The mysterious turn-based western Hard West 2 is available on Steam and GOG, announced by publisher Good Shepherd Entertainment and developer Ice Code Games.
In Hard West ii, the legendary Wild plays the famous bandit Gene Carter, a legend of his West. Together with an accomplice, the hero decides to rob the Ghost Train locomotive on a large scale. But the train doesn’t bear its name for no reason.
Drawn into a mystical realm, heroes must fulfill their duty to save souls from their Lord’s defeat. You can meet not only ordinary bandits, but also various witches and demons.
Hard West 2 adds a very aggressive element to its generally excellent turn-based tactical gameplay. There are many ways to defend against your enemies, and managing a gang can be difficult. Each attack activates an active Bravado system and completes the action that occurred.
Such courage unites the enemy with an unstoppable steam locomotive. Skillful placement allows experienced players to quickly thin enemy lines without a chance of attack. Brave decisions are rewarded.
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Hard West II – Review
Cowboys, outlaws, ghosts, demons, werewolves. Those are all good things. Combine them and you get a weird Western genre. This should be even better, right? Hard West 2 is a great example of that, as it stands as a tactical, weird western that recognizes that the genre must look, feel, and sound first and foremost. How do you want to do it?
Hard West 2 is more of a thematic sequel to 2015’s Hard West than a literal creation. A 20-30 hour campaign tells a new stand-alone story, with three challenges of escalating brutality to choose from. Even those who complete it don’t have to worry about playing the original before this one.
The world draws you in beyond the surface. You lead a group of badass cowboys on the supernatural edge of the tough west. After a bad deal with an evil demon went horribly wrong, you lost several souls and have a strong desire to get them back. (By the way, the demon’s name is Mammon and he has a very cool ghost train with giant metal centipede legs.)
The campaign is split between dialogue-driven quests in the Overworld area and turn-based combat delving into his missions for most of the game’s time. Writing in and out of missions is hit or miss. There’s more than a few lines of weird grammar and eye-opening clichés, but it works well enough that you won’t skip any cutscenes or text-only expositions.
Shoot her
Tactical combat is at the heart of Hard West 2. They’re pretty good, they have everything I love about them, but there are other things I don’t like. Combat is reliable, frustrating randomization is minimized, but the difficulty is high Missions feel more like puzzles than tactical exercises.This distinction is also important.
On medium-hard difficulty, I had to redo some missions up to 5 times to find the solution to this puzzle and beat it. It’s balanced against flexible character abilities and a decent arsenal of weapons at your disposal. Together they form a suite of powers that work together with the well-designed environment to deliver tricks, combos, and more. , to enable chain kills.
Your attacks deal constant damage based on the weapon you use, the only thing that changes is your chance to hit based on the enemy’s range, height and cover. Combined with this defensive focus, there’s a real problem to overcome when approaching new groups of enemies.
Minimal randomization can make some missions feel like puzzles.
The first is trick shooting, where certain weapons bounce bullets off metal objects to bypass enemy cover. The second is luck. This means that missed shots (among other things) fill the pool and spend it on bonuses to attacks later turns. The third is your character’s abilities, the unique powers that everyone possesses.
For example, Oldman Her Bill, who is full of bullets and likes to shoot back at enemies with explosive explosions, and Flynn, who magically interacts with everyone who can see her. Trade locations, allies or enemies at the cost of a little health.
The fourth tool is her Bravado, an important system for overcoming enemy advantage.
Hard West II
You can get as many kills as you want in a round, but lining up to get 4, 5, or 6 kills in a single turn is the real thrill of Hard West 2. There is also tension in this puzzle-like game. : I always feel there is a better way to optimize a weapon’s fixed damage numbers against enemy health. Repeat this calculation every round to get more kills. Higher difficulties require you to balance the optimal number of kills and defensive moves to be successful.
But aside from these standout mechanics, the combat isn’t much new or unusual, and lacks some of the things you’d expect. For example, most small objects cannot be jumped, and many covers cannot be destroyed with Dynamite.
This and these area-of-effect attacks are two-dimensional, leading to strange situations. B. When you can’t shoot someone with a shotgun because they are on the balcony below you. But the strength of these combat systems makes up for the frustration, and the mix of interesting enemies and diverse missions keeps things fresh throughout.
Wild Bunch
Each mission is packed with quirky Western clutter characters that not only look great, but also act as a cover to interact with and play with. Rugged wooden frontier roads covered with benches, dilapidated homesteads with disused farm equipment, sprawling occult and steampunk mining operations – I think you get it.
Conclusion
The objects and visuals are really clean, even disproportionate to the design and writing, and the sound design and voice acting are almost flawless. There’s also a great soundtrack by Dead Space and Tomb Raider composer Jason Graves.
But it’s not just the atmosphere.
