Review | Virtuous Western |

LifeisXbox’s Virtuous Western review | Welcome to the Wild West! In Virtuous Western, we follow a cowboy looking for his horse. A bunch of horse thieves stole his precious friend, and he must now eliminate all of these thieves using a limited amount of bullets. Do you have what it takes? Can you shoot first, throw some dynamite and blow up some TNT? Set out on a short but sweet adventure in Nibb Games’ and Ratalaika Games S.L. latest release: Virtuous Western.

ℹ️ | Maui played Virtuous Western for 1 hour on Xbox Series X. This game is also available on PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation.

What we liked!

Gameplay elements | Virtuous Western does offer some interesting gameplay elements that made this particular game fun. The concept is really great, let’s be honest. There are enemies on a map, and you have to eliminate them with a limited amount of weapons. You start with just bullets, but further along the game, dynamite and TNT are introduced. Of course, you can also use your surroundings to your advantage, like standard and hanging crates. I quite enjoyed figuring out how to kill everyone with the limited amount of bullets, and the fact that there were different ways to beat each stage was definitely a plus as well. Not to mention that this adds a little replay value to the game, even though I think it’s rather minimal.
Speedrun mode | Good news for all you speedrunners because yes, there is a speedrun mode available in Virtuous Western. If you want to add some extra spice to the gameplay, you can try to complete the levels as fast as possible. Given that the game is already on the very short side, I think speedrun should be possible in like 20 minutes and less, but not for me since I’m too slow lol. Still, a nice addition for you competitive spirits that want to beat theirselves.

Somewhere between

Graphics and soundtrack | The game promises beautiful pixel art graphics, but I’d rather call them average. I get that the developers are trying to give off a western cowboy kind of vibe, but it all felt a bit bland and repetitive. In some ways, the stages felt all alike and the whole game is riddled in a brown color, which I get, but it got quite boring sometimes. The same buildings, the same ladders, the same kind of backgrounds,… a little more variety would have been welcome. The same basically goes for the soundtrack. It didn’t stand out at all, and I actually had to restart the game to remember what it was so it’s quite forgetful.
Easy and short | I mentioned that I enjoyed figuring every stage out, and that is true, but it was a shame how easy it was to figure everything out. Mind you, I’m very bad at logical thinking and puzzle-solving, yet I still finished this game in an hour! There are only 30 levels (29 regular stages and one boss stage to end the game) and you’ll get through them in no-time. I felt like I was just getting into the mechanics, and I was just getting to enjoy everything, and then I was at the boss fight, and it was over. I would’ve loved a bit more difficulty and a longer game. Still, the game doesn’t even cost 5 bucks (and not even 2 on Steam) so it’s a fair price, but I think people might expect more.

What we disliked

Controls | When a game requires some sort of precision, I expect the controls to work perfectly. Unfortunately, this was not the case in Virtuous Western. I can’t tell you how often I died because I got stuck on a stupid ladder of because my character went one step to far. It was so freaking annoying, especially during the boss fight, which already requires a lot of patience, so if you die and it’s not even your own fault, it’s quite upsetting.

How long to beat the story | 1 hour
How long to achieve 1000G | 1 hour
Similar with | Kindou

50%

Even though I really like the concept that Virtuous Western offers, I only partially enjoyed its execution. The repetitive, easy, and short gameplay together with the unresponsive controls got in the way, unfortunately.

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