Hard West 2

The game is ok for a few days. Overall it is a pretty forgettable title though. - Combat is ok but gets repetitive fast - Graphics are ok but also not spectacular. - Story is mediocre but serves its purpose. - Characters are bland. little interatction - A simple side quests here and there - A lot of unimportant dialogue texts to read. - Otherwise had no bugs or performance issue. Got this one for free from Prime Gaming. Also played the 1st Hard West ages ago. This series does little wrong but is pretty forgetable ... there is just too much better competition around in turn based tactics.

Excellent tactical, western style turn-based games. Improves a lot on the predecessor, especially when it comes to balancing and mission fairness. The game is hard, especially in the earlier chapters, (finished it on normal), but even harder when trying for every side objective - some missions took me a couple hours, several loudouts and - yes - a bit of save scumming. The Bravado combo system is absolutely excellent, I loved defeating a dozen enemies in one round with Laughing Deer. My only grievances are that it's sometimes hard to figure out if there will be a line of sight using ricocheting after movement (resulting often in realizations and subsequent reloading, because the enemy wasn't close enough or for some reason the second object to bounce a bullet off wasn't accessible despite looking like it) - and that the characters and choices aren't very consequential. You can base choices solely on the rewards they will give. And the characters all have definite personality and charme, which makes it so unfortunate that they weren't involved in the story more. All in all a very good game.

After what I thought was a gimmicky start with turn-based horseback combat and having to work out ricochet shots, I didn't think I'd be playing it long. However after the 1st hour it becomes a satisfying X-com western style with a dark edge, characters with some personality, satisfyingly simple inventory / weapon upgrades, and a rudimentary map to explore. Upgrading abilities based on collecting playing poker hands is also a nice touch. Battles (the first few at least) don't have time limits either unlike other games of its type, so you can really get your flank and strategy on.

Hard West was a deeply flawed game that, for all of its other faults, absolutely *nailed* the feeling and aesthetic of the weird west with an excellent narrator, moody music, and a series of plots that fit the themes. The writing wasn't amazing, but it did what it needed to do, and their choice of narrator sold it. Hard West 2, then, contains the hardest, most shocking tone-shift in any game I have ever played. We've gone from playing as nobodies with some simple backstories to... I don't know, friggin Back 4 Blood "every character has to be over the top and soooo quirky teehee!" hero shooter nonsense. Every line by every character (except Bill, who is the "lone sane man" type of character) is aggressively overacted. They quip at you when their turn comes up, they say something when you're moving on the overmap, there's little quips during dialogues - and it's all steaming turds. The meathead Native American Warrior dude will talk about all the colors of the wind and dances with wolves, eat your heart out. Gin has a line something to the effect of "I thought this was the Hard West, not the Deadlands!", and so on. It's painfully generic, from the writing to the delivery. I wish I could turn it off. On the overmap, we've swapped from a second-person style of storytelling (as the first game was narrated by Death, meaning all of the text is from his point of view, not the player character's) to Gin talking about things in first-person, like in a diary... if that diary was written by a teenage girl writing her first fanfic. It compounds the tonal whiplash coming from the first game. I gave the game two hours to woo me and get me past the tone-shift and it couldn't stick the landing. Gameplay is dramatically improved from the original in interesting ways, as are visuals. But the writing and aesthetics are legitimately just THAT bad that I couldn't stomach any more of it. Worst sequel I've played in a long, long time.

a good top down strategy shooter the mechanics work well for the game, they are thematic to the settings, not that much varity in weapons The storyline is fine, voice acting good, the artwork sets the mood.