Wild Bastards Review – Shooting for the Stars

Wild Bastards is the sequel to 2019’s Void Bastards and intends on expanding the appealing mixture of shooting, boardgame, and roguelite, while retaining the acclaimed art style and quirky characters. The combination is interesting and there is a strong sense of identity to this sci-fi western adventure, but do these elements blend into something that will keep you coming back for more, or is it too much of a melting pot that falls short where it should excel, which is the shooting part? Keep on reading to know all about it.

Band of Space Misfits

There’s no denying that the mix of genres at work in Wild Bastards is a clever one. It’s also one that is becoming more and more common, almost as if any game now instantly needs slapping the word “roguelike” onto them. There’s an addictive appeal to the gameplay loop that such mechanics provide, sure, but how many games do we need where the process is always the same – progress through an usually hard early game, die, repeat, hopefully manage to get some permanent upgrades to your characters, repeat over and over, until you are finally strong enough to progress a bit further. And then what? Die and repeat, of course. What ever happened to balancing difficulty?

Maybe it was the default difficulty in Wild Bastards that made me realize just how unfair this loop can be. It’s only rewarding in a sense that you get to progress and feel this sense of achievement if the game is well balanced – and it clearly isn’t, in this case. You get tons of items as you explore the systems and rescue the fallen members of your outlaw gang, up to a total of 13 characters with a decidedly unique look and feel to each one, but when the bell of death tolls – and it will, many, many times – all of that is lost, apart from the aces that are the permanent hero buffs.

But what’s more intriguing is how most items that you collect never seem to make any real difference, even if you assign them to the hero that they are mostly suited to. When your heroes drop into the arena, with an on-the-fly character switch mechanic, it still feels punishingly hard, despite a few good ideas at work here, such as enemy location being spotted when they talk. However, their ability to track you down in a supernatural way is a bit jarring, and they will easily make you run for cover with just a few hits. The arena showdowns could have been quite fun, but the relentless chase you are subjected to just becomes frustrating and definitely not enjoyable.

The other part of Wild Bastards is this boardgame-like gameplay where you move your outlaws across the planets in a turn-based system. There are quite a few elements here to check, from the mandatory shops to fixed and moving enemies, data sets and currency to collect, teleporters to save up on turns, and a few stronger nemesis that discover your whereabouts and decide to give you chase. It’s a nice fit to the arena side of the game, a robust system overall where the two halves don’t overstay their welcome – the problems of Wild Bastard surely don’t reside in this genre mix.

One thing that must be said about Wild Bastards is that it’s oozing with style. Voice work is terrific and the art is quite unique, with smart angular lines and a direction that bathes on retro inspirations without being properly antique, and the vivid colors result in a landscape that almost feels both techno and virtual reality at times. It’s a wise choice, a talented result, and extremely pleasant overall.

Unfortunately, with this art direction comes a decision that looks good on paper, but that takes its toll on the gameplay itself – the deliberate lack of animation frames is not the best thing for a harsh arena shooter where every millisecond matters – visual cues are of utmost importance and lacking here – and some animated actions as well, cutting short on these in a way that ends up hurting our comprehension of the unforgiving arenas. The glaring issue is how ladders work, without any sort of ascending or descending animation – you and every other character, friendly or foe, simply teleport top or bottom, something that frequently has a terrible impact on gameplay. To put it shortly, it’s not unusual for you to be surprised by a teleported enemy or two, as there are no visual cues and they simply spawn right next to you, pretty much capable of throwing your run into the trashcan. Lazy and unfair could be words suited to this design choice.

Almost Golden

An accomplished art style isn’t enough to take these Wild Bastards to the galaxy of roguelike heroes. The positive first impressions will end being washed up by some shortcomings and a difficulty level that is not so much challenging as it is frustratingly difficult. The diversity of characters is fun, but all of them feel puny and ineffective for longer than they should, the combinations and counters here at work more boring to figure out than fun to use. It gets even more complicated when your characters start having feuds, limiting your choices even more.

Which is a shame overall, because Wild Bastards has a robust core that just isn’t balanced. There’s obvious appeal in it, but only for the most persistent gamers who are capable of looking beyond some glaring flaws. In the end, it’s wild wild west in space, just as the theme of the game illustrates so well.

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

• Accomplished art style
• Awesome voice work
• Creative character styles
• There’s a clever genre mix here

Cons:

• Arena shooter sections are unfair and frustratingly difficult
• Your progress is removed over and over, and the permanent buffs don’t feel significant
• Teleporting ladders are the worst invention ever for an FPS

Wild Bastards review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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