Hard West 2 Preview

Have you ever wanted to rob a train on horseback, get into a shootout in the middle of town, or play cards with a devil? Sadly, doing any of that in real life isn't recommended on account of how terrible they are for your health, but if you just can't help it, consider giving Hard West 2 a shot!

This sequel to 2015's turn-based tactical game Hard West provides a great amount of fast-paced strategy and fresh new mechanics. From new developer Ice Code Games and returning publisher Good Shepherd Entertainment, Hard West 2 follows Gin Carter, a classic sort of Wild West outlaw who assembles a posse of the roughest and toughest people the land has to offer. The group's target? A legendary vehicle said to be loaded to the brim with federal gold, known only as the Ghost Train.

I was able to experience Hard West 2 from the opening train robbery — a truly amazing set piece featuring both puzzle combat and horses — through to the next two large fights. Overall, I found the game to have an impeccable sense of tone and style. The train robbery starts out with an energetic rush under a shining sun before introducing the title’s more occultic elements, seamlessly transitioning into a realm of unnerving creepiness as the train too transforms into a spooky skull-themed monstrosity. Yet, even when the plan seems to go awry, there’s a consistent feeling of confidence from the posse up until the very end of the mission, when a demonic entity named Mammon wins their souls in a game of poker.

The rest of the demo takes place in and around a snow-covered small village named Boomtown, where the posse reconnects and discovers how they have been changed. Gin feels a deep emptiness within himself and has lost his shadow entirely — a detail that can easily be seen in-game! Nice attention to detail there — and gained the ability to fire a spread of bullets that phase through objects and cut through enemies. Flynn, already having been described as possessing some magical abilities of her own, mentions that her shadow also feels wrong and off. Still, she too has obtained a new power: the ability to swap places with anyone in her eyesight. Other characters have their own changes — and discover their own abilities — over the course of the plot thus far, but I believe I’ve said enough on that aspect of things. The game looks stunning and has a very good grasp of storytelling. I can’t wait to see what will happen next.

I also can’t wait to get back to Hard West 2’s combat. At first brush, with the limited amount of actions each character can take on their turn and how the maps are littered with places where enemies and allies alike can gain either half cover or full cover in order to reduce the odds of getting shot, the game looks like a Wild West version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. In my time with the title, however, Hard West 2 proved to be easily twice as frenetic and fast-paced as Enemy Unknown was. Even though there is no time limit or anything to keep a player from taking as long as they want with their turns, the combat greatly rewards using every action to gain as much ground as possible, making for what feels like a quick and endlessly engaging experience. This is thanks to four elements: the area layouts, the posse’s skills, the extra objectives, and the Bravado mechanic.

Bravado works by giving each character all of their action points back upon killing any enemy. Essentially, that means that the best place for any character to be is in the middle of a large mass of enemies with low HP. If they don’t need to move somewhere else to get things done, that character can just pull out a high-powered weapon like the rifle and mow down everyone one by one. But if they do need to move further into a given level, they can use one of their three action points to move closer and then use a weaker gun to take out an enemy to allow them to refresh their actions. This way, the player can chain combat, movement, and other actions to sweep their way through a level in a single turn. Not only does this reward the player for fighting enemies close-up, but Bravado also helps to make every attack oh-so-satisfying.

The Bravado mechanic thereby unlocks the true potential of the other three elements I mentioned. The way the combat areas are designed, with several floors to play on; plenty of easily visible metal objects that bullets can ricochet off of; and a mix of wide-open outdoor segments and closely packed indoor ones — Bravado can easily turn any level into a playground. Even characters on the slow side can cut through the denser areas with ease if they have enough enemies between them and their goal. The various skills, some of which we’ve already touched on, reward risky movement almost as much as Bravado! Flynn’s Shadow Swap allows her to jump right into the middle of a group from far away or take a sniper’s position away from them and use it for herself. Gin and Bill’s abilities — both allowing the player to attack many opponents at the same time — become more powerful the more enemies there are around them, incentivising the player to throw them into the middle of a bunch of foes. These and other abilities allow the player to set themselves up for more kills and thereby more action points. Lastly, Bravado can make many of the side objectives possible in the first place. In two of the combat situations I found myself in, I was given the bonus task of clearing an entire area of foes (about 7–9 people) on the first turn. With only four members in the posse, doing so is impossible without Bravado.

With Bravado, the first turn becomes a puzzle, leaving the player to figure out the most efficient use of their abilities to clear enemies as quickly as possible. Furthermore, by putting these “single-turn” tasks at the beginning of the missions, the player is quickly trained to think about combat as that same sort of puzzle. Even when the player has all the time in the world, they already know that it’s possible to use Bravado to do great things in the space of a single turn and will thereby plan their attack with that in mind.

Overall, even with only roughly 2–3 hours of playtime under my belt and cowgirl buckle, I found Hard West 2 to have some of the best and most engaging strategy gameplay I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I can’t wait to see where it goes next when it releases later this year. Yee-haw!