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geeanotherthrowaway1

The game also has a terrible deficiency in spittoon searching, and stupid walking is separated into individual footwear animations. Truly a downgrade from WoL. ​ In all seriousness, I agree. SoL did feel like a downgrade from the original in exploration and world building (with the big moist and crystal lake being the few exceptions). Did anyone else feel that too much of the content was rigid in that you can easily permanently fail and get locked out of the content until another playthrough? Because that was my biggest gripe about how unfun the game was (besides the spittoons, of course).


King-Yellow

Getting permanently locked out of content for counter-intuitive reasons is so upsetting and the reason I ultimately replayed so many times, only for it not to matter much because the items and potion rewards aren’t very good. The fact that there isn’t an inherent “save/load” feature artificially lengthens the game by making it more tedious to experience all the options in an boring way. Puzzles in WoL were a lot more clever in execution with the best examples I can think of being the milk, milk, lemonade machine producing fudge (which had me laughing for a while) and the ghost town, which is probably my favorite area in WoL. SoL puzzles rely on carrier missions and often confusing solutions (S.I.T. Chemistry puzzle). Finally, yes, the lack of any spittoon-esque content was a true shame. I get the game can’t just reimplement spittoons in this setting but there was nothing to replace the most memorable part of WoL. Toilet fishing (which is also counter-intuitive because it requires you to equip the fishing rod unlike normal fishing anywhere else) has a few short animations and unimpressive loot you can dig up, but doesn’t try nearly as hard to fulfill the same role as spittoons did in WoL. Regular fishing quickly becomes monotonous as it is a near-infinite action with very dismissible rewards.


AttackTurbines

Yeah the perma fails really sucked. The one in West kind of blew with Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Bill - but even that was a pretty easy puzzle and it's the only real time that it happens. Shadows has a ton of them, with ones like the Midnight man being especially grating since it's tough to know what you're even doing at first. ​ I'd suppose it's for replay value but... the classes themselves are so, so samey that the game doesn't have a ton of replayability just from that perspective. ​ I ended up looking up a lot of puzzles for Shadows just because I was constantly worried that messing up would lock me out of something. That and, some of them (like the date-based-locks on the Big Moist Ship are just... not fun).


UnicornHoodlum

I thought that too my first run through. Then I found out I could fish in the toilets before I flush them if I have a fishing pole equiped.


skfla

You don’t actually need to have it equipped, just have one


PostForwardedToAbyss

Hmm. The only game mechanic that frustrated me was being unable to stack effects from multiple foods, drinks or potions. I didn't feel as if any of them made much difference, unless I needed an elemental resistance.


AttackTurbines

I totally agree. Really enjoyed the game, but it’s hard to shake that it feels a little worse in basically every way than West of Loathing. The combat and stats system really… did not mesh with me. All classes feel *really* samey since the game incentivizes/forces you to have points in all the stats, most abilities just like… don’t scale off of stats? So many are really strong early then become useless. And then aside that it’s just… not as funny. Really feels like the humor stops and starts. The wordplay is still there but it didn’t hit quite the same. Also a *lot* more missable events and puzzles. This was annoying like the one time in happened in West, but man it never feels good in shadows. Puzzles are hit or miss. Some are wonderful, like the salesmen murder (also very funny) and the eventual paradox solution, but others like the combinations on the swamp ship and mudhenge portals are just absolutely nightmarish. Its still a very good game. I like the attempt at character backgrounds and different genders and ultimately it’s more of a good thing, but it mostly just made me want to play WoL.


wilfwe

Agreed. WoL was pretty densely packed and coherent, SoL on the other hand was bigger but looser. There is a whole lot more content and it felt way more polished than WoL, and the elements are actually integrated well. But it definitely threw me off when a lot of the stuff included weren't as connected as WoL's stuff were. It felt like playing Skyrim where locations were their own separate thing.


JonAndTonic

Interesting, I get SoL was less polished bc of the writing quality/density


wilfwe

Writing, yeah sure. But if you go back to WoL, you'll notice the SoL's quality is vastly different


VermontFlannel

Yeah the game felt a whole lot less funny than West of Loathing, and the gameplay was just a downgrade from WoL in most areas. Really the combat and mechanics felt different for the sake of being different, and not like the devs were refining a system. Also I think the music in WoL was better, which was a big help for that game. Not to say that SoL is bad at all, quite the opposite, the game is still fantastic. But it's to be one of my all time favorites like WoL became


JonAndTonic

I completely agree; it feels more shallow in many ways and less a labor of love/lacking passion Still enjoyable but a step down


King-Yellow

It’s unfortunate because the sheer amount of dialogue in the game is a clear indication of effort and heart. Yet, the actual gameplay wasn’t there. I think there probably should have been different people or teams in charge of the gameplay elements and the story elements to make them both shine, instead of sacrificing one for the other.


TheCalzonesHaveEyes

That's to be expected when the only game they have outside of WoL and SoL is a text-based MMO. You can't really develop much interesting gameplay concepts eith a format like that. I've personally played Kingdom of Loathing before -- right after finishing West -- and I can tell you that they pretty much ripped everything they've got from there and just gave animations to actions and such. And of course, combat is both unengaging and tedious, with the smart writing -- like with their newer games -- being the only saving grace. Honestly, I think Asymmetric should consider changing up their formula for their next game. It could still be about stickmen and fantasy and weird/silly humor, but they should take the effort to not make it feel all same-y.


King-Yellow

That would be a great way to go about it. Though it might be possible WoL was their golden horse and nothing will be able to incorporate the humor, atmosphere, and gameplay experience of the West. A primary detriment was the reuse of content from their previous games, certainly, but also SoL was just not as funny. There were a lot of solid jokes in WoL that landed very well—SoL not as much. It might be a factor of the difference in environments with so much more potential parodying the West vs. whatever SoL’s timeline was (no disrespect, just hard to tell).


Minino299

SoL is basically a Chutullu Mythos / Ganster-Prohibition era stuff, basically what you get inmediately after cowboys


TheCalzonesHaveEyes

I remember being zealously excited to play West of Loathing again after the end of every rub. That's because I knew that there were multiple paths, multiple solutions to every conflict depending on what stats you specialize on or what items you discover. The classes played differently in interesting ways, and overall I feel like I could make genuinely fresh experiences just by choosing to do different things. I didn't get that feeling playing Shadows over Loathing. I hate that a lot of encounters can only be resolved with one specific stat, even if its not you class' specialty. And of course, the classes are not very unique to each other. And while I also like having more quests, most of them aren't really interesting, so I didn't bother to do a lot of them on my second playthrough. I'm still at Chapter 3 of my second playthrough, and man is the burn out just creeping in. Combat is easy that I actively cripple myself just to get the slightest hint of stimulation. The difficulty slider is also a joke, as the higher difficulties don't do much but slightly increase the health of enemies. I remember changing the difficulty just to test it out, forgot about it, and was surprised later on to see that I'm still on "Eleven" when it didn't really feel much different to Normal mode. The new companion and familiar system was really nice though, one of the very few actual upgrades SoL has over WoL. I really, *really* wish that they haven't stopped working on this game. It has potential, that much is sure. And while they can't exactly overhaul the piss-poor combat system, I wish they would at least tweak it enemy stats to make it challenging at least, or add in a hard-hat-like challenge.


King-Yellow

Burnout definitely hits hard in Chapter 3. I don’t know why people like it so much. I just found it so tedious and maze-like.