More than just an X-Com-like, Hard West has a style all its own.
The American West, as a setting, has rarely thrilled me, but Hard West’s gothic, almost Lovecraftian riff on it pulled me in immediately, as did its surface conceit of being X-Com with gunslingers. In combat, it plays the familiar turn-based tactics tune well, with a few enjoyable liberties taken to boot. Out in the world map beyond the battlefield though, Hard West feels a little thin, its lite RPG elements proving too insubstantial to properly support or supplement its competent combat.
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Check out the first 23 minutes of Hard West in the video above.
Hard West doesn’t take long to kick the tired trappings of the spaghetti western to the curb in exchange for cursed artifacts, and supernaturally driven insanity. A grim-sounding narrator effectively cements the Weird West aesthetic early, lending more gravity than you’d think to what actually amounts to a simple revenge tale. The art, music, and even the flavor text accompanying your various world map choices do a great job of establishing an ominous tone that kept me wondering what kind of deviousness was in store for my party next.
Usually, it involved being shot at, but I didn’t really mind. Hard West’s tactical combat borrows heavily from the best, and with some success – to the point where X-Com vets can easily slip right in and apply many of the same tactics. It’s not all familiar though. Hard West leverage’s its mystical elements here too, giving players access to powers and consumable items that add quite a few enjoyable wrinkles to the well-tread formula.
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Check out this video to see Hard West’s crazy abilities in action.
While these abilities are fun to use, they also tend to undermine the tactical elements a fair bit.
Taking a bite of a fallen foe’s corpse might restore some health, while a puff of a shaman’s pipe might boost my maximum Luck, a unique resource that powers the use of Hard West’s delightful, dark arts, like Golden Bullet, a special shot that never misses, and pierces all cover and obstructions for maximum lethality. While these abilities are fun to use, they also tend to undermine the tactical elements a fair bit. Being able to heal wounds by staying out of direct sunlight, or obliterating multiple enemies at once with a single, powerful shotgun blast is certainly novel, but it made nice nuances like the range and penetration profiles of different guns feel far less significant.
Despite this, the different combat scenarios are varied and fun, ranging from standard shootouts to jailbreaks and defense/escort fare. Some make use of Hard West’s neat stealth mechanics, which look implausible when enemies three squares away don’t see you, but ultimately add a welcome strategic element to battles: carefully positioning party members before going loud can ensure the engagement goes exactly the way you want it to. This variety, paired with the thick atmosphere helped keep Hard West interesting long after I’d found the best abilities to game the system with.
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Get a glimpse at Hard West’s stealth gameplay in this video.
It’s at its thinnest when the bullets stop flying, though. The world map is littered with locations to click on, but going from one to the other doesn’t carry any opportunity cost. Resources don’t dwindle, ongoing situations don’t worsten – it’s like time has stopped so I can click about without ramifications. I might have appreciated the leniency more if there were lots of interesting scenarios to explore, but Hard West’s procession of mining spots, abandoned trainyards, and ghost towns offer little more than simplisitc choices with very little in the way of noticeable outcomes, which makes them seem like pointless padding between fights.
Hard West isn’t the deepest game of its kind, but it does a good job of walking the line between cold, hard tactics, and Weird West-style personality. Its mystically-inspired abilities add a fun twist to the X-Com formula, even if they do remove some of the need for tactical forsight. A richer world outside of combat would have been nice, but as is, Hard West still presents a fun, unique take on turn-based tactics.
