Wild West Dynasty Review (GeForce Now & PC)

Before Medieval Dynasty became the giant it is now, it went through a grueling development process. At first, gamers had to make do with a barebones product that had a couple of bugs and glitches. But we trusted the process, and now, Medieval Dynasty has become one of the best community-building and town-management simulation games you can play. Wild West Dynasty is essentially asking that gamers do the same: trust the process. But to what extent? Let’s take a look at what you can expect in our Wild West Dynasty review.

Became a Pioneer

You’ve just arrived in a derelict vast piece of land: the Old West. The game calls you the “Pioneer,” who will build your first ranch and set up a thriving town that attracts more settlers and, in the end, results in a booming Wild West community. The game tasks you with building a successful dynasty, starting from the bottom of the barrel and climbing your way to the top. And yes, absolutely, the premise of Wild West Dynasty sounds promising. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired. 

Upon selecting “New Game,” you’re taken to the story mode, where you unravel the plot, meet NPCs, and uncover the secrets of the land. For the most part, the story is uninteresting, mainly because it lacks plenty of details. For instance, you start chatting with your mother. She’s been injured, and her wounds are more life-threatening than yours. So, she sits on bare land and directs you to the basics of gathering resources and building a home. 

The exchange takes place via text dialogue that feels bland. Your perspective has also been raised higher than your mother’s. And overall, you can’t wait to wrap up the exchange so you can get your hands dirty building and managing your own ranch. Still, you have to pay attention to conversations with NPCs, as these give you the next quest to take on.

Howdy

Speaking of NPCs, you’ll meet quite a number of them while exploring the lands. Besides your mother, you’ll run into other survivors. However, their design, animations, and purpose feel unfinished. The characters in Wild West Dynasty appear rigid. Meanwhile, the animations often stutter, with buggy implementation. Moreover, the characters barely stand out. They lack personality or background stories that set them apart from one another, let alone memorable. Soon, your mother succumbs to her injuries, leaving you to venture out into the world to recruit more survivors to join your community. 

Cowboy Up

While exploring, you’ll often run from place to place. Fortunately, you’ll unlock the ability to mount a horse. It makes exploration faster, allowing you to cover even more ground. It comes in handy, especially when you discover that Wild West Dynasty has a vast world. You’ll move from biome to biome, gathering resources and scouting for the best place to set up your ranch, workshop, and, thereafter, town. The game demands scouting for flat land, which is frustrating at times when you find the perfect spot, but it turns out you cannot build there.

Anyway, once the stars align and you find a flat land that pleases you, you can start chopping trees for wood to build different structures. Thankfully, you enjoy a good enough amount of variety, with the freedom to customize houses to fit your personal style. At the moment, you can customize by the material, type of house, and even painting, but there’s a chance future updates will add more options. 

Your crafting tools will break pretty often. And the only way to ensure their durability is by upgrading. It can be frustrating at times, but after progressing, you can nip that in the bud. Plus, you’ll soon upgrade from building wooden houses to stone-walled structures. These require setting up your blacksmith shop to unlock more features. As is, crafting works pretty well. With the ton of menus you often have to navigate, Wild West Dynasty manages to remain intuitive. 

Spirit of the West

It’s pretty fun building new structures and gradually expanding your home. Seeing your ideas come to life feels satisfying as you push the envelope to experiment with more designs. Unfortunately, though, the construction process itself is the same. It gets repetitive quickly because you don’t really learn new mechanics but rather build more and more houses. The cycle soon merges into one as you mount your horse in search of more resources and return to build a new structure in the same way. 

Besides building, the game has an element of survival. You’ll need to scavenge for food and water to survive the desert. You may need to stay in the house to evade the hot summers or cold winters. However, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. You never truly feel the urgency to go out into the wilderness to scavenge. Getting food is pretty easy, whether from edible fruits on the trees you come across or setting up traps. Meanwhile, you can dig wells or get free water from Ed. The survival bit of gameplay simply feels safe most of the time.

Now, you’ll sometimes run into enemies you’ll need to defend yourself against. They can be wild animals that you can take down with your axe and, later, a weapon, including a shotgun. Combat is hardly challenging. If anything, it can feel wonky. Still, Dynasty games have never been combat-based: rather than killing enemies, they focus on sustaining a community. So, it’s unsurprising that the combat in Wild West Dynasty is sparse. 

Sense of Charm

Visually, Wild West Dynasty has a sense of charm that captures the spirit of the Old West. It’s probably the color palette and its undertones that nail the dusty feeling of the wilderness. And as you forge on into the world, you discover varied biomes that bring with it greenery and foliage. Unfortunately, the world has been let down by the implementation of the graphics. They have low textures with bland designs that look the same in nearly all the places you visit. 

Hardly any environment entices you to really take a step back and take it all in. You barely run into points of interest that make you want to find out more about the lore. On top of all that, there is a lack of polish that leaves the visuals looking unfinished. Couple that with the lackluster character designs, and the overall rating of Wild West Dynasty toggles drastically down.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it feels like the game is missing a lot of content. Besides polishing and fine-tuning its mechanics, Wild West Dynasty feels like it hasn’t quite yet tapped into its full potential. The concept of the game definitely sparks intrigue. Simply building a dynasty in the Old West is bound to attract a lot of gamers, whether they are simulation enthusiasts or not. Yet, the implementation of the gameplay has drastically let down the premise. Most of the game’s mechanics feel wonky, while the plot desperately needs a facelift.

Comparing Wild West Dynasty to Medieval Dynasty is perhaps unjust. The two games may share the same publisher, Toplitz Productions, but they have different developers. Perhaps in that respect, we can give Wild West Dynasty a reprieve for failing to meet the expectations of gamers. The game is simply unfinished at the moment, with plenty of content still to come. 

Verdict

The gameplay in Wild West Dynasty hasn’t been implemented well. The plot lacks intrigue, with uninteresting text dialogue between characters who don’t even spare the time to look at each other. Characters themselves look rigid, with a lack of personality that makes them memorable. Animations also look wonky, breaking immersion in the process.  

But not every gameplay element disappoints. You do enjoy a seamless inventory and crafting system. Building different structures does spark excitement as you watch your ideas spring to life. Gradually, you build a flourishing community after your own heart and protect it from attacks. And then the praise stops there as the cons of the game break through the surface again. The building mechanic soon becomes repetitive, with hardly any new mechanics to introduce a change of pace. 

Further, the world, while seemingly vast, feels empty. It doesn’t feel inviting to explore it to the fullest. Environments are bland, with few points of interest that you genuinely spend time exploring. In the same vein, the survival mechanic to scavenge for food and water is interesting. However, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Finding food and water is pretty easy, hardly creating a sense of urgency that keeps you on your toes.

In all of these, the developers have been diligent in ironing out the issues gamers are pointing out. They have launched patch updates that have fixed some of the glaring bugs during the early stages of early access. So, we hope they will continue to update the game with wholesome content while polishing the unfinished areas. Perhaps then Wild West Dynasty will redeem itself in the eyes of simulation enthusiasts and every gamer alike.