A proverbial “Inch of Water”; simultaneously incredibly shallow and yet somehow overwhelming to the point of drowning the player. Excessive crafting-station and resource variety serve the grindy aspect of the game loop rather than any creative or emergent gameplay styles, ultimately discouraging experimentation in lieu of piling resources into already established upgrade paths.
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It’s hard to say where Wizard with a Gun’s strengths lie; the story is uninteresting, the storytelling is relegated to journal entries, the gunplay is unsatisfying (downright unpredictable with a controller) and the challenge is at the behest of an erratic difficulty curve. The art style is at least pleasant, seemingly in line with other Galvanic Games releases, but this doesn’t really offset the myriad disappointments.
On the surface, WwaG appears to be a highly customisable experience. A wide variety of weapons, bullets and “powders” are available; the latter allowing the player to modify projectiles like increasing Area of Effect or adding Homing behaviours to a bullet. Every item of clothing can be changed and “enchanted” for more health or better resistance. Hell, even the entire Hub World is almost totally rebuildable with a plethora of floors, walls and furniture to scan and unlock over the course of the game. It sounds like a game in which experimentation and unique approaches are rewarded…
…however, WwaG quickly devolves into a clusterfuck of shallow mechanisms spread across far too much ground. Weapons themselves are not customisable which results in them either becoming irrelevant very quickly or staying in your arsenal forever as new discoveries either immediately supersede them or fail to inspire.
The variety of bullet options on display gives the impression of emergent gameplay options and interconnected behaviours. In practice the cost of the linked elements (losing a bullet slot) does not justify their use, instead encouraging the player to stick with maximum damage/destruction routes. Once the player has progressed part-way down an upgrade path there is very little incentive to deviate or experiment with new strategies.
On the topic of upgrade paths: the way the game presents upgrades and gear customisation seriously needs a QoL pass. There are too many crafting stations for too few options. Resources are stored in chests that can be accessed by nearby stations (good). However the chests have to be very close to said stations (bad) and often multiple stations require the same resource, making it impossible to create a crafting area that isn’t extremely awkward to use without requiring the player to run around cherry picking resources for every upgrade (ugly). This could all have been solved with one universal storage point accessible from anywhere in the Hub.
(Side note: for some reason Galvanic Games saw fit to make it so that you can only craft guns and research potions via select NPCs in the “Combat” areas of the game, meaning that you cannot do these things from the comfort of the Hub. You must first know or intuit what resources you will need to bring on a run and then seek out said NPCs. Why??)
Ultimately, Wizard with a Gun felt like an exercise in time-burning. Very little new ground covered despite the novelty suggested at the outset. Maybe it’s better with friends but I don’t have any of those.
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It’s hard to say where Wizard with a Gun’s strengths lie; the story is uninteresting, the storytelling is relegated to journal entries, the gunplay is unsatisfying (downright unpredictable with a controller) and the challenge is at the behest of an erratic difficulty curve. The art style is at least pleasant, seemingly in line with other Galvanic Games releases, but this doesn’t really offset the myriad disappointments.
On the surface, WwaG appears to be a highly customisable experience. A wide variety of weapons, bullets and “powders” are available; the latter allowing the player to modify projectiles like increasing Area of Effect or adding Homing behaviours to a bullet. Every item of clothing can be changed and “enchanted” for more health or better resistance. Hell, even the entire Hub World is almost totally rebuildable with a plethora of floors, walls and furniture to scan and unlock over the course of the game. It sounds like a game in which experimentation and unique approaches are rewarded…
…however, WwaG quickly devolves into a clusterfuck of shallow mechanisms spread across far too much ground. Weapons themselves are not customisable which results in them either becoming irrelevant very quickly or staying in your arsenal forever as new discoveries either immediately supersede them or fail to inspire.
The variety of bullet options on display gives the impression of emergent gameplay options and interconnected behaviours. In practice the cost of the linked elements (losing a bullet slot) does not justify their use, instead encouraging the player to stick with maximum damage/destruction routes. Once the player has progressed part-way down an upgrade path there is very little incentive to deviate or experiment with new strategies.
On the topic of upgrade paths: the way the game presents upgrades and gear customisation seriously needs a QoL pass. There are too many crafting stations for too few options. Resources are stored in chests that can be accessed by nearby stations (good). However the chests have to be very close to said stations (bad) and often multiple stations require the same resource, making it impossible to create a crafting area that isn’t extremely awkward to use without requiring the player to run around cherry picking resources for every upgrade (ugly). This could all have been solved with one universal storage point accessible from anywhere in the Hub.
(Side note: for some reason Galvanic Games saw fit to make it so that you can only craft guns and research potions via select NPCs in the “Combat” areas of the game, meaning that you cannot do these things from the comfort of the Hub. You must first know or intuit what resources you will need to bring on a run and then seek out said NPCs. Why??)
Ultimately, Wizard with a Gun felt like an exercise in time-burning. Very little new ground covered despite the novelty suggested at the outset. Maybe it’s better with friends but I don’t have any of those.