Every building comes loaded with doors, windows, and other points of access that let you devise many kinds of strategies. Part of this is due to the level architecture, which allows free range of movement. Hard West is both weird and normal at the same time, blending its eerie Wild West with by-the-book turn-based combat in expansive locations like this warehouse/laboratory. Too many tactical games of this sort force you to find the one proper way to beat a map, so I was very happy to see that things were far more flexible here, allowing experimentation. Maps are intricately designed with numerous options for taking cover, and although there are clearly best ways to go through levels, I never noticed a rigorous puzzle logic at work. Others take you to battle maps where you fight enemies in even more generic Western settings such as rowdy saloons, railway stations, and warehouses, using a familiar turn-based system that relies on such age-old genre concepts as action points, taking cover, and shooting percentages.Ĭombat provides for many satisfying shoot-outs in the Wild West, in large part because tactical thinking is paramount. You select from a few options on a dialogue screen, wind up getting hurt or collecting goodies or cash, then ride on down the range. Some encounters are limited, choose-your-own adventure visits to places like Indian villages, decrepit ranches, ghost towns, abandoned mines, and other Western archetypes. Every scenario plays out on a territory map where you venture off to specific locations as a posse and gradually progress the story through various battles and encounters.
You operate a small party of cowboys and cowgirls, each with traditional core stats (Aim, Defense, Movement, Sight, Luck, and Health are used here) and inventories to manage. The basic structure of Hard West mimics old-school tactical combat games, right down to the inability to save progress on demand, which can be a pain in longer missions. The setting is the familiar dusty frontier, but with the addition of otherworldly legends and a tinge of steampunk-meets-sci-fi trappings. If the sub-genre can be said to have a formula, Hard West nails it. Hard West takes the most tried-and-true elements of turn-based combat classics like XCOM and Jagged Alliance, and dunks them in a spooky rendition of the Wild West frontier, often referred to as the Weird West.
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