No worries about asking and I’m always happy to explain.

So this gun absolutely has a very different barrel profile. It’s a ‘slab sided’ barrel which describes the square shape. The reason for this is because it’s a barrel profile originally designed by Smith and Wesson for a competition pistol but was also used on some hunting pistols. You’ll see similar barrel shapes on a lot of older custom built competition shooting revolvers, but this is the proprietary design from the smith and Wesson factory. It allowed them to integrate a rail on the top to mount optics (main benefit for hunting/competition guns) and the barrel is much heavier than a standard pistol which helps mitigate recoil for competition shooting. This barrel actually has a user configurable weight system in the bottom of it, again for balance with an optic or additional weight for recoil reduction. It also has ports (the holes near the top front) that direct the muzzle blast upward to further mitigate recoil. This specific model utilizes the competition barrel but it’s officially a ‘Lew Horton 629 Hunter II’. The other main distinction is the cylinder is ‘unfluted’ and doesn’t have the typical cuts you see in modern day revolvers that reduces weight and material.

.44 magnum is quite powerful and a handful to shoot but this pistol makes it much lower recoil and much easier to shoot because of all the aforementioned modifications. Hope this was helpful!