World to the West - Life is Peaceful There!

World to the West

About a month ago I finished Zelda : Breath of the Wild and after spending over 100 hours in that world I almost immediately had a Zelda shaped hole in my gaming needs. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome from being immersed for so long in that world? I don't know what causes that longing for more of a game even after you've played so much but thank goodness for World to the West.

I have been following the development of World to the West via their Facebook page for about a year now after seeing some initial art and screenshots that piqued my interest. The developer RAIN previously had done a very well received game called Teslagrad that I had not played (I was scared away by reviews reporting crazy boss fight difficulty) but after some research I really liked the concept of what they were going for in World to the West. I bought it on release day (becoming a disturbing trend for me this year).

I should come out right away and say that World to the West is not a copy of Breath of the Wild (despite how I phrased my opening to this article) but more along the same vein of game and a lot like 2D Zelda of days past. World to the West is an isometric adventure puzzle game, lightly sprinkled with combat. Over the course of the game you will control 4 different characters, hoping back and forth between them to work through the game's story across a quite large map covering various environments.

The look of World to the West is what initially drew me to it and the completed game does not disappoint. The super colorful steam-pulp setting is fantastic. Every character and NPC is distinct both in looks and in interaction. The environments are lovely to travel through and each screen has specific details that allows for easy navigation without getting lost. While monster variety is not huge each serve a specific purpose and are quickly recognizable. It's one of those games where the vivid style makes it almost impossible to take a bad screenshot.

Through the game you are introduced to 4 different main characters that you will control. Each gets their own intro story and sequence that brings them into contact with the others in a well done interlinking plot. While not super heavy in the story department each character has their own motivations and the intertwined plots keep you moving along through the mysteries presented. Sometimes you will only be able to control a small selection (even only 1) character as the story puts the others out of reach. A few times you are jumped to other characters for deliberate reasons to simulate a "this is happening at the same time as that thing you just did somewhere else" which gives the story flow good coherence. The story is broken down into chapters in a way that add to the pulp-novella feel nicely.

Each of these characters also has a set of abilities, some you get to start with other you develop over the course of the game as various plot elements are revealed. The abilities are paramount to the game and the manipulation of the 4 characters in conjunction with each other make up the core game play. Each section of the game is traversed by solving a series of puzzles often requiring you to use more than one character in a back and forth system. You teleport around the map via a series of totem poles (made up of the characters heads) but first you much reach these spots, and they are unlocked on a character by characters basis so even if you reached it with two of them you made need to get the third character there to help solve a puzzle. Sometimes you can trace the same path with multiple characters, the first "opening the way" for the rest, other times because of a characters specific abilities (which are often navigation restrictive based) you will have to take a completely different route through the map. This exploration/navigation based puzzle game play is fantastic IMO.

Back/re-tracking is definitely the name of the game in a lot of cases. Three different characters will utilize the same screen space in various ways based on their capabilities and limits. I often found myself pre-thinking about how I would get one character through an area while actually doing it with a different character. From teleporting, grabbing keys, hypnotizing enemies and blowing up ways (or just charging through chained doors) each character is a tool in you box to navigate the puzzles presented. If you feel stuck just switching  to another character and fiddling about can help realize a step in the solution. Almost every time I felt I couldn't solve a puzzle it was because I had forgotten about how one of the characters abilities interacted with the world and was trying to square peg a round hole with the current one. A couple of things in the game are a little obtuse and I had some difficulty in areas where I just simply failed to see something or observe an thing that was intractable with a specific character.

I only have one complaint about World to the West and that is concerning a couple of the "boss" fights that come up during the story. There are only a few but as they are mostly combat based, a factor that is light in the rest of the game, they feel a little out of place and 2 in particular are very hard compared to the rest of the game. I don't know of this is some of Teslagrad peeking through or a choice made in the design book of Zelda but as they are character specific and you can't change during these boss fights they are a tad frustrating. I wish there had been a more puzzle based way to fight these bosses (though the final boss fight is very good).

World to the West gives you a large map (with both an above and underground level) to work with and initially as the story progressed you reveal only a very small part of it and I was worried that a lot of it was empty space. The pacing of the story seemed that it would be over before I could see it all. But again to the developers credit they are setting you up for learning how to use the world and the characters by initially running you through a small part of the world with all the characters as a primer to using the same spaces in different ways. At a certain part the game just sets you lose on the remainder of the map with 2 quest markers set off in the distance and its initially intimidating. But it gives the game an great sense of adventure, you just pick a character and start going out and exploring, sometimes in large chunks, other times in small bits before you need the assistance of one of the others.

There is also an entire "secret history" element in World to the West where you collect a series (36 in all?) small tablets that give you a back story to the world. These are often hard to find and even harder to get to (I only got 18 or so) but a small but a small number of them are required to finish the game and they give you a good in-game  means to them. I think there may even be an alternate ending if you get enough...

For $20 World to the West offers a good 15-20 hours of great exploration based puzzle game play in a beautifully rendered world. I heartily recommend this game to anyone who i enjoys the style of play that it offers!