Legacy Review: Hard West

Hard West

Genre: Turn Based Strategy, Novel

Platform: PC (Windows 10 - Steam)

Developer: CreativeForge Games

Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment

Playtime: 24 hours

Date Completed: 31/5/2018

Reviewed: 2018

Grade: A+

https://store.steampowered.com/app/307670/Hard_West/

Hard West is a turn based strategy game where you will follow the tales of several characters in the rustic setting of the wild west. The game is comprised of 8 scenarios that can be played separately but are all interwoven into the same overarching plot. In each scenario, you will go through multiple combat situations as well as adventure novel sections where you advance the story by completing tasks and making decisions along the way.

Each scenario typically starts out with a combat scene that stars the main character of that scenario who you will have to keep alive at all costs. The combat in this game is both charming and engaging, while also resonating with the wild west mood of the game. Each character will be given 2 action points to spend, and they can choose between moving, reloading, shooting, using a skill or an item.

In addition, the battlefields you enter (other than looking gorgeous), are designed with strategy in mind. You have the concept of full-cover, half-cover and no-cover, which essentially affects how much damage you will take from enemy fire. Throughout the battlefield, you will find many nooks, crannies and outcrops that you can utilize to best protect yourself from getting killed.

The beauty of this system is that when you hide, you limit your effectiveness as well (Obviously you can’t shoot in front of you when there is a big rock blocking the way). You will often have to balance the time spent hiding behind cover and the time spent being bold and dashing towards enemies to finish them off, especially considering that enemies usually tend to be intelligent and position themselves reasonably well.

Add to the mix a different variety of guns that operate well only at a certain range, and an effective fog of war system that hides enemies that are too far away, and you get a pretty dynamic combat system that not only feels fun and engaging but itches your desire for some good strategic gunplay.

Every now and then, you will also find yourself in a setup stage where you can move your characters around to achieve a certain task. There will be no gunfire until you are either detected by an enemy, fire a shot or simply point a gun at someone for too long. This seems like an attempt to add more flavour and variety to the standard combat system, and does serve its purpose. One major flaw with this concept however is that detection is almost impossible given that enemies and their field of visions are always visible to you when they are within range, and the setup mode just feels more like a chore than something fun to do.

 

When not in combat, you will have access to the overworld and can move between locations where you can trigger events or just carry out tasks and activities. This is what I will refer to as the adventure mode. These are the sections of the game where you will get most of the plot delivered to you and make most of the decisions that will shape how the game plays out. The choices you make are relatively small in nature, but will end up affecting factors like the items and weapons you obtain. They will also on occasion affect which battles you end up fighting or even the characters you have in your party. I also found that those choices did have effects in chronologically later scenarios, though they were hard to notice save for the very last one.

The adventure mode is also where you get to manage your inventory, weapons, money and even your party, where applicable. This is clearly the game’s attempt at delivering RPG elements to you, though whether they end up working out or not, we will see later on. What’s great about the adventure mode though is that each scenario has a unique feel to it, and tells a story that differs greatly from all the others. You will enjoy going through the adventure modes in each scenario and will always find both going through the story and performing actions engaging and fun.

Now that we have discussed the gameplay itself, its time to move on to the elements that play a part in said gameplay: characters, skills and items.

As I have mentioned earlier, you will find yourself using a variety of characters throughout the game, with each scenario featuring a different cast. I feel like this was one of the factors that ever kept the game from being stale as just knowing that your party is constantly changing gives you a feeling of freshness.

Each character, or atleast the main characters also have their own backstories and motivations which you will be intrigued to learn about with help from the game’s brilliant writing and narration. The narration in particular blends superbly well into the game given the choice of narrator and even the tone of the voice itself. It really keeps the story going and raises the immersion level, which helps keep the game feeling engaging. You will even have narration during combat, showing the high level of integration of the combat into the game’s story.

However, the usage of so many different characters in the game also comes with its downsides. For one, you never spend enough time with any one character to truly get attached to them. Only the main characters ever come close to being memorable as they have huge roles to play not just in combat but in the adventure sections of the game as well. As for the side characters, they quickly devolve into ‘I have 3 characters in my party’ as opposed to ‘I have A, B and C in my party’, which is a notable flaw in a game where storytelling forms a core.

By now though, you might be wondering “Oh, well I bet those side characters at least have something that makes them stand out, like signature skills, or weapon restrictions or items unique to them. Most games do something like that”. Yes, most games do, but this one unfortunately doesn’t. but more on that later.

It is true that the game sports a sizable amount of weapons for you to acquire either by unlocking or buying. Weapons are always guns (finally a game that realizes that melee weapons are useless in a game with guns and has just left them out completely.) and you can expect to find pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns and snipers. The weapons themselves are all designed with the wild west in mind, which was a good move by the developers. Guns also have varying range, damage and cartridge capacity and some even have attributes such as allowing two shots or quick reload. The amount of variety you get here is commendable when you consider that all the guns conform to the restriction of being historical. With each character being able to equip 2 guns and switch between them freely in combat, there will always be a lot of thinking on your part to figure out how to best arm your squad.

In addition to guns, you also have a variety of items that play a lesser role in combat but still prove invaluable nonetheless. Items come in the form of healing potions, equippable items that give stat boosts or a skill, and other miscellaneous consumables or damaging tools. It’s nothing special really, but adds a tiny bit of flavour to the game. One major flaw you will find though is that only healing potions typically end up being purchased to be used. You will scour for equipment, yes, but at least personally, I only ever used healing potions in combat. I found just shooting to be more efficient than using items for anything other than recovery. Still, the options are available if you want to shape up your battle style.

The skill system of the game is also something worth mentioning. Skills are granted to characters by means of a card system. You unlock cards by progressing through a scenario and can assign up to 5 to each character. Each card grants a skill and stat boosts. In addition, the cards display a suit on them like playing cards and forming a poker hand gives additional bonuses to your character. I found this system to be innovative and makes the game stand out. At the same time, I also found that it hardly mattered which characters received which skills so mostly just went for poker hands, or went for cards to boost their weakest stats in the absence of having poker hands unavailable. It was also disappointing that you always had the exact same deck to unlock cards from in each scenario. I think changing this up or making it more randomized would have added some additional flavour to the game, making it more engaging. It was good however that the cards you would unlock are tied to which events you complete in the adventure mode of the game and the choices you make therein.

The presence of all these things and their integration with the adventure mode do give the game an RPG feel, as I may have mentioned earlier. However, this is where a major problem starts to emerge. Characters do not feel unique. This is because characters do not have signature skills that only they can use. Characters can equip any and all guns, items and equipment. You can build character A exactly the same as B, C or D.

This is normally not an issue for RPG games as they do a good job of making the characters pop out in other ways, getting you invested into them via immersing visuals and storytelling. However, in Hard West, getting invested into characters is difficult. A character needs ample showtime and good presentation to start getting the player involved. This is made harder for text based novels as they have to do all of that with words alone, and need more time to accomplish the same tasks than RPGs and visual novels that rely on both visuals and text. However, you rarely spend enough time with any one character, save for the protagonists in the first scenario, to fully get attached to them. When you don’t get attached to them, and when there are no other ways to differentiate them, what ends up happening is generalization of the characters into simple numbers, which is a point I brought up earlier, and which is a major detriment to the game. It doesn’t make gameplay unenjoyable, but it really loses out on a considerable amount of potential.

In conclusion, I still have to say that this game is enjoyable and is worth playing, especially if you are a fan of turn-based games or story-rich games. It does have a large amount of weaknesses, but thankfully they only hinder the gameplay from reaching lofty heights rather than detriment it. Still, you do have to be warned that the storytelling will be light due to the lack of attachment with characters, and should not expect quality on the same front as visual novels. If you are okay with that, then go ahead and enjoy the strategic and challenging combat the game has to offer.

 

(=) Good but light storytelling.

(+) Good narration and choice of narrator

(+) Beautifully crafted environments, which are designed well for combat

(+) Large amount of playable characters

(-) However, characters are never developed to the point where you can get invested into them

(+) Each scenario has a unique story to tell featuring different characters

(+) Scenarios are cleverly linked to an overarching plot

(+) Choices matter, in the sense of what items you get, what cards you unlock and what characters join your team.

(+) Innovative skill system

(+) Wide variety of weapons and items

(+) Engaging gameplay, both the adventure mode and the combat mode

(+) Characters and guns are always switching up between scenarios, guns to a lesser extent.

(-) Same selection of cards for every scenario

(-) Characters often have nothing that distinguishes them in combat (Providing the customizability is a GOOD thing, don’t get me wrong, but the characters need to have a baseline that makes them stand out before adding this extra layer of customizability.)

(-) Side characters do not get enough quality time in the adventure mode

(+) High longevity

(-) Ineffective attempt at delivering RPG mechanics