Recent reviews by DrummahMike

The first Hard West I thought was extremely fun. Unfortunately, the previous developing company left that game a broken mess. The enemies would get stuck clipping on the environment making them infinitely walk in place without completing their turn. This forced you to restart and lose your progress only for it to happen again and again. The forums were littered with posts about this but it fell on deaf ears and I was never able to complete the game.

When Hard West 2 was announced I was reserved to say the least and thought they had some nerve releasing a 2nd title after how they left their customers in the dark from the first game. I noticed the developing company was under a different name now. I don't know if HW2 is completely new people or just a name change, but seeing that and also hearing good reviews from people that actually played the game, I figured I would give it a shot.

I'm having a blast, this game is fun. It runs smoothly for me, solid 144fps at max settings, no hiccups. Each character has special traits that you unlock through your relationships with them via dialogue choices throughout the adventure, as well as a pretty robust and interchangeable character "leveling" system through the use of playing cards. This allows you to fine tune the parties traits and special abilities that also will complement the loadouts you gear them with.

This is not a puzzle game and it's really evident that well known review outlets, since some of them used that term, everyone else just keeps regurgitating it back up as if they're saying that it's not really a strategy game. That's simply not true.

The poker hand system opens up decisions on who you take in the group and how their traits and abilities will play out. You unlock cards as you progress and each character can hold five cards. The better the hand you give them going by traditional poker rules, the more powerful their traits and abilities become. This can be interchanged as many times as you like between battles to mold your selected party into how you want each character to play and synergize.

The luck mechanic should be managed by toggling it off and on when necessary, using it for only the most risky shots, or to activate a powerful character trait in later turns. This is how you get the most out of it and not to be left as some passive thing that you ignore. The entire luck system is built around taking risky shots, getting shot at, missing your own shots, or banking your luck points until a certain threshold to activate powerful character trait.

This is not a *complete in one turn or you take damage and have to restart* type of game.
This is why there are plenty of healing items, characters that are more powerful the lower their health is, or characters that transfuse blood to heal the group or become more powerful when another party member dies, etc.

Calling this a "puzzle" game as if to diminish it's worth in the genre of turn-based strategy is really a disservice to the game, the genre, the potential players that missed out because they listened to your lazy review, and your reputation as a review outlet. To everyone else that's curious, the game is excellent.

It's going to be rough around the edges as it's EA, but there is a lot of potential here and the gameplay is extremely fun. If you miss Nosgoth, this might scratch that itch for you. It's free, give it a try.

1080ti
8700k
Installed on SSD

I wouldn't recommend this, needs some serious patching just to get it playable, let alone polish, polish that should be standard if they plan on monetizing a full priced AAA game. I never in my life played a game this absolutely broken on release, after 3 weeks of betas, early release for people that purchased the Deluxe Edition, and even still now after the main release.

The game is rife with nonstop crashing, paid skins disappearing, erratic fps (100fps-20fps just standing still), and finally I gave up and refunded after randomly falling through the map on the Chimera. I thought reloading my save would fix it, and instead the checkpoint loaded me straight back into falling through the map again making the game an endless loop of unplayable garbage.

The forums are drowning in technical issues. Yeah, steam says "mostly positive" reviews, but just look at them....in most of those positive reviews the people are still complaining about the technical issues but they leave a positive review anyway with phrases like "I just know they'll fix it with patches". They're like a cult that'll take whatever the developer/publisher feeds them just because it's their beloved Avengers franchise and now they can finally play as these characters. The publisher knew this and released what is clearly an unfinished product that was barely QA tested.

The fanboys are telling people to just be patient, they'll fix it. Well I say -you do you-, I'm refunding this broken, mess of a game. If it were a new IP or some franchise not on the same hype level as Marvel, this would be "mixed" at best on Steam probably "mostly negative". If you don't believe me, go ahead, take your chances, you'll know you were had within a few minutes once you partake in this jank.

If you have the patience to deal with a litany of bugs and technical glitches that was never and will never be supported, then there is certainly something special here under the hood.