We Happy Few

TL;DR: We Happy Few is worth buying on some sale, and playing it with console cheats to skip the boring repetitive parts and experience the well-written story.

OK so this thumbs up was the toughest one I have ever given. And that's because it's under certain conditions. Let's clear this up.

The game is the essense of "great concept, poor execution". It has great story, dialogues, humour, graphics and in theory good gameplay. And by "in theory" I mean it has great game mechanics ideas but they fail to be fully fleshed out because of poor implemenation.

The main factor attributing to this is the bad bad bad AI of the enemies. For a game focused on stealth approach, it's insulting seeing enemies acting so erratically. They either see you performing unaccepatable actions (like jumping and running in public) from 3km away, or you could be sneaking in their home and hiding behind a chair and they literally don't notice you are there. Their patrol patterns are also really odd, making you usure of the available windows to make your next move. Even out of stealth, the pathfinding of all NPCs is terrible, making them walk up to walls and stumble on eachother in the street etc.

But the main gripe I have with We Happy Few is its biggest gimmick which I think it's also its greatest weakness: The procedurally generated map. It causes so much trouble and unnecessary walking between randomly placed points of interest and spreads thinly all the otherwise interesting and well-crafted content, while also making all areas look the same and depriving them of any sense of character and memorability. If instead, the map was hand-crafted, smaller and denser, it would make for a wonderful experience. And it would make actual sense between the 3 acts (yes, the map changes in each act, for some reason, which makes zero sense in-game).

I am not proud to admit this, but in order to overcome all this and save me several dozens minutes of pointless walking, I enabled the in-game Console and used cheats (infinite Stamina and no-clip) in sections between quests where I only had to walk. I highly recommend it to everyone.

On the good notes, as I already mentioned, the story, characters, dialogues, voice acting are all perfect. They all have depth, the attention to detail in environmental storytelling is equal to a AAA game. The game mechanics are mostly ok (inventory management, crafting system, combat, conformity in different areas etc) and the 3 characters offer a somewhat challenging and interesting playstyle by having different "builds".

Give it a chance, while being prepared for its many issues.

One of the best games of our time, I've played it since release and stayed through all the bug fixes - It has been my favorite game of all time since the beginning. Like, this is top of the list for me, even after R2DR. The STORY, the lore, the gameplay and effects of joy and mushrooms, they created something that is a one of a kind experience.
Play this game. It might surprise you.

Firstly, I was gifted this game by a friend. And I am SO thankful.
I noticed this game while it was in Early Access/Alpha release, shortly after it moved up from the Kickstarter. After being given the gift of WHF, I played and failed. I let myself starve or got lost and couldn't find my way back to the story more times than I can possibly count out. I had a great time having a horrible time. It was beautiful from day one, but was a bit clunky here and there. But watching it grow to what it is, was an absolutely incredible experience. This game has grown to be so truly above and beyond what I expected.
I don't normally play survival games, because I don't have the patience for them. But just the aesthetics and what little game play I saw of this game early on, tempted me. I NEEDED to try it. I got the opportunity, and I was blown away.
Early game play was fun, but man, it was HARD to stay alive for someone like me. Not used to having to eat every 5 minutes of real time, find water quite frequently, and sleep like a normal human. >.>
By the time they released the game officially, they had relaxed the survival necessities, while maintaining that these things are important, you didn't die if you had to AFK for a bio break. You can get great benefits from paying attention to the things you need to survive, but near instant death was no longer a worry. Now you could wander, discover the wonders, find the hidden bits, see the story, get that extra bit of loot to sell and make sure you don't go broke if you need to buy some food. Just have a real experience.
The aesthetics I saw early on were a GREAT indicator of what was to come with how they provided a story, a feel, a world. The main story line made me laugh, cry, cuss out some imaginary characters, even fear for the lives and the hearts and souls of those characters. If you love story, this is it. Especially when you include some of the expansion content.
There are characters that have stuck with me for almost 10 years now, springing forth when I hear certain things making me spout references that so many of my friends unfortunately do not understand.
I couldn't possibly say enough good things about this game, so I will leave you with this...
If you're looking at this game thinking, "I kinda dig this, maybe it'll be fun." Take a chance. I can't and won't pay you back, but if you don't like it, call me an A hole. If you THINK this game is giving you vibes, my dudes, it IS. This game isn't for everyone, but if it speaks to you, let it speak to you.
Thanks for your time, and if you join the WHF universe, I wish you the best, and I hope you enjoy your journey!
-Mizz

We Happy Few in 2024 is an interesting experience. I first played Arthur's story back in 2018, and the whole thing was a complete mess. It wasn't a question of how the game would break, but when. I slogged my way through to the end of his chapter, and never even started Sally or Ollie's. Looking at the trophy counts on Steam, it seems like most players did the same thing.
Revisiting this in 2024 has left me feeling two things: A) the (mostly) fixed game was a blast, and B) most players have never seen some of its best content.
To be clear, this game's biggest issue remains its evolution from a procedurally generated survival open-world experience into a narrative driven adventure game. This awkward marriage of two very different visions is in the marrow of We Happy Few, and short of rebuilding the entire game from scratch, there was no way these two visions were ever going to coalesce. The devs had one thing in mind, the players got excited about another - and thus the awkwardness was born.
Compared to the broken mess of 2018, though, We Happy Few in 2024 plays remarkably well. Yes, there's still some jank - and the procedural generation of the worlds, although refined, only ever hinders the quality of the game. But - the quests are completable, the world looks gorgeous in 4K, and bugs are mostly aesthetic.
The real sadness for me comes from the fact that Sally and Ollie's playthroughs are both brilliant. The latter of which was my favourite in the game. Sally's story was great, don't get me wrong - but Ollie's was just superb. It tied so much of the narrative together, and without spoiling anything, his final few quests made me smile at how thoughtfully the devs had considered the world they'd created.
But only 6% of players ever reached Ollie's ending. The vast majority chose my path in 2018 and never returned. I completely understand why, but it's also hard not to feel sad about this. There's an absolutely brilliant narrative in here, buried under so much 2018 jank.
If you get the chance, I'd really encourage you to give this a 2024 spin. There's some truly brilliant storytelling here, and most of us missed it after the initial launch. The DLCs are arguably even more brilliant, but I'll leave those thoughts for another day.

A game with an absolutely amazing story, but with unfortunately mediocre gameplay.

TLDR: Worth your time as long as you wait for a sale (80% minimum)
Go in with an open mind and you wont be disappointed and don't let the 2018 articles dissuade you. A reviewer said it best however: "its a game with a great story/world building that is hiding within a basic and sometimes glitchy game".
PROS: Really engaging story imo that motivates you to finish the game. The characters are believable for the setting (though they're terrible as individuals) and the writers definitely knew what they wanted to do with the ending in mind from the start. LOTS of inspiration from the book Brave New World. Also the sound track is memorable and I sometimes listen to it in the car as it is quite nostalgic inducing.
CONS: My biggest complaint was how much of a repetitive running simulator it can be at times. Plus lots of open areas that are empty of structures and NPCs, especially in the garden district, which makes side quests not feel worth doing. The fast travel helps but you have to explore them to access points. If you stick to the main story-line, the game does finish quicker (positive) but you do miss some of the world building events I feel.

MINIMAL SPOILERS (only about gameplay no spoilers for story)

This game is mixed. The story, world, characters, actors, etc are all absolutely fantastic, I love it so much and I can't overstate that enough when speaking to others. Also, you should get the dlc because the gameplay is better in those 3, specifically the best being "We All Fall Down".

But when it comes to gameplay, int he base game, it just kinda sucks. The ideas for the gameplay are good like having to wear certain clothing to "conform" to different areas and having to take Joy (or alternative stuff) to blend in and not get detected by machines as being a "downer" survival mechanics like thirst which risks stuff like drink potentially drugged water are all good ideas.

But that's about it, this game has procedural generation in it and while that could be good for replayability, it's only good for the "sandbox" mode and that's it. What it does is pretty obvious when you play, when in the Garden District (Outside of the "Joyful" society) there's a lot of nothing, some kinda big islands with a few repetative houses and streets with only very few sidequests scattered about randomly. In the Village its less obvious until you see postboxes in front of benches and stuff like that out of place but it all kinda looks the same too. The Parade district looks good though but I only spent about an hour there my entire playtime of the game and most of that was inside buildings.

Most of the quests too are fetch quests; go here do that, go there get me that etc. The survival system is just a bit of a hassle, the combat is mediocre, stealth is really challenging in the way it looks like you are supposed to be able to stealth but it just kinda doesn't work. And then there's the bugs too, most are visual but some not just that, the 2 prominent ones that I can think of are the NPCs being placed incorrectly (sitting on a bench, backwards or to the side hovering in front of it) and when you're "stealthing" behind some enemies, they'll just disappear, you'll hear you've been spotted only to find they've teleported behind you and are calling attention to you.

Yes, I have wrote a lot of negative things but if you can get past all that (play on Easy, there's no difficulty related achievements), maybe use some console commands to make it a bit easier, I used "DemiGod" a lot. This can be a really good story and setting, get it on discount too and definitely get the dlc if you want some good/better gameplay alongside the base game. Plus the last dlc "We All Fall Down" kinda felt like what the game should have been, a handcrafted world with good imagery and stealth/combat. Be aware the dlc however removes almost all of the gameplay features of the base game and are completely separate from the base game in terms of accessing them (from the menu, autosaves only, not accessed in world), there's no blending in, no requirement to consume anything but for health and no procedural generation. I wish the actual game was like the last dlc mixed with some of the ideas of the base game (needing to blend in and no procedural generation), it could be so good.

If you somehow read all my rambling, wow thank you I guess. I hope this gives you an understanding of the game. Seriously the story is SO GOOD, that and the dlc, the only reason I'm giving this a thumbs up, everything else gameplay-wise, just wasn't implemented well enough, take a look at the percent of the achievements too, when I wrote this, only 6.5% of players actually finished the main game and about 9% got halfway through unless a lot of people were doing something that disabled achievements, that says something (I used console and still got 70% of the achievements, including dlc).