I kickstarted the original Hard West many years ago. I loved the game’s weird west setting. While the developers nailed the atmosphere, the rest of the game was fine, but fell short of what I had been hoping for. It was made up of a number of short vignettes, which made the game feel somewhat disjointed and had a relatively short playing time of 13 hours. I didn’t expect much of the sequel. The idea that the game’s publisher, which came in long after the Kickstarter, owned the IP, and gave the sequel to a different developer was also something that I held against Hard West 2. I still bought the game on sale a while ago and decided at some point to fire it up. Hard West 2 is a tactics game with RPG elements. The new developers took the game in some different directions than its predecessor and in my opinion, those were very good decisions.

 Atmosphere and Story

What sets Hard West 2 apart from most games is its weird west setting. The outlaw Gin sets off a series of supernatural events when he decides to rob a train ignorant of the fact that it is helmed by the devil Mammon. He assembles a cast of colorful characters while trying to recover his soul and escape the hellscape that the diabolic train leaves in its wake. A witch, an undead cowboy, a borderline psychopathic native warrior, a priest who is at the same time a master of the occult, and a noble native scout join Gin on his quest to catch the devil. On his way the outlaw visits many strange locations and meets with various people of both the natural and supernatural sort. In the weird west our outlaws meet and battle not only outlaws, cultists, and soldiers, but also zombies, mythical creatures, and demons.
Hard West 2’s story takes place in a multitude of map hubs which need to be explored. Here Gin and his companions get main and side quests, and on the way discover a number of other locations. There are towns where the party can get bounties, visit the surgeon (to get healed) or visit the shop. While many of the places visited lead to battles, there are also a multitude of areas where a story unfolds where Gin can choose between diverse options, often dependent on what’s in his inventory, and how loyal his companions are. These small vignettes are played out by showing a beautiful drawn sketch and a relatively short text. Sometimes your companions will give their suggestions, and occasionally we have voiced commentary from Gin or one or the other of his companions. The voice acting, the atmospheric music, the story telling, and the hand drawn artwork are some of the strengths of Hard West 2.

I have pleased Laughing Deer enough that he has decided to reveal more of his violent past by the campfire.

Character Development

Characters in Hard West 2 have four attributes. These are hit points, luck, movement points, and bullseye (critical rate). There are, however, no levels or experience points in Hard West 2. Characters start with two traits each and they can (and will) gain additional traits as the game advances. This can happen in two ways. First, Gin can gain the loyalty of his companions by making decisions in their favor at various story locations and during various side quests. The more loyal a companion becomes, the more of their traits get unlocked. Also, as the game progresses you will find more and more poker cards. Individual poker cards boost one of the game’s four stats. Characters can build a hand of cards with these. The stronger the poker hand a character holds, the more traits they unlock. Traits are progressively earned, so a character with 3 tens in their hand, not only gets the trait for holding three of a kind, but also from holding 1 pair and 2 pairs.
Each character has their own special ability, which improves with traits. For example, Gin can fire a volley which can pierce cover and ignores walls and other obstacles. While each character has a different set of traits for each poker hand and loyalty degree, the number of perks are still relatively few and some of them, such as rifle mastery can be gained by multiple companions even if they get it for holding different poker hands.

At the heart of Hard West 2 are the tactical combats. Most often these, like in the predecessor, are on large semi-open maps, such as a plateau landscape or a town. You are allowed to bring four of your characters into each scenario and are outnumbered by masses of opponents. Though most of these opponents are inferior to our characters, the sheer number of enemies can wear down and destroy your forces if you are not careful. You have a number of things you can use to your advantage, including elevation, cover, line of sight and of course your special abilities. Each character can bring two consumables, such as dynamite or bandages into battle. In addition to these large maps, Hard West 2 introduces battles on horseback, and battles where you have to conquer or defend a train. Most battles have multiple main objectives which are required to be accomplished to end the scenario, and there are usually one or two optional objectives. Optional objectives usually result in extra loot at the end of combat.

During every round your character can use 3 actions, these can be used to attack, move, use items, or take a heads down action. The heads down action ends the turn, increases cover and removes some negative conditions, like bleeding or immobile. Hard west 2 has 4 classes of weapons, but they are very distinct. Melee weapon attacks only use 1 action, but do the least amount of damage. Still if a character starts next adjacent to an enemy, they can make 3 melee attacks in that round. Rifles, on the other hand, have the best damage and range but require all 3 actions to fire, which means moving and shooting is out of the question. Pistols and shotguns each take 2 actions to fire. Pistols do slightly more damage and have better range, but shotguns hit everything in a cone.
Many tactics games have timers to discourage players from playing too cautiously. Hard West 2 has a different mechanism called bravado. If a character kills an enemy, they get all of their action points refunded. This means a character can chain kill multiple wounded or weak opponents in the same round. This gives the player an interesting conundrum. You normally activate a group of opponents when you enter an area, somewhere between three and eight. Playing cautiously and taking down a few enemies means weathering a number of attacks in good position. The other option is to play aggressively and try to take down most of the enemies and maybe facing an attack or two out in the open from the survivors.

You can hover over enemies to see your hit and critical chances.

Technical Issues

I had no issues till the very final phase of the final battle, when the game crashed multiple times after the last boss used his special attack. This is a known problem and it was the only thing which blunted my enjoyment of an otherwise good game. My computer is 6 and a half years old at this point, and I had no other performance issues.

The Hard West area hubs are a pleasure to explore.

Summary 

If you haven’t figured out by now, I really enjoyed Hard West 2. The game has a fairly unique setting, and it uses it well. Even though this is a budget game made in Unity and its models and settings show it, the developers used their money wisely and the presentation profits from it. The game develops the atmosphere of the Weird West superbly with wonderful voice acting, artwork, and music. The story and writing is nothing exceptional, but is good enough to provide a solid framework for an enjoyable game. The combat is well done, with the bravado mechanism providing enough “push your luck” to keep the battles suspenseful. There are just enough items and special abilities to give the player different equally effective ways to fend off the enemy. Also, there is enough difference in the types of combat scenarios to make the game much more suspenseful than its predecessor. There is an interesting world to explore and stories to play through as you chase Mammon through the wilderness. Hard West 2 is longer and better than its predecessor and follows a singular solid main storyline with multiple companions who accompany us for the long haul. Its length and production values are nowhere near AAA quality, but neither is its low price. For those players looking for a good game in a pulp horror western setting, Hard West 2 is a great choice.