Hard West

If "XCOM clone that replaces base building with CYOA segments" sounds like something you really must have, get this when it's at least 50% off. Otherwise, don't bother. Length: 15-20 hours. The campaign is split up into multiple scenarios, mini-campaigns of their own. Annoyingly, there is only a simple checkpoint system and no ability to save manually. Some missions have a lengthy setup stage. Having to repeat those is downright painful. Combat: The tactical combat copies Firaxis' XCOM, adding the Luck mechanic to sort of distinguish it. Luck is a stat that gives you a chance to avoid shots and can be used to pay for some abilities. Your luck pool decreases when you evade a shot, increases when you get hit. The issue is that you get shot at constantly in many missions simply because of the number of enemies. In these cases you will often have trouble paying for abilities unless you get hit. Many maps are too small, and often enough you start in a defensive position, with 10 enemies right in front of you and no incentive to move beyond getting into slightly better cover. There is no enemy variability beyond stat and weapon variations. There are no crits and it's generally easy to get 100% chance to hit, making combat reasonably predictable. Cover can be hard to figure out, though. Characters only differ in stats, advancement happens through playing cards that you assign to characters, giving a small stat boost and an ability. Card balance is bad, and several are incredibly overpowered. There's one that reduces the HP of everyone on the map to 1, and enemies don't use healing items. Between battles: Basic CYOA adventure stuff and some trading. For how long these parts take in some scenarios (you'll often click through text much more than fight), there's very little depth here. Some scenarios come with a gimmick added to the CYOA segments, like having to manage supplies. These generally have little influence on how you play, or are just outright irrelevant.

Hard West is a turn-based strategy game with simple mechanics already known from similar games like UFO. I really like the steamish wild west setting and for those of you who know the Deadlands pen'n'paper rpg, Hard West will be fine. Sadly, the game stays behind it's potential. The combat mechanics are to simple for my taste with very less strategic value and options. All in all you just shoot through a handfull of tiny-to-small maps with diffrent characters and more or less diffrent weaponery. I hope Hard West will get a Part II and i also hope the devs will or should take a look at Fallout Tactics to improve the mechanics, story telling and map size.

I was first reluctant to try out Hard West. I like X-Com and read that the turned based strategy was similar in Hard West. However, as I grew very tired of X-com, and never finished one playthrough I thought that it would be the same with Hard West. However, Hard West have something X-Com doesn't. A good story. Right at the first tutorial level I was introduced to this harsh western world, where the occult have a strong presence. The strategy is ok, you feel the power in the guns you use as well as the different powers you obtain later in the game but the best thing in this game is the story. A story about a boy growing up in a harsh environment and a dad doing everything he can to exact revenge on those that murdered his wife. A lot of the story is told on the overview map, as well as in cut scenes, the blend between the overview map quests and things you do there gives a good complement to the turn based combat. I highly recommend this game for people who wants to experience a good mature story where the nature of human behaviour gets explored to its core.

This was one of the few tactical games that has forced me to play both cautiously and very tactically. The generous cover system and high damage weaponry mean you really need to keep in a safe position to succeed, rather than a rambo-style approach. The enemies get the same benefit, though, so you have to constantly move around, analyzing the terrain to try to find points where you can get on a new side of them while staying safe. If this doesn't work, you end up pinned in a tense duel, which is sufficiently in the player's favor as to not be devastating, while still being a rather exciting twist. The theme adds a lot of pizzazz to all that, really making it feel like an old-fashioned shootout when you do something like dive behind a bar to get out of the way and fire your revolver. There's enough customization that you can play it your way (even choosing which aspects of the tactical play you prefer), but not so much it seems unfair or overwhelming. Overall, it's the tense shootout I'd always wished XCOM-style games delivered.

Most of the not-so-good or bad reviews are from 2015 when the game came out. I am playing this game's newest version, the last update was provided in mid 2017 at the time of writing this. This game has still some rough edges but who cares? Nothing is perfect, important is that you work on the errors. These developers really do and listen. The game itself is in my opinion very good and pretty unique. Despite some basic errors here and there, like e.g. an event gets triggered over and over when you visit the same place more than once even though the event makes only sense the first time, I think that this game is a pretty gem. It combines many different styles and goals into a well done mixture. To me personally Western and Pirate themed games/movies are usually the most boring but this game's style, theme and crossover genre is interesting to me. It mixes the "Western" genre with a dark and crude style which has a rather horrory taste to it (which is btw. another genre I don't like on its own). Now that's the mixed theme and type of story. The gameplay is also mixed, at first a little bit irritating, but once you get how it is supposed to work then you get along with it and recognize how you will progress in your own experience provided by this game. To help you, dear reader, decide whether you should buy this game or not, here are some characteristics of the game that will clear up how it is to play it: - open turn based combat in a closed level - between battles improvements to your characters (and event-triggered debuffs) are possible - the big picture and overall experience of the game gives a pretty strong DnD-like taste - the story and theme of the game is filled with dark humour, western movie styled overall experience (e.g. behaviour of characters, atmosphere, any actions and how progress is made) - story is cut into "scenarios" that are separate from each other, gameplaywise, but are based on the previous one - variety of weapons, usables, characters