Hard West

What a story? What a story! Ernsthaft, ihr sucht eine atmosphärisch dichte Geschichte, die euch Einblicke in die Abgründe der menschlichen Seele gewährt und ihr seid heimlicher oder sogar unheimlicher Fan der Ära des "wilden Westens"? Perfekt! Dann könnt ihr bei diesem Commandos-Clon bedenkenlos zugreifen. Rundenbasierte Action mit untoten Revolverhelden, verrückten Wissenschaftlern, blutrünstigen Anhängern eines Kultes, und so weiter und so fort. Die Designer konnten sich hier nach Herzenslust austoben - und das merkt man an allen Ecken. Fazit: Beste Unterhaltung für alle die auch eine Story und nicht nur Action brauchen. Aber Vorsicht! Ihr lasst euch mit dem Teufel ein!

Solid tactics game set in a supernatural-infused wild west. It's relatively light on the RPG elements, since you don't really get to do much exploring, there's no character creation, you don't level up based on XP or anything like that. There is a story but it's tied to little vignettes that unfold as you visit locations, but those locations aren't explorable and you just get a text box with some dialogue options when appropriate. In that sense, it reminded me of Expeditions: Conquistador. The actual combat is pretty much what you'd expect from a tactics game set in the Old West. Cover, stealth, some special moves, and so on. Combat scenarios are sometimes built a bit like a puzzle because even in Story Mode you can easily fail by getting killed if you rush into battle with no regard for safety, since often the victory conditions involve some or all of your companions not dying, and sometimes you have companions that are kind of weak and can't take more than a couple of gunshots. Playing this after playing Weird West makes me feel kind of like comparing Expeditions: Viking to Expeditions: Conquistador in the way the former game has more RPG elements and a more fleshed out story, so now I'm intrigued about how Hard West 2 compares to its predecessor and to Weird West. I think this game's concept is better than its execution, but it's still a solid little tactics game with an interesting setting instead of the usual military or sci-fi stuff you tend to get in this genre, especially since the narrative structure is somewhat unusual because it's not linear and there's more than one protagonist.