Wild Bastards Review (Cosmic Hatter)
It's an experience that never fully comes together, so to speak.
Earlygame in the first/narrative campaign is great, you've only got two characters and have to play carefully, making due with their abilities and semi-stealth in shorter warp-maps, but... that unfortunately doesn't stay too long, as by the time you get 4 characters, the game starts to fall apart. Warp maps expand out to basically 3x7 Slay-the-spire-map type choices, with other, typically larger grids on the planets, and you're encouraged to fully explore to get cards and resources, except you have the Prince timer breathing down your neck and have to get through multiple repetitive shootouts in order to get that loot, and you're encouraged to get infamy by doing all the shootouts and packs/patrols, but that ends up being exhausting and not really worth it most of the time... Guess what, there's like 15 characters and THIS is the unchanging loop you get for the entire game.
With that said, that's where the cracks show up. As more enemies get introduced, and you start building characters in a more-roguelike manner (levelups have a random draw of 3 cards, some generic, some specific to the character, this might also apply to the Core cards because I did see a different core card during the first Challenge run on a character that I had three core cards on in the Narrative Campaign...) , and enemies get introduced that are meant to be countered in certain ways, but... You WILL be forced to use characters that don't necessarially counter those enemies, including not being able to use characters that WOULD be perfect for the situation if they weren't randomly feuding, so those cards and intents become retroactively useless and gimmicky, cause everyone can do everything with varying degrees of efficacy and play style.
On that note, feuding is just a bad system. The characters never decide that they're going to be pals even if you just slayed through 6 encounters with both characters competently and barely took damage, no, instead that causes "oh I hate you now and won't let you recreate that success until you find more beans!" for no damn reason. It seems to happen more if the playstyles clash or you lose 50 hp on both characters... Or just exist as my favorite example, Preach and Ros, who have pal skills that complement eachother, Preach giving 3 healthkits on Ros being hit three times, Ros giving 3 armor after Preach gets 3 times, allowing for a loop of recovery- they even immediately pal up when you revive Ros, but then immediately after using them on one planet, they instantly split, so you can't even make use of the gimmick. Better yet is when you repeatedly use beans to make a pair that works well happen, then they repeatedly fall out. The ONLY times I have seen pal-ups is when a character gets rescued from Jail or Scattering, otherwise it seems to happen between characters it's useless for, like, say, Billy and Kaboom or Billy and Judge, where Billy sets 3 enemies HP to 1, but Judge and Kaboom do so much damage that that's hardly ever necessary.
So you'd think that means Beans are super common, right? Nope. There's like 1 can every 5 planets. In the same vein, the whole Charge mechanic applies at the same rate, a character will be charged and have their buff only the first time you use them in a system, then you need Tonics to get that buff back, but they're also rare, which then loops back into the cards feeling like unnecessary gimmicks, and since some characters are just better than others, you'll make those characters perpetually tired, and...
...This all comes crashing down. The whole thing just sort of feels irritating by midgame, especially since you'll make most of the characters pals until Ros arrives, then he just turns most everyone against eachother and immediately causes multiple feuds, which then force certain character combinations, then you get into the repetitive loop, leading you to possibly try to get beans more rather than cards just because Ros pisses everyone off constantly, then you go and rescue Spike, who technically starting the endgame by making everyone but Smoky and Billy leave, and then... Then you have to do extra showdowns to get one character back per warp map, if you choose to go for them, then you make it to Fletch, who then basically reserves 4 characters three times to make you play certain characters and not others, so none of it's really your choice, your builds don't really matter, and the game just feels like it's not right.
Then there's the ending. For all that repetition, for all that grind, for all that work, you get a "Oh, sorry, the entire goal of getting to homestead was a lie, it was for these three children we made you rescue for no big reason, k thanks byeeeee" and then it. Just. Ends. You unlock Procedural mode and Challenges, but all that work you did, the builds you made, it's all just vanished despite the post-credits saying "oh hey, we're going to make this go on forever, you're here to stay". Dear. God. This is where I went "Yeah, the devs clearly wanted to make a different game and then changed it into this one."
Challenges aren't challenges, they're deceptions with annoying modifiers and RNG reliance. You start them with certain characters at certain levels with certain gimmicks, and since you didn't build them, you're relying on enemy RNG and auto-chosen-card RNG to be kind to get them done. Bleh.
Procedural seemingly leans more into the Roguelike nature, but it still ends at some point and you still don't really get much control over what happens anyway so it's just more of the Campaign but with a lot more randomness.
All this and without mentioning Cramm. Cramm's the "gold" of this game, but you LITERALLY NEVER RECEIVE IT DESPITE SHOPS APPEARING ON NEARLY EVERY PLANET, so I just ignored them most of the time.
Tldr, I'm expecting some kind of massive changes to occur because the state of the game right now is just.... Abrasive and chaotic.
PS: The robots can be poisioned, the literal Ghost can take damage, and the flaming skeleton can take fire damage. Only two of three of those get somewhat solved by core cards. Also, the loudest thing in the game is the showdown intro tracks, which isn't controlled by Music volume, no, it's on Main volume and turning that down makes everything else basically inaudible.