This game is bad. Very, very bad. If you are looking for an Elder Scrolls spinoff, play Redguard. Redguard is far from perfect, but it isn't this dumpster fire. I bought this game on CD ROM for $0.25, and I still felt ripped off.
There were a lot of things that I absolutely loved about this game. The setting is really neat, and the puzzles (for the most part) are above average. In addition, there are tons of things that are just good. In terms of adventure games, the gameplay is much less cryptic than the average, and most actions make sense. But, unfortunately, there were many parts that were aggravating and pointless. Here's all the issues I experienced: The Mac installer is broken in a really odd way. It installs the game perfectly fine, but when run, it asks for the user to insert the CD-ROM. Oddly enough, the CD version wasn't supposed to have any copy protection at all, even in the retail version. I ended up taking the files out and plopping them into SCUMMVM, which worked flawlessly. The remainder of the issues are in the game itself, and not technical. The location "Rat Cave" is fine to walk through once, but due to its length, the number of times you need to walk through it is painful, but by no means the end of the world. The "Dungeon Maze" just isn't great. It's also not my biggest problem. The "Dog Castle" is the worst location in the game. It comes in at about 30% of the way through the game, and is absolutely atrocious. A walkthrough is necessary, as this is a horribly long maze with nothing in the means of landmarks, and a confusing camera angle. While content wise, it isn't the largest part of the game, it is by far the most time consuming. I hate this part. And, at the end of the maze (provided you reach the correct exit) you get the second worst part of the game. There is one area that is heavily dependent on luck, and in order to get a necessary quest item, you must try repeatedly to do something (that I will not say due to spoilers.) After this, it's back to the maze. Ugh. Once you're out though, the game really picks up. Big time. It goes from good, to awful, to great, all in the span of a maze. One last note: the publisher-mandated rewrites are VERY obvious.
(Review from Steam version) I've been playing Kingdom of Loathing for years now, and West of Loathing does a wonderful job capturing the exact style of comedy and brilliance of KoL in a far more animated adventure. The black and white stick figure artwork returns to great affect, but WoL makes these far more dynamic by adding animation. This is a wonderfully funny game from Asymetric, and it somehow manages to just be, well, perfect. This game is perfect. Well... almost. While the gameplay is excellent, the puzzles are just hard enough, and the writing is superb, there is one minor flaw: It ends. (But really, replay value is massive, as it is impossible to see everything in one run.)
This game is fantastic. While it is not as recognizable as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, it is a great entry into one of the best fighting game series ever made. The graphical style is top-notch, along with the music. One thing to keep in mind though, is that this game is a port of a PS2 game, therefore a DualShock is probably the best controller on offer. It is mapped flawlessly by default, and plays very well. Playing with a keyboard is a little clunky, but definitely doable, while an Xbox 360 gamepad will take some effort to get running.
