Hard West

It is the parts, not the whole, that makes this worthwhile. After ten hours playing, I cannot say what didn't click with me. Something about the "episodes" being too disjointed. The combat feeling particularly punnitive, and not in a "oh, that was my mistake" way, but more "oh, fuck, dice roll of doom!". I wanted to get lost in a supernatural Western world, but kept slipping on having to replay WHOLE sections due to one mistake. Also, the first two hours of this game are misleading. I thought it would involve some settlement management and then, nope, the plot happened, and then it didn't. Man, I really cannot review this game. Play it if you love westerns, supernatural and turn-based combat like this. The atmosphere is brilliant. The story was going someplace, but it is hidden unders such a layer of gameplay that seems to not have been thought out the whole way that sometimes I feel like I got buried alive for just wawnting to play the game, and I am trying to crawl my way out of the coffin with my car keys.

I like the gameplay, both the campaign part and the actual turn-based combat. My only complaint is that the campaigns are unrelated or loosely related to each other. What you did in a previous campaign (eg the money/resources you collected) doesn't really carry through to the next campaign. This lack of continuity of the characters and their stories and their progression breaks my sense of progression. It's like I've become invested in character A, now you're making me play as character B, then once I've become invested in character B, you make me play as character C who's actually a villain. I would like like to play a Hard West game that has 1 continuous big campaign that follows the same characer and only has 1 story arc.

I loved XCOM, XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad, (on which I have spent thousands of hours.) So I thought I would try this game that was recommended to me as being "similar to XCOM". I played through the tutorial of this game and realized... this game does NOT let players manually save games. The game automatically saves at checkpoints. Even worse: it has only ONE save game. This lack of manual saving is a huge pet peeve for me. It means that, if the game had some serious bug or if the one-and-only save game became corrupted, the player would be screwed. So I read through past comments from other people who have played the game. Many complained that they had made mistakes at various early points that made the game unwinnable later. Even worse, the game has game-breaking bugs that the developer has never bothered fixing, (you can read other negative reviews about it.) Players were forced to start over because they could not backtrack to some early points in the game, and many became upset and just abandoned the game. That shows just how the developer has no consideration nor respect for the time of customers and players. I am a busy working professional. I own thousands of games on backlog that I want to play (and likely will never have time to play.) I really do not want spend time on a game that does not allow me to backtrack, only to be forced to start the game all over from the beginning, because the develop was too inconsiderate and decided to to not allow players to manually save games. I find that kind of inconsideration to be disrespectful and offensive. I uninstalled the game immediately after I had realized it did not allow me to save manually. I will not bother playing it, its sequel (which I would have given a chance if I had played and liked this game,) any future Hard West game, or even any game from this developer. I value my time, and I have no patience for game developers who disrespect my time, so thank you very much.

While not truly amazing, Hard West was a solid and memorable experience. At times, it was superior to others in the turn based squad management genre. For a system based on 'luck', it actually has next to no luck involved and is much more reliable than Xcom. Hard West sidestepped much of the frustration of its contemporaries in the genre, while still providing an experience on par. The card system was an interesting spin, the story was engaging and the atmosphere was immersive. All in all, I had a good time, 4/5 stars, would recommend.

Rookie storytelling mistakes done by clearly talented team. Instead of one campaign, you get seven short ones. Each of them gets different special "gimmick" in the overworld: you mine gold, you manage expedition, you have to feed your people. But these systems are so shallow, I've started to loathe the overmap and just wanted to get to the next combat. I've not played the latest XCOM so I can't compare these two, but the combat has sort of "boardgame" feel to it. I like it, it is clean and fun, but it doesn't offer enough "meat" to last more than few hours. Enemy runs to cover --> flank him --> shoot him --> repeat, ocasionaly you use special power, but flanking is where it's at. Because campaigns are so short, character progression is close to nonexistent, you simply don't get that "sense of pride and accomplishment" that comes with growing your guys. I've played games with weak gameplay because of great story (Bard's tale wink wink), and the combat here is not bad, it's ok, but it would need help from other game mechanics to make great game, sadly it's the best part, which maked Hard West just somewhat enjoyable. TL;DR;: If this were a cowboy, he would have a fairly decent shooting arm, face that seemed to change so often you wouldn't care about it, and he would walk with a slow limp, taking forever to get to a shootout.