A ridiculously easy turn-based "roguelike" text-based decision making game. The good: It's cheap and I didn't encounter any bugs. Apart from that, not much, in my opinion. I guess there's a niche out there for text-based roguelikes, but I'm definitely not part of it. The bad: - Fun-ish for about 3 hours, in which you see all there is to see in this game apart from some story dialogue. It's very, very repetitive. - The normal difficuly is ridiculously easy, although the game describes it as "challenging" and you can't change it after you start. This is the first roguelike in which I haven't died a single time in 5 hours (after which I stopped playing it), and I wasnt' even ever close to it. You really have to try hard to kill yourself. The game is like "An avalanche is coming straight at you, would you like to avoid it or stand still?" and you're like "I'll stand still, thank you." and you only lose like 5-10% of your health or only get a temporary debuff. - The walking animation is unskippable, you can only speed it up, and at maximum speed you will spend 75%+ of the game just watching your character walk and climb long distances after you told it where to go, which is beyond boring. - The story is minimal, vague and uninteresting and in no way makes up for the unchallenging, repetitive gameplay.
The good: It's cheap and I didn't encounter any bugs. Apart from that, not much, in my opinion. I guess there's a niche out there for text-based roguelikes, but I'm definitely not part of it. The bad: - Fun-ish for about 3 hours, in which you see all there is to see in this game apart from some story dialogue. It's very, very repetitive. - The normal difficuly is ridiculously easy, although the game describes it as "challenging" and you can't change it after you start. This is the first roguelike in which I haven't died a single time in 5 hours (after which I stopped playing it), and I wasnt' even ever close to it. You really have to try hard to kill yourself. The game is like "An avalanche is coming straight at you, would you like to avoid it or stand still?" and you're like "I'll stand still, thank you." and you only lose like 5-10% of your health or only get a temporary debuff. - The walking animation is unskippable, you can only speed it up, and at maximum speed you will spend 75%+ of the game just watching your character walk and climb long distances after you told it where to go, which is beyond boring. - The story is minimal, vague and uninteresting and in no way makes up for the unchallenging, repetitive gameplay.
I enjoyed it more than I expected. A fun roguelike. Pros: - cool combat and gameplay loop; - unique visual style; - you can finish the game with minimal unlocks if you're good enough. Cons: - fucking horrible tutorials and very little info available online; - a bit buggy; - the more unlocks you're forced to get, the more you're forced to play with gear you don't like; - almost non-existant story for almost the entire game; - pretty lazy PC port; - can't remap controller keys, can't dodge and aim at the same time because you aim with right stick and dodge with A, and the dodge window is very small; - and probably others that don't cross my mind right now. Somehow, though, despite all of its flaws, it was still very fun for me. The combat and gameply loop are just that good.
I enjoyed it more than I expected. A fun roguelike. Pros: - cool combat and gameplay loop; - unique visual style; - you can finish the game with minimal unlocks if you're good enough. Cons: - fucking horrible tutorials and very little info available online; - a bit buggy; - the more unlocks you're forced to get, the more you're forced to play with gear you don't like; - almost non-existant story for almost the entire game; - pretty lazy PC port; - can't remap controller keys, can't dodge and aim at the same time because you aim with right stick and dodge with A, and the dodge window is very small; - and probably others that don't cross my mind right now. Somehow, though, despite all of its flaws, it was still very fun for me. The combat and gameply loop are just that good.
It's not a 5/5 in my opinion, I reserve that for really legendary games, but god damn, this is the highest 4/5 I can give. Some bugs (not many), some plot holes, some annoyances, but an enjoyable experience. A good game, could have been a great one with less bugs and better story, because the melee combat is very well done and the highlight of the game.
At first, it looked like it had potential, but the more I played, the more disastrous it got because of multiple issues. Here are just 3 of them, I don't want to waste your time with an entire novel: - The upgrade system is bugged 4 years after release - you buy an upgrade, you get the other one. Both upgrades I purchased were swapped for the other choice. Considering you only have money to buy 2 out of 4 upgrades the entire game if you play perfectly, you only get the chance to buy upgrades twice in a playthrough and there's no manual saves to fix it, this is absolutely unacceptable. Also, 2 of the 4 upgrades are borderline useless, which is exactly the ones the game gave me instead of my choices! Furthermore, the developer claims to have fixed this bug on the Steam forums, so he's either selling an inferior version here or he didn't fix it. Either way, I think GOG or someone should notify him about this absolutely major issue. It will make tons of buyers angry. - The last third of the game is horribly underdeveloped, the guy just rushed through it so he can sell it. You collect money and supplies with absolutely nothing to spend them on, literally. Why, then, do you loot stuff for hours if you can't use it for jack shit?! There's literally no shop where you can spend them until the game ends, and the story is rushed to an abrupt ending that concludes nothing after trying to intrigue you the entire game. The developer clearly intended to make an upgrade shop at the very least for the third weapon that you get, but decided it's too much work, since he apparently wasn't even able to get the previous 2 upgrade shops to work properly. - The English is not only terrible, but also full of typos, as proof of the dev's low effort put into this - didn't even bother to spell check the game once. Huge disappointment.
Important fixes for modern computers: - FPS Fix; - Small subtitles fix. Google them before playing or it's probably unplayable. The good: - The combat is awesome and addictive. - The AI of the enemies is impressive even for today's standards... most of the time. These are certainly the elements that got the game a lot of critical praise when it released. The bad: - Could have been more polished. There are plenty of small bugs in the game, one of the common ones being getting stuck in a door if you go through the doorway as soon as you open it, so you will have to load the last quicksave to continue. It happened to me around 4-5 times during my playthrough. Subtitles also don't match the voice acting in quite a few instances, like the writers weren't even decided on the story yet when they released the game. - The story is unplausible, especially if you take into account the entire series. No matter how much you try to suspend your disbelief, a few elements just make absolutely no sense, such as how a baby super-soldier was left to live a normal life by a corporation that has no problem forcefully impregnating little girls, never thinking this would come back to bite them in the ass, or minimum wage security guards committing murder and fighting special forces for their employer. I can't give worse examples than these without spoiling it, but there are much worse ones. If you play this game, play it for the combat. Overall, I was expecting a bit more considering how much praise this game gets, but it's still a solid purchase for the combat alone.
I'd strongly recommend watching a recap or two of the first game before playing this one to understand the story better and connect with the characters. Here are the YT vids I watched to get caught up: /watch?v=14VGMP5P5C4 - short version /watch?v=_RZsY2GyWfM - longer version I'd watch them both because they each add some details which the other misses. You could play the first game, but it's got pretty shitty scores, so I didn't give it a chance. This game, on the other hand, is a god damned masterpiece, in my opinion! I played this game on release (and now bought it here because I love it) and I still remember some really emotional music pieces from the soundtrack towards the end, coupled with really intense moments in the story. I dropped some tears in the final levels. The gameplay is excellent and tense, with amazing atmosphere and challenging combat if you play on hard, which I would strongly recommend for most horror games since it adds a lot to the atmosphere and sense of danger, not to mention " a sense of pride and accomplishment" (I'm looking at you, EA). Stealthy approach is highly recommended on hard difficulty for extra XP and ammo conservation. Nice talent trees, exploration greatly rewarded and recommended because it adds to the story, but the game is still beatable without it. There were a few optimization problems at launch, but not nearly as bad as other releases nowadays. I've played it on a GTX 1060 and it was fine. Not sure if they've improved it by now, I'd assume they did at least partially, but even if they weren't, this is still a 5-star game for me.
I didn't give it 5 stars because, for me, 5 star games are ones that you remember fondly 10 years after playing. That being said, very solid, fun game. About 8-10 hours long for the main story, with new game plus and extra challenges if you feel like playing more. Some dude said it's 3.5 hours long - yes, yes, we are all very impressed with your mad skillz, but that won't be the experience for most players. Some players like to actually observe and enjoy a game instead of speed running through it like it's a work assignment. The story is ok, nothing amazing, but the main attraction is the gameplay, which is super-fun, maybe because the western genre has not been very explored in games. The duels can be a bit frustrating if you play it on hard (and you should, normal seems a bit too easy if you're an experienced gamer), but other than that, time and money well spent. Save file is located here if you want to do a manual backup (at least if you're not using GOG Galaxy, not sure if that changes it): C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Local\Techland\COJGunslinger
