Hard West

Isometric turn based squad combat with a strong story.

Overview

The basic gameplay of Hard West is nothing new. We have seen it hundreds of times, most notably in XCom. While Hard West's take on it is fun and engaging, what really makes for a memorable experience is the story.

The game is set in the Wild West, or perhaps the Weird West. It is gritty, full of desperados and more anti-heroes than heroes. There is a smattering of the occult -- haunted Indian burial grounds, curses, Chinese herbs, that sort of thing. 

The campaign consists of two adventure lines. Each adventure line is linear, except there is one "prequel" adventure which is not unlocked until you have advanced the story sufficiently. Each adventure tells the story of the main character who is on some quest -- perhaps to find his father, to cure a disease, or to beg Death to return his wife. The story is told by visiting locations and making minor choose-your-own-adventure decisions where you can acquire better guns and equipment, followers, and money. The Narrator does a great job with spot on voice-acting. The story is told in the past tense. Instead of "choice 1: you go to the saloon, choice 2: you go to sleep" you are presented with "choice 1: Solomon went to the saloon, choice 2: Solomon went to sleep". Framing the story as a legend of the past was more engaging for me because it helped my suspension of disbelief. I'm not dodging bullets and burning witches, I'm helping tell the story of a man who dodged bullets and burned witches.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

It's a Western. I have to make the pun.

The Good

Engaging story. Fun tactical missions. Very atmospheric. 

The Bad

"Normal" difficulty felt a little too easy, but switching it to hard just beefed up enemy hit points. This made the game very hard but not more fun. I decided that it was more fun to play on easy mode. Maybe later I was good that I could have bumped it to hard.

The interface is generally pretty good, but sometimes you think you are behind cover and aren't. That is a huge big deal and you can be killed in one shot. I died more often to "oh dang, I thought I was behind cover" than any other reason.

The Ugly

There were a few minor but obvious bugs. Surprising since the game has a lot of polish. For example, every so often a location I had previously visited and "exhausted" would play it's description. Once I had to exit the game and return because I was stuck in a loop of visiting places that were closed (this wasn't a big deal, I didn't lose anything). Also, it looked like there was some placeholder dialog. Normally when you leave an area it just gives you a single choice like, "Leave the saloon while you still have your wits about you". A few times the choice was "End the event", where event was clearly the programmer name for the location you were visiting.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. You like XCom. You can tolerate Wild West. You like good stories. I don't usually like Westerns, but this one drew me in.