Is Wild West Online the western game we’ve always wanted to play with our friends online? Back when that first trailer came out and so many people mistakenly thought it was some alpha footage for Red Dead Redemption 2 that’s what so many were hoping for. But then doubt began to leak its way to people. The game engine was the same as the zombie survival game that everyone wants to forget, which brought up questions of if this game would be what they promised if this would be another game gone wrong. It’s time to dig deeper and find out, this is our Wild West Online Review.
It’s fair to say that I am a fan of the Western genre in both movies and games. There are so few that have been put out for video games though. Everyone knows of the great success of Red Dead Redemption, some have played the fun game that Gun was, but is Wild West Online simply trying to cash in on that oft unloved genre or is it a worthy entry? To figure that out we have to look at what they were promising at launch. They said there would be outlaws vs the law PvP combat. They said there would be great ways to customize your character. Plots to build your own home, mining, crafting, a variety of choices that wouldn’t be pay to win.
To start out with character creating is limited, very limited. You can only be male with a choice of five different faces that only vary slightly. You can have one hairstyle or be bald. Yup, that’s it. This may be slightly forgivable if they hadn’t promised so much in the beginning or if they had decided to launch in early access on Steam with a beta. But no, this is a fully launched title charging money. Is this game-changing? No, but this is the only way to customize your character without spending real money to buy satchels that may have something you want, it can be very disappointing.
There is clothing customization in the game. Unfortunately, it revolves around buying satchels that are loot crates. These crates vary with either clothing ones, skins for guns and skins for your horse and saddles as well to name a few things. The majority of these satchels can only be bought with real life money. There are a few ways to get some options to help change your look, but they can be hard to grind for. SO overall if you want your character to look different, be prepared to spend more money than you already have for just the base game.
But what about that gameplay, that outlaws versus deputies PvP action? In the first weeks of launch there was no separation of servers, so you would consistently see high-level players destroying lower level people (most commonly with high-level rifles that you had no chance to fight against with normal revolver). That’s changed recently with a patch separating low levels into their own servers, but now that just drops the population on servers making it harder to find people. Faction play was busted, to begin with, but slightly works now. Overall PvP works but is still ill-thought out and favors those who use rifles. With little to no PvE gameplay at all, it’s just a frustrating experience all around.
Overall Wild West Online in its current state does not offer anything worth spending at its full asking price for. The player number seems to continue to drop and while the dev team continues to patch the game, it could be too little too late. A game that should be in Beta, is instead in full release.
