Author: TheAleosha

Completed Blood West.
Third episode bumps the stakes again. Enemies are so “meaty” I have to buy the unique revolving buffalo rifle, and gunpowder horn that saves 40% of its very expensive ammo. The whole idea of the episode is that you descend into this “radioactive” canyon (at least you don’t need gas mask filters, but you do need to craft a “gas mask” sort of), towards the huge demon skeleton that carved this canyon.
One episode I didn’t enjoy much is raiding the indian village for one of the totem figurines. It’s swarming with invisible enemies called Broken Screams. Since they are invisible, it’s hard to sneak past them, and I ended up almost running of ammo. Had to use the chain revolver that holds 28, so I don’t need to reload so often.
There are nasty enemies called Boo Hags, skinless women that can only be killed with a instakill or fire. One of them is talkative and asks to bring her skin back. She also mentions that the night is endless, which is never explained.
There’s very little explained in general. We climb the mountain, summon totem of souls (which was previously a ram head on a stick), which is a bubble, that turns into a dragon. The boss fight is fine, but least inventive out of the three bosses: it telegraphs where “mortars” will land, and has a “flamethrower” pattern attack. You shoot it with buffalo rifle until it dies, which doesn’t take long.

Despite story being lackluster, I enjoyed this game immensely. One of the best experiences of 2025.

I mentioned that if you die 3 times, you get cursed, and to remove a curse you need to complete a miniquest. Some of those are nasty, though, despite not sounding so. “Kill 5 enemies with fire”? But the fire in this game is extremely weak, a Molotov doesn’t kill a basic zombie in the second act, while shotgun fire shells are too strong, and enemies die from the shell, not from “fire”. Easier to use or buy one of the anticurse “purple” potions instead.

Speaking of purple potions, second act introduces cursed items. They usually have strong benefits, like -20% to all shop prices, but to unequip them you need to die or use the purple potion. Since the way I play this game is by switching weapons and trinkets constantly, it makes sense to limit this.

Another new element, which I’ve seen in MMORPGs, but don’t remember in games much, is world boss. A huge monstrocity shows up half way through the act. You can try and attack it, but you’re supposed to sneak away past it, until you complete the quest to weaken it enough.

Speaking of quests, there’s a very vague sidequest where you need to find a cure for the plague, and both Priest and Madam are after it. It is guarded by three gunslinging wraiths, which are extremely dangerous. Unless you find an amulet that makes wraiths ignore you.

There are no “sets” in this game, but a combination of a pistol that grants 5$ for each headshot and a cowboy had that recovers 5HP for each headshot sure feels like one. And every 5 consequitive headshots also remove a curse, which is great, considering how annoying those are.

Second boss is not bad, but I wish the pyres worked differently. It seems you need to light them with Molotovs, and they burn only for a short period, weakening the boss, but Molotovs aren’t stackable, so you need to drag each into the hotkey slot. I ended up shooting it in the head until it died.

By the end of the first chapter you become quite formidable, all thanks for interesting design of skills and items. You get a knife that restores HP on backstab, you get a bow with infinite arrows that uses HP, but you can regenerate HP with wendigo heart. And also crowmen trade bullets favorably: 2-6 bullets for a single headshot.
How do you make a boss in a stealth game? You leave an option to crawl around to weaken it! It’s a tree-boss, that attacks you with roots (the AoE is vicious!), and you either wait for a literal opening or shoot the tendrils to force it to open.

The second episode is set in Lousianna swamps. My problem with enemies in this episode is that they are too tanky, most can survive a headshot, and that’s not mentioning the butchers, that have a helmet on.

The good bit is that the authors remembered volcanic pistols, with a tube instead of a cylinder. Wild West arsenal shouldn’t be limited only to revolvers.

Was very excited to find a unique version of the Prodigal Daughter enemy, VIP Daughter, tucked away in a cave. Later discovered that she’s part of a quest which I ruined. And since there’s only a single save in this game: no reward for me.

There’s a really fun quest that predates this one where you need to find and talk to cacti. There’s a seniorita cacti, miner cacti, sheriff cacti, and they are all voiced. You can only talk to them while drunk. I wonder why…

The drunk game is very strong in this game in general. As a reward for this quest you get a bottomless flask. Before that, you got a knife, that has a bonus damage while drunk, but drains your life while sober. With the bottomless flask, though, it’s not a problem anymore. And there’s also a rifle for drunkards, that has bonus damage while being drunk.

Wendigo are like local version of Deathclaws. They are terrifying, but fair: they will chase you, but won’t fit in small caves, where you can snipe them from. The most annoying enemy are the flying skulls. They pass through walls, hard to hit, take multiple shots, and relentless.

It starts like Blood and looks like Hexen 2, but it’s neither. You have a stealth system, with a full fledged visibility and noise meter which I haven’t seen in ages. And an inventory system. There’s also money, with multiple traders, and experience, with skills and multiple upgrades. The loot is fair. If an enemy has shotgut, it will drop shotgun once killed. At this point, I’d like to say it plays like a Deus Ex, but honestly I don’t remember how Deus Ex plays.

You cannot save freely. Monsters respawn, but I couldn’t figure out when. Not when you rest, or die. When you die, you don’t need to pick up your corpse to recover stuff, but you do get a curse every time, lowering your stats. And if you get cursed three times, you need to complete a miniquest to remove the curse: do 5 headshots, stealthly kill 3 enemies, or something like that.

The start is quite brutal, until you get the lever action rifle. It holds more bullets than revolver, and unlike it is actually able to deliver headshots. Also, ammo is plentiful, since it’s the same as the revolver one.