3 / 10. Thoroughly disappointing
This review is based only on 2 campaigns as I didn't have the nerves to go trough all the content, but I don't expect much from the subsequent campaigns. I picked it up after reading very good reviews about the game and it's tactics elements, but alas, it's not all that great. I generally rate games with 3 when the mechanics feel utterly broken and Hard West is the perfect example.
First off, Hard West is not primarily a tactics game, but a Choose Your Own Adventure game as mostly everything resolves the narrator and a story arch. The tactics part (or encounter part) serves only as a means to further the story. The tactics phase doesn't actually have any benefit at all. You don't gain XP, you don't loot weapons, it's just a means to showcase you a pre-painted event with some minor branching. The branching part is inconsistent and mostly inconsequential. On some world map, from some locations you can always back off, while on others you are forced into a choice. Like I said, choices are of little consequence, you either get a small reward or a debuff. The map contains too many locations which don't bring almost anything to the table, so the map view almost feels barren and a forced gimmick to throw some cheap writing at you.
Like mentioned earlier the combat phase doesn't bring any value, so you might as well play everything on easy (if you're not into doing 100%). On easy, the enemies' hit points are usually bellow the typical gun damage, while on hard, your health is usually below a typical gun. This means that if a character is not covered, they can get insta-killed. Some characters are essential, so if you get one-shotted, you will need to replay the whole mission (or the whole campaign on hardcore).
Hard West copies some modern TBTs but without properly understanding the design. In these modern TBTs, cover plays a big role, but in Hard West, cover also greatly impacts weapon damage, negating most of the weapon impact. As a core mechanic, the game revolves along an attribute called "Luck", for both skill usage and an absolutely free shot at the target, if their luck runs out. This means, that luck becomes some RNG for you getting hit, dying and at the same time, denying your skill usage. This is because luck will always get decreased by every miss from the enemy, by subtracting the to-hit percentage. There are two enemies that have 50% change to hit you? The second shot is almost surely a hit. Since you cannot pick up any items, this means that if your character does not have any skill or passive that regenerates health, they will collapse if the fight drags long enough.
Enemies mostly tend to stay hidden of flock you. The combat is generally structured as shooting ends turn, so if you didn't move, well,, tough luck. Moved, and now your out of cover? one-shotted... Do your abilities require you knowing if a tile is in daylight or in shadow? The game doesn't care, it only shows you this when you move there. All enemies have a passive overwatch ability, while you don't even have it as an active choice. All these little design issues are anti-player design and the final enjoyment tanks.
The game also makes usage of fate cards that you can randomly get after each encounter. These are either passive or active. Stacking and matching them like poker cards will result in a small passive bonus. The effects range from mostly useless to absolutely game-breaking. For example the "Golden Shot" card lets you shoot anything, anywhere, at 100% chance. This means that your sawed-off shotgun can shoot 100m away, through walls and mostly insta-kills it's victim. "Sudden Death" drops everyone's HP down to 1 which now makes weapon damage pointless and if you can regenerate HP, then the game becomes mostly one-sided even on hard mode.
Transitioning from the map to the tactical phase, one thing that is utterly annoying is that this game only has one single save slot for both the map and the tactical phase (only for the beginning). So, if you forget to bring something along, or the mission would require certain card combination, well... don't worry! You can always restart the whole scenario, as your save will be immediately overwritten and you cannot quit the mission.
There are also a lot of performance issues for a game that's not a looker by any means. Very poor and variable framerate. Different graphical issues like the whole GUI not showing up, needing about 1 minute for the main menu to show up and so on.
I may someday force myself though the campaigns and do a 100%, but I'll just pass it for the moment. If anything changes then, I may update my review.
Until then, some worthwile alternatives:
- Turn based: Jagged Alliance 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, Wasteland 2, Battletech, The Shadowrun (PC) series, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate, SteamWorld Heist
- Real time with active pause: Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Door Kickers
- Real time: The Commandos series, the MechCommander series
