studio to make something fun and engaging to play. West of Loathing’s art style is its most intriguing feature a first glance, and the silly charm of it never wavers.

Despite the minimal presentation, the grand scope of adventure with the western genre is not lost on West of Loathing. Our customizable RPG protagonist (of the tiniest variety, with long hair being the one distinguishable feature between a male and female protagonist) lives in his hometown ranch with his family in a podunk area of little significance. He/she lusts for the thrill of adventure, and to their convenience, the frontier valley of the American wild west is a few miles yonder. They pack their bags and set out to the nearby town of Boring Springs to prepare even further. Here, the protagonist seeks out their horse and partner (sorry, “pardner”). I chose the googly-eyed horse from the Boring Springs stable and named it Budweiser, something I thought was appropriate for my protagonist, which I named Truck Balls. As for my sidekick to assist me on my quest, I chose the no-nonsense cattle rancher Susie Cochrane who is out on a mission of vengeance against a herd of demonic cows that slaughtered her family and burned down her ranch. Once you leave Boring Springs, the protagonist is at a point of no return as the vast, dry wasteland of the wild west is the domain for the game's duration. The triple-A game I’ve been comparing West of Loathing to so far is Red Dead Redemption, but the wild west on display reminds me more of Fallout (not New Vegas specifically). The map is littered with a smattering of locations with icons representing a thematic consistency, like towns, caves, forts, etc. The objectives here range in significance as most of them are tied into sidequests, and many of them are discovered as distractions on the way to the destination. Still, this is precisely how the Fallout series achieves a sense of intrigue in discovery. Even though the player can’t travel in West of Loathing unless they select an area by pulling up the map and travel is exhibited by the clip-clops of horseshoes, West of Loathing still manages to make the world feel as extensive as one from a Fallout game and offer the same level of immersion.

Another of West of Loathing’s core mechanics that also reminds me of Fallout is its character-related RPG system. On top of increasing physical attributes, the RPG mechanics in Fallout also extend to personal traits that help in various instances. The protagonist in West of Loathing uses his experience points not only to boost his strength and defense, but traits like intimidation, lock picking, forging, etc., are just as essential to excavating the uncharted realm of the wild west. Unlike Fallout, the player doesn’t have to stick with the values they assign for themselves before the game even begins. The player’s experience points can be used to enhance these assets. The game allows micromanaging where experience points are spent, but who would want the game to mother them like this? Besides, the three classes present in West of Loathing should try to put their eggs in their respective baskets based on their unique properties. These three classes are inspired by typical classes seen across most RPG games: the cattle puncher is a warrior class, the beanslinger a food-oriented wizard, and the snake oiler a thief, the most crafty shyster during frontier times. Each of these three classes coincides with muscle, mysticality, and moxie, respectively, and one would think that focusing on one stat for the class they choose would garner success in the game.



However, the equal division of stats as the game’s default seems to be the only practical way of remaining balanced as the player will need a certain level of competency with all three attributes to progress in the game, especially near the end of it where the experience needed to perform tasks ratchets up exponentially. West of Loathing presents multiple ways of approaching a problem, but they all seem to involve grinding in some capacity. For example, one quest that irritated me as much as it irritated the protagonist’s eyes was finding a cure for the ant-eye virus. A man named Roy Bean sells a cure for a whopping 6,000 meat (the game’s currency), but he lowers the price for every bean you recover in a series of sidequests. An issue arose when a goblin obstructing the path to a bean requested that I retrieve a syrup to comply with my demands, and the only source of this syrup was a sieve leaking from the next room that I needed a staggering fifty moxie to extract. I ultimately ended up grinding for a discounted 4,000 meat, for I was desperately trying to fix the vexatious altered screen that looked like a broken kaleidoscope because of the ant-virus affliction. So many progress impediments seen in West of Loathing also involve picking two poisons of forced grinding, and it really gets on my nerves.

The other half of West of Loathing’s turn-based combat, and this factor falters even more severely than the leveling system. To say West of Loathing’s RPG gameplay is undercooked is an understatement. West of Loathing’s RPG gameplay isn’t even sashimi wrapped in seaweed and rice: it’s the raw fucking fish still flopping about on the cooking table. Turn-based combat in West of Loathing is so simplistic that it’s boring, and this is coming from someone whose select favorite turn-based RPGs include Paper Mario and South Park: The Stick of Truth. Most battles will be over in a matter of seconds, regardless of their chosen class. Thankfully, combat ensues mostly at the player’s pace. The protagonist approaches the enemy, usually prompted by a scroll of text. Fighting them is an option if the player cannot scheme any other way out of the situation. I highly suggest the player stock up on stats that aren’t strength related because the situations are unpredictable. It’s a coin flip as to whether the enemies will be offensive powerhouses with advantages strong enough to bulldoze over the protagonist or vice versa. At least the player can prepare themselves for a scripted fight, but the frequent ambushes while traveling across the map forces the player to engage in combat randomly as they might not have the specific attribute needed to bypass it. The protagonist can’t give in because it counts as a defeat, and three of these will cause the protagonist to black out from anger as he’s resuscitated from his rented hotel room in Dirtwater. A day also passes, and I’m unsure of the consequence for causing too much elapsed time by failing. Still, the uncertainty of the severity of failure in combat is another hole in the crooked, shoddy combat system West of Loathing displays.

Even though West of Loathing’s makeup stems from the JRPG genre, the game’s true calling is with the point-and-click adventure genre. In a game where the extent of kinetic involvement is stick figures walking about, the game reverts to an archaic tactic found in the earliest days of gaming: reading. Not only are there long swaths of text dialogue in West of Loathing, but most of the action outside of the turn-based battles is read by the player in a second-person play-by-play account. The text is primarily where the humor in West of Loathing blossoms, either detailing an action or through dialogue. Some of my favorite instances across the game include the horrifically descriptive plunges into a spittoon for an item and the suspiciously anxious “bed and breakfast” manager Chuck who fumbles over every word in an attempt to deflect your suspicions that he’s a serial killer. While these and other instances are relatively amusing, the game does not win me over with its humor. Maybe I can chalk this up to my broad, twisted sense of humor (which might explain the few I chose to highlight), so I can’t fault the game too much. Slight bemusement is arguably more refined and collected than causing the player to bust a gut at every moment. After all, that’s how Earthbound did it, and that game wouldn’t have been the same if the developers were attempting to make the player burst out in hysterics.

I’d be willing to praise the game’s humor more if the story of West of Loathing was more substantial. The protagonist’s goal in his adventure out west is totally nebulous. His ambiguous goal is simply to “find adventure” in the wild west, which could really count as anything the player does in the game. However, there is a main quest with an overarching goal: to continue the train venture led by conductor Schmee. The train's trajectory is halted by various hindrances, and the third one is a little more frantic. “Emperor Norton,” the old lunatic who burdened the player with the ant-virus, has somehow stolen the train and taken every passenger hostage as it careens backward on the track. Fighting his crazy ass three times before he submits to defeat and the train is recovered is the climactic point of the entire game. While this moment felt far more enthralling than every moment leading up to it, the lack of narrative development supporting this finale makes this ending feel sudden and unearned. I guess that’s what comes with a story where a guy sets off to the wild west out of sheer boredom. Given that West of Loathing offers a prime selection of options for “pardners” and horses that the player must choose one of, one would think West of Loathing would warrant a second playthrough. When the player watches the credits in the ol’ timey theater to signify completion, the protagonist walks out with only all the sidequests still on his plate. I assume that since Susie’s mission with the hellcows is still unresolved by the end, any pardner’s quest is nothing but a trivial setup, so there is nothing left to explore by retreaded progress with a second or third playthrough anyways.

West of Loathing is a game with a lot of charm. I was dazzled by its lo-fi visuals and assumed that the game could deliver the same exceptional quality seen by other atypical RPGs like Earthbound. Surprisingly, my experience with the game led to an adequate adventure game similar to the point-and-click variety. The elements borrowed from that genre allowed the game’s comical irreverence to flourish. Unfortunately, the RPG hybrid is the colossal ball and chain that drags West of Loathing down. Just because the game looks like minimal effort was put into it doesn’t mean the gameplay and plot should be indicative of that preconceived notion. I don’t loathe West of Loathing, but I wish the developers put more weight and substance beneath its offbeat surface.