So many strategy RPGs came to PC this year. Don't miss this one.
I'd hate for Hard West 2 to go overlooked, though. Like Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters it's got a slightly misleading name, coming from different developers to the original Hard West and having only a little in common with it.
Hard West 2 builds on the bones of XCOM with swaggering style. The familiar shield icons for light and hard cover are there, but you can ignore any pile of rock or hastily raised coffin lid between you and your target by lining up a ricochet from a nearby object. Your posse unlocks abilities by looting magic playing cards and then assembling poker hands out of them, with better hands providing improved versions of their powers.
Rather than being overpowered, these bravado moves turn out to be essential for clearing the crowded town squares and train cars of the Hard West, and characters like the axe-wielding badass Laughing Deer are designed to take advantage of it. That doesn't mean you can't over-reach of course, and many's the time I realized too late there was nothing to do but hit the end turn button with Laughing Deer out in the open after using his Wild Run ability.
Which is exactly as it should be. Westerns are a perfect match for turn-based tactics—the movies are full of outlaws getting shot in a gulch somewhere because they strayed too far from cover after rushing out from behind a ridge, and what's a high noon showdown if not a turn-based duel where high initiative wins? Hard West 2 took the western theme and found a set of mechanics that go together with it as smoothly as whiskey goes with bad decisions.
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