I recently played Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier and I was very impressed. The game has a great storyline and the graphics are stunning. The game play is intuitive and the controls are easy to learn. I love the variety of tasks you can do as you build your settlement and the challenge of managing resources. I also appreciate the ability to trade with other settlements and the option to play in different difficulty levels. Overall, I highly recommend Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier to anyone looking for a fun strategy game.
“Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier” is the second edition of this game. In the previous version the settlement of Hope River was built. Supposedly that settlement has been destroyed and in this edition of the game the three characters have to rebuild it. Starting from scratch, they’ll have to take care of the first citizens and build up the infrastructure needed to survive, such as houses, wells, farms and so on.
You can play with the character you like, from these three:
- Marion Morrison: he was just a simple farmer before bandits drove him off his land. Now he’s working to make sure others have a safe place to live.
- Maureen Fitzsimmons: is and adventurous young woman, always eager to see what’s past the horizon. She’s the daughter of a prominent banker.
- Terrance Stevens: is a mountain man and a trapper. He’s used to living with the land instead of on it, and look out for those who have earned his friendship.
If you like far west movies this is definitely the game for you, since its looks, sounds and dialogues are all designed according to that style. It’s a kind of complex game since it has a lot of features to learn about. It offers a comprehensive help information but it’s available only online, which is kind of inconvenient if you don’t have Internet access at the moment. You don’t have to worry anyway, because there is a tutorial available at the beginning of the game, which will be teaching you how to play the game step by step, as you play it. Maybe this is the easiest and most entertained way to learn, instead of reading a text file on the Web.
Once you’re playing, what you have to do is to control your hero (character) and make him to do what you think is necessary to succeed. You’ll be controlling it with your mouse, and some dialogues balloons will appear on the different characters so they can communicate. That’s how you’ll know what to do.
When you enter the game you reach the Main Menu, with the following options:
- New Game: Begin a new Westward II game.
- Sandbox: Sandbox mode allows you to play in two different modes;
o Open Range: Allows you to develop a settlement at your own pace. All buildings will be unlocked at the beginning and no natural disasters will take place.
o Disaster Challenge: Steadily increases the rate of natural disasters while you grow your town. The game begins with low chances of environmental disasters and that chance increases over time, with experience and gold being awarded each time the disaster level increases.
- Continue: Continue your game from the previous saved spot.
- Load Game: Load a previously saved game.
- Profile: Add, delete or create new profiles.
- Options: View game options and adjust settings.
- Awards: View awards received/available.
- Help: Launch Westward II help pages.
- Credits: View game credits.
- Exit: Exit the game and return to desktop.
Once you are playing, you can press the MENU button on your keyboard to pause the game and view the in-game menu, with the following options:
- Resume: Resume playing Westward II.
- Save: Save your progress in one of the save slots. To properly save the game, you must select one of the save slots. When saved properly, you will receive a confirmation message stating the save was successful.
- Load: This will allow you to load a previously saved game file.
- Options: View game options and adjust settings.
- Awards: View the awards you have received while playing Westward II, or view additional awards available in the game.
- World Map: View the Westward II World Map.
- Quit: Quit the current game and return to the Main Menu. Before doing so, you will be asked if you would like to Quit, Save & Quit or Cancel.
You can try this game for 60 minutes before you buy the licensed version. If you like it, you can buy this game for only 19.95 dollars, right from the Oberon Media Game Center, on the Web
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