It’s a hard life out there in the west, and a ghost train that’s controlled by a devil who took your souls doesn’t help things either.
Hard West 2, a sequel to the incredibly fun 2015 game Hard West, opens with the appropriately gruff sounding Gin Carter who, with his posse of questionable outlaws, seeks to rob a train. Little do they know, however, that the train’s “ghost train” nickname is actually quite literal as you make it to the conductor to discover it’s actually a devil who steals your souls. After barely escaping with your lives, your gang decides to get payback on the devil and take their souls back. It’s a pretty typical setup for a western, but part of the first game’s entire appeal was the supernatural/occult element at play and I’m eager to see if the sequel doubles down on it more.
If you played one tactics game you’ve played ‘em all and Hard West 2 is no different. Playing similarly to an XCOM or any of its like, Hard West 2 is a turn-based tactics game, and while I would’ve really liked to have seen it take some cues from its peers that have improved on the genre, it still plays pretty well. One thing Hard West 2 does that I’ve never seen another tactics game do before is have a dynamic environment. My build opened with my posse robbing a train while on horseback, and while the game is still turn-based, the environment itself continued to stay in motion which added a drastic level of gravitas to the encounter. It made me excited to see more moments like that in the game and hope other developers pull from it as well. You’ve got your posse that you can deck out with gear you’ll find while playing, and no perma-death (as far as I’m aware), along with playing cards that can alter the way a character plays. As you play the game you’ll come across a variety of playing cards that have varying effects like granting health regeneration or increasing a particular stat, but it goes further than that in that you can earn bigger bonuses if you equip a character with (for example) three of a kind. It makes you think a bit more before just assigning cards willy nilly.
Fans of the first game will either be happy or disappointed to hear that developers Ice Code Games have heavily streamlined the game’s mechanics and UI; a lot for the better. First off, the luck system got a hell of a lot simpler. Instead of the somewhat confusing nature of the system in the first game, it’s been distilled purely to: if you’re hit you gain luck and can use luck to boost critical hit chance on your turn. Easy and simple. The reaction shot system is gone as well which I’m sure will make some folk happy. A lot of the in-combat menus have been cleaned up and simplified (in a good way) into a pretty clean looking product. My only gripe is that sometimes clicking from the move button to the shoot button will make your character shoot at an enemy the game apparently automatically selected for me, instead of simply putting my character into “shoot mode” if that makes sense.
Newly added is the very fun bravado system; whenever you kill an enemy that character will regain all their action points and basically get a second turn. It’s a fun way to keep the momentum going and feels really cool when you manage to chain together a bunch of kills back-to-back. At one point I managed to get a character to have five straight turns by carefully planning out my kills.
The map system returns again, with a fresh coat of paint. Previously you controlled a simple icon that moved across a map with locations on it you’d stop by for missions or events that’d be resolved in text, and the core of that is still the same just with new window dressing. This time around, instead of one big drawn map you move around, you’re actually riding your horses in an environment. My preview build only let me explore a single area, so I’m not sure how much more the system expands on this, like whether you can return to previous zones or whatever, but there were still towns to interact with or little events (like a crucified zombie who has a useful charm in their bone jagged stomach if you’re feeling the risk) so the core of it is still the same as the first game.
Overall, my time with Hard West 2 was a lot of fun. It kept elements from the first game that I really enjoyed and improved on some of my grievances. I’m eager to see how the full package shapes up when it releases later this year.
