War for the West

War for the West is a highly political kingdom simulator where you play as a lord or lady who recently inherited leadership over a medieval province and have to decide how to best use your time, money, and personnel to perpetuate your line and not suffer an untimely death.

This game feels very medieval, a rarity that I appreciated greatly. For example, you are expected to marry someone of the opposite sex, because you are meant to carry on your lineage which, of course, involves having children (though true to real life, this does not mean you have to be particularly romantic with or faithful to your chosen spouse, and I'm fairly certain you don't have to marry at all).

In general you have the same sort of array of options that I would expect from a real medieval lord: marrying for love or political gain, bolstering or defying the church, giving to the poor or spending all your money on banquets and pleasure houses, and so much more. Consequences for these choices felt realistic in the setting, though often unexpected in fun ways. For example, sometimes a just or merciful action could backfire but it always made sense (e.g., if you punish a guilty party when your people don't think they are guilty, you could lose a bit of their support).

While I wouldn't call this game a particularly wholesome game - it definitely makes some rather questionable actions quite tempting - it wasn't nearly so dark as I was expecting based on the grimdark tag and content warnings. You can't avoid all the unpleasant content, especially the violent kind, but the darkest stuff seems to be by choice (my MC was fairly honorable so I'm not sure how dark it gets, but based on the choices I was offered, I suspect very, very dark and disturbing).

There are also some surprisingly wholesome characters! I married the first suitor that came my way, who was kind-hearted and supportive (and a shy virgin on the wedding night, which I thought was sweet and rare for modern stories).

My biggest issue with the game is that I don't think ChoiceScript is the best format for it. I get why CS was chosen (it's hard to find an easier option if you're going solo), and the author did a good job with it, but I just found it so awkward and clunky navigating the CS menus and hard to keep track of resources as a result, which is a huge deal in a kingdom management sim. I would have far preferred a UI that more readily displayed key stats like money, and that made it easy to just click one button to pull up reputation stats and the like. It could also really use an autosave system! It's easy to die unexpectedly and if you haven't been saving with the clunky CS save system, then you're going to have to redo everything because of one bad choice.

I was also disappointed to find that this isn't a standalone. My particular ending was interesting but unsatisfying on its own, and I found myself frustrated with some loose ends that I suspect will only be wrapped up in a sequel which has yet to release after 7 years (not blaming the author here, these games take time, but it's worth noting for players who want a finished story).