The first is trick shooting, which lets certain weapons bounce bullets off of metal objects to circumvent enemy cover.

Luckily, you have four tools to play with. Combined with that defensive focus you have a real problem to overcome when closing in on new groups of enemies: They'll probably get effective shots at you before you get some at them. Your attacks do fixed damage based on the weapon used, and all that changes is the chance to hit based on range, elevation, and the enemy's cover. You get three actions per turn, with shooting usually taking two or three of those, meaning that the rules overall favor defensive fighting. Combined, they form a range of powers that synergize with well-designed environments to enable tricks, combos, and chained kills. That's balanced against the flexible character abilities and neat weapons available. That distinction matters too: On the middle-of-the-road Hard difficulty I had to restart multiple missions, some as many as five times, to figure out the solution to that puzzle and get a win.

The combat is reliable and has minimal frustrating randomization, but on the harder missions that makes it feel more like a puzzle than tactical exercise. They're pretty good, but for everything I like about them I dislike something else.

The centerpiece of Hard West 2 are its tactical battles. It has more than a few lines with weird grammar or eye-rolling cliches, but does the job well enough that I wasn't skipping cutscenes or text-only descriptions. The writing both in and out of missions is hit or miss. The campaign is split between doing dialogue-driven quests in overworld areas and diving into turn-based combat missions for most of the playtime.

Hard west crossroads