Tomi on 29/4/2017 at 01:11
Are you tired of shooting aliens?
If you answered "yes" to both questions, then Hard West might be the game for you! :D
I got Hard West and a few other games in the current Humble Wild Frontier Bundle that's still available for a few more days. I can't say about the other games in the bundle as I haven't even tried any of them, but Hard West alone has been well worth the few bucks that I paid. :) I had never even heard of Hard West before, but as soon as I saw henke describe it as a "wild west/Lovecraft-themed XCOM-alike" I was sold.
To my surprise, it turned out that Hard West doesn't only combine my two favourite settings (Wild West & Lovecraft-style occult weirdness), it's also quite an interesting mix of a turn-based strategy game with some RPG and adventure game elements thrown into it. The game consists of eight scenarios that all take a few hours to finish. Each scenario is its own mini-story with different characters and gameplay elements. And here comes the first negative thing: I feel that the developers have been a bit too ambitious with the whole adventure/RPG side of the game. In between each combat mission there's a world map that can be explored; you travel from one town to another, visit all sorts of places and speak with all sorts of people, and perform tasks that you're required to do in each scenario, and as the story progresses you'll get in combat missions. It sounds like the perfect game to me, but instead of making the "world map" part of each scenario totally different from one another, I think they should have concentrated on making just one kind of the world map activities really good.
Example: In the first scenario you're a gold digger and you have to learn different kinds of digging methods to maximize your gold mining profits, so that you can buy weapons and other equipment and hire mercenaries to help you beat the bad guys and progress with the actual story. In the next scenario you're a trader who travels from one town to another selling stuff for profit, and in another scenario you're in charge of a big expedition that is trying to discover a lost Indian temple. And in the latest scenario that I played you're a mad scientist who invents new weapons and gadgets as the story goes on, and tries to find a cure for a strange disease. It all sounds pretty good, and I really liked the first few scenarios especially where some of your choices really seemed to have some consequences, but the problem is that the implementation of all the different elements feels a bit shallow, the world map UI is quite terrible at times, and it's often somewhat badly balanced too - you'll win even if you make some bad decisions on the world map.
Luckily, the combat gameplay is nowhere as forgiving, and of course the combat is the main thing in the game. Anyone who has played XCOM or something similar should feel right at home. Except that Hard West is all about staying in cover and making sure that you're never an easy target for your enemies. Even if you're hit but you're in cover, you only suffer minor damage most of the time. However, if you're standing in the middle of the street as an open target for your enemies, it's usually one shot and you're dead. It's a bit hard to explain, but it makes the tactical side of the game quite a bit different compared to XCOM for example. One thing that I really like about Hard West (that some other people will probably hate) is that you can't save during combat missions - it makes the gunfights really tense at times when you can't rely on the good old quickload.
The enemy AI isn't always that great and the enemies occasionally tend to do some rather stupid things. It's quite common to see some silly gunslinger leave their perfect cover spot to run towards you, only to stop in the middle of an open space to reload their gun, so that in the meantime you'll get a great opportunity to blow their head off. As a result of some occasional AI silliness and some overpowered character skills (more of those later) the name of this game is a bit misleading; Hard West isn't really that hard. :p I'm no expert in turn-based strategy games, nor am I very experienced with them, but even the Hard difficulty hasn't caused me too much trouble so far.
The characters and the character customization is where Hard West really shines in my opinion. The playable characters aren't just generic soldiers with silly randomly generated names like in XCOM, they have their background stories and own special abilities and skills. There are lots of different guns and items that your characters can use, but you'll also find playing cards that give your characters special abilities. Some of them are quite overpowered (especially if you spend some time and really think about how to share the cards with your posse - some of the card combinations are really lethal), but what would a Wild West game be without some over-the-top gunslinging action? :cool:
Visually the game looks a bit old-fashioned, I suppose, but it looks good enough to me and there's something charming about the visual style. I really should add some screenshots in here, especially as this post is already getting way too long, but I'm tired so I can't be bothered right now... Hard West doesn't have the cool close-up kill animations like in XCOM or anything too fancy, but I can live without those. What I'm really missing though is destructible terrain; even visible bullet holes on walls and small details like that would have been a nice touch. The music is pretty good, but it's just background music that helps to build up the atmosphere but you don't really pay much attention to it. The sound effects could be better and there could be a little more variation, but that's just a minor complaint.
Hard West is a flawed gem, but at the moment I'm quite hooked on it. If you like turn-based strategy games but you're tired of shooting aliens or just want to try something a bit different, I would definitely recommend Hard West. The Humble Wild Frontier Bundle seems to be available until the end of this month (I think), so hurry up!
henke on 29/4/2017 at 12:31
Oh cool, glad you're enjoying it. It sounds like there's more to it than I'd imagined. Haven't played it myself yet, just started up a new round of Invisible Inc so I'll finish that before starting up another turn based strategy game, but I look forward to giving this a go. :)
henke on 1/5/2017 at 18:52
Well, my latest Invisible Inc campaign ended in tears and death, so I started up Hard West. Finished the first chapter tonight and moved on to the second. Really digging the storytelling and character development. :)
Tomi on 18/5/2017 at 17:45
Alrighty. After spending 47 hours in Hard West I think I've seen pretty much everything that the main game has to offer. It's nowhere perfect and it has its flaws, but it's still a lot of fun! There's still one more DLC chapter that I haven't bought yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try next week. :)
My final verdict on Hard West:
+ Interesting story with a very cool setting. There aren't too many games set in wild west out there, which I've always found a bit odd.
+ Great soundtrack! I didn't even pay much attention to it at first, until I realised that it fits in perfectly in the game and really sets the atmosphere.
+ Combat gameplay. There's nothing revolutionary or new (apart from the "Luck" resource perhaps), but it works! I've had some super exciting gunfights in Hard West, and it feels very satisfying when your "clever" strategy actually works.
+/- The world map gameplay... that's the RPG side of the game. Each scenario has its own "mini game", and they could have been something really awesome with some more polish, but now they're just okay and very simple.
- Lack of continuity between scenarios. The story and the characters are all good in each scenario, but as each of the eight scenarios only takes 3-4 hours at most to play through, there's not much character progression. One big scenario/campaign could have been a better approach in my opinion.
- Badly balanced difficulty. There are two things that pretty much destroy this balance and can make the game a bit too easy: Cards and The Fate Trader. Cards that you can find throughout the game give your characters powerful and/or supernatural abilities that belong in a game like this I suppose, but they're just too damn powerful. The Fate Trader is a merchant that appears in each scenario who sells you (over)powerful weapons and items that you've unlocked in other scenarios. With certain card/equipment combinations you can create a character who can one-shot all normal enemies in the game without too much trouble and from a safe distance. My suggestion: Choose the "hard" difficulty level - it's not really that hard if you have any experience with turn-based strategy games. (Go for Ironman mode for extra excitement!)
- Goddamn memory leaks. The in-game menus sometimes freeze for 20-30 seconds or so, and the game can get quite slow especially after longer gaming sessions.
henke on 18/5/2017 at 18:35
I only played it for 3 hours, and my last session left a bad taste in my mouth. I was down to just 1 enemy, and I had 1 unit left standing. However the baddie had regenerative powers, and due to how the luck system works I could only get a shot in ever 4 or so turns, more than enough time for him to regenerate back to full health every time. As far as I could tell, there was simply no way to beat the guy with only one unit.
A shame, I liked the storytelling and ambiance the game served up before that.
