Wild Bastards Review – Rastle That Roguelike

The spiritual successor to Void Bastards is anything but bastardized. Wild Bastards is a roguelike FPS about robot gunslingers, daring heists, and the friendship-restoring power of beans. It’s a sci-fi western as charming and funny as New Vegas or Firefly, but Darkest Dungeon 2-esque drama threatens to break your posse (if McNeil’s crew of outlaws doesn’t gun you down first). Blue Manchu is no snake oil salesman, and the double dose of adrenaline and style is as advertised. It’s only appropriate that the Bastards’ quest to unite their scattered posse takes them across the galaxy. Wild Bastards is a star.

Wild Bastards Review

Reunite your scattered posse of 13 outlaws, each with a unique weapon, power, and growth tree. Plot a careful route across the galaxy, leveraging your growing infamy to secure mods and other upgrades. Steal valuables as you navigate a boardgame-like planetary map, then engage in a series of FPS shootouts. Escape to the teleporter before McNeil and his crew catch up with you. That’s the loop. After yeehawing your way through the 15-20 hour campaign, dive into a challenge mode for unpredictable modifiers and escalating difficulty. Wild Bastards has as much punch and personality as Smoky’s Skinnin’ Sauce.

Story: Bug Lady and Jackpot Joe

Turn back the calendar to before McNeil and his gang ruled space. Before puritanical magnate Jebediah Chaste set out to eliminate the bastards. The Bastards were stronger once upon a time, but then the universe saw fit to treat them as its own personal spittoon. When Wild Bastards begins, the only ones left are Spider Rosa and Doc Casino. Alone aboard their sentient spaceship, the Drifter, they hatch a plot to rebuild the Wild Bastards one eccentric outlaw at a time.

Roguelike FPS is exactly the kind of game from which you can jettison all semblance of story without sacrificing quality, but Blue Manchu chose not to. Instead, the developer took pains to establish an enjoyable narrative that binds together mechanics and plot. Wild Bastards takes a comfy seat on the space western wagon, wheels rattling through well-worn ruts. You’ve got your preachers, your gamblers, your…gray aliens? Some of the story beats are fleshier than others, but Unregistered Xeno Roswell and the rest of the Bastards show just how much imaginative moxie the game has.

Cutscenes shed lantern light on the plot, but the fun comes from banter between the Bastards. Many have histories together, and even those without a preexisting bone to pick might quarrel when the plan goes sideways. Stubbornness, ambition, and idealism are as powerful a cocktail as whatever Smoky slathers on those magic beans. The dialog rings with it, every phrase turned just so for maximum charm. I don’t like Smoky because his pyrotechnic AoE shots can drown a backwoods town in flames. I like Smoky because he talks like he’s got a mouthful of gravel and looks like the Atomic Skull.

You collect outlaws like Funko Pops throughout the campaign. Wild Bastards is the rare roguelike that made me eager to recruit new characters not only for their unique abilities but also because I wanted to see how they’d annoy the rest of the gang. It’s not the deepest mechanic in the world, but the petty rivalries and solemn friendships that develop between posse members breathe extra personality into a game that was already doing just fine in that department. The Bastards are more than lethal; they’re sassy.

Gameplay: I Thought, Then Shot

Before banks get robbed and sheriffs get shot, you begin in space. You’ll navigate a randomized node map, picking between wandering merchants, loot caches, and other events in an attempt to outfit your ragtag crew. Except for certain special upgrades, you lose everything (including your money, mods, and consumables) when you jump sectors. This use-it-or-lose-it mechanic keeps the roguelike formula fresh by allowing you to receive a constant stream of power-ups without becoming OP after a handful of planets. If the sight of a Slay the Spire map gets your strategic juices flowing, you’ll be happy here.

Once you’ve picked a planet to land on, you’ll enter a second randomized map. It’s not just the enemy mobs, shops, teleporters, and allies that are randomized, however. Terrain features, weather, and even gravity change from world to world. One minute you’re moon hopping around a low-gravity ice world with Doc Casino’s shotgun, the next you’re letting Roswell’s infinite ammo laser pistol spray and pray in an Old West saloon. You can spare these variations little thought and still have fun, but much of the game’s replayability comes from the eternal, impossible quest to dominate the RNG.

Combat takes you to yet another type of randomly generated map for a first-person shootout. Every outlaw wields a signature weapon and stunt ability, and you can swap instantly between the two characters in your current posse. Use The Judge’s sniper rifle to one-shot a tower guard, scale the town wall, and then hot-swap to Doc Casino for an injection of buckshot right to an Armored Kyote. Spin-up the preacher’s minigun to clear a crowd, then bring out Rosa and her dual .45’s to pin down the Mortician. The gunplay is snappy, fast, and bright. It’s like getting slapped by a coloring book.

I enjoy the strategic route-plotting, but the shootouts are the best. Enemies ping their own locations when they shout, whether they’re calling out your position or just taunting you. This self-ping mechanic, combined with the cover-littered battlefields, means you can play Wild Bastards like a tactical shooter, never corner-peeking until you can taste the headshot. The health, stunt boosters, and other scattered power-ups have the opposite effect, rewarding those who stay on the move. Cover becomes more impactful on the harder difficulties, but I never felt boxed into a playstyle.

Having just one weapon and stunt per character sounds stingy, but Aces (unique power-ups), mods, and charged abilities result in a ton of combos. Even before you’ve recruited every lost Bastard, you’ll have no shortage of fun choices. Give Smoky 75% Fire Resistance and let him burn down every seedy saloon and arctic camp around him. Give The Judge double-jump boots, and let the sniper execute mobs from otherwise impossible vantage points. I’m not sure if Wild Bastards has received the fine-tuning of Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon 2, but it’s a wild mess that feels balanced most of the time.

The campaign is an excellent introduction to Wild Bastards, but you can burn far more hours in challenge mode. Following in the footsteps of Monster Train, StS, and other excellent roguelikes, Wild Bastards relies on mutators, escalating difficulty, and the Eldritch Gods of RNG for its replayability. How much you can juice this fruit depends. As a fan of shooters and strategy games in almost equal measure, I enjoyed the Bastards approach. Battles are bite-sized, however, so if you don’t enjoy the game’s tactical elements, you’re going to resent how much time they take.

Graphics & Audio: Catching a Synthwave

The Judge trains the digital sight of his Verdict .50 on a Mortician. The summoner’s tophat and glasses peek out from behind a triangular outcropping of stone, and that’s all it takes. Tiny, neon clocks fill the air as Judgment Time activates. The Judge’s stunt slows time for 10 seconds, and the robotic gunslinger uses them well. His particle beam superheats the air, then the snowflakes, then the Mortician, killing the summoner instantly. A pack of Kyotes bark as they close in behind The Judge, but he’s already turning. Five seconds left.

Wild Bastards is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but cel-shaded and with more robot assassins. It’s Firefly with Tron‘s lighting. If you like the bold, neon outlines of synthwave, then this is the space western for you. Still, there’s an inevitable sameyness to procedural maps. The poison swamps with their rickety bridges will soon turn to a lilac blur. So will the lonely cow towns, frozen mountains, and other biomes. Thankfully, characters benefit from strong visual designs, with enemies receiving the same attention as your posse.

Overall I enjoy the SFX, although weapons like Rosa’s Las Calaveras .45s don’t feel weighty enough. Others, like Smoky’s Skinnin’ Sauce, look and sound every bit as deadly as they are. Watching cel-shaded fire spread across the battlefield like spilled boba pearls, consuming innocent barrels and guilty gunslingers alike, might be my favorite thing in Wild Bastards. In a game where every firefight feels like a highlight reel of your most dashing (and foolish) moments, that’s saying something.

The music is good; the voice acting is great. These are hammy parts, but no one’s chewing the scenery. I would happily sing the praises of Smoky’s “dug from a fresh grave” rasp for the rest of this review, but if you closed your eyes and pointed at random, odds are you’d still land on a funny and surprising performance. Listening for enemy shouts is a core mechanic, but it’s an unexpected pleasure that even random mobs sound this good.

Conclusion: Posse Up

I experienced few glitches and no crashes during my time with the game. Wild Bastards is what a spiritual successor should be. It’s a monument to what made the original great and a beacon lighting the path to something new. It also makes robot snakes explode in pretty colors, and I respect that. Still, the split between overworld strategy and FPS gunning might irk some. That said, if you enjoy blasting baddies and settling blood feuds over a can of beans, you’ll lose untold hours here. You can take a cowboy road trip across the galaxy with Wild Bastards for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S now.

Review copy given by Publisher.

Wild Bastards (PC Reviewed)

8 Great!

A space western roguelike that mixes strategic planning with flashy gunplay to create a worthy successor to Void Bastards.

Pros

1. Strong strategic and FPS gameplay
2. Stylish art and character designs
3. Great voice acting

Cons

1. Shootouts are arguably too short
2. Some weapon SFX are undertuned
3. Procedural maps get repetitive