Blackguards - Tactical RPG

I am loving this so far. Not very far into it, but I'm happy with the purchase.

69/100 meta. Maybe you guys just like junk?

I haven't gotten around to playing Blackguards yet, but Might & Magic X Legacy has a 71/100 and is about as far as you can get from being junk. Metacritic is a dubious source of information at the best of times, and it gets vastly worse once you start dealing with reviews of games that use mechanics that appeal to a particular audience; e.g. turn-based combat. Just skimming those Blackguard reviews, you can see that most of them were written by people with no interest in the genre. There's even one dude still crying about the fact that it was put on early access last year.

So yeah, I'd trust people here who actually like turn-based strategy games and have played Blackguards over 'professional' reviewers who know fuck-all about the genre. I'll definitely try the demo myself before purchasing it though.

No way in the world is it better than FFT. The game is good, the leveling and skill system is pretty deep, but the combat is just too much for me sometimes. Plenty of maps are a 45 minute grind fest of slaughtering hordes of shitty AI-less mobs that just never end. Battling vs other NPCs is usually pretty engaging, but I just can't bring myself to put much time in to it because every other battle is going to be near an hour of endlessly grinding through thousands of HP of bugs/rats/etc.

First game in a while I "tried" and found myself to not like after 30 min or so of playing. Big fan of tactics type titles too.

Amongst other things the leveling system just seems too wacky and obtuse while at the same time being rather restricted from my impression so far. Maybe worth a look at down the line from me - but with so much on the near horizon can't imagine that'll come before the Steam sale for Thanksgiving.

Ronne_sl said:

No way in the world is it better than FFT. The game is good, the leveling and skill system is pretty deep, but the combat is just too much for me sometimes. Plenty of maps are a 45 minute grind fest of slaughtering hordes of shitty AI-less mobs that just never end. Battling vs other NPCs is usually pretty engaging, but I just can't bring myself to put much time in to it because every other battle is going to be near an hour of endlessly grinding through thousands of HP of bugs/rats/etc.

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This. The rat/bug slaughters are very meh.

FFT had much better/faster combat, and gave you a decent sized party to begin with.

I do like some of the stats and skill trees. I really want to like this game.

I am one of the few who falls in between I suppose as I played roughly to the halfway mark (its a pretty long game due to time spent in combat) then lost interest completely. I like tactical RPGs enough that it kept me playing longer than it would have otherwise despite its glaring pacing problems. For the first several hours of the game you are unable to meaningfully advance your characters active abilities beyond the incredibly boring passive stats and spell % of success chances. Most of the time you will be merely spamming one ability over and over on maps that require almost no tactical planning aside from the maps where they force terrain/trap interaction on you in order to succeed. Mana is not automatically replenished between fights (which can be and often are linked in succession) and in-combat regen is slow which leads to a miserly approach to spell casting; often doing nothing but healing or casting a debuff when appropriate instead of using the more entertaining damage options.

Melee skills are unfortunately not as fleshed out and diverse as they could be, the system is heavily slanted in favor of axe/mace as power blow is superior to what is available in the sword/spear line. I rolled with a dual wielding swordsman and he managed alright but frequently through the story your party is stripped of their equipment and forced to all use clubs despite their skill/class sets and it is downright annoying (but doable). Equipment is bland and a bit odd as their stats display as cumulative to the whole rather than on the standard item by item basis. Items give minor defense increases and do nothing special, some weapons you can find/buy early on will be equipped for most of the game seemingly with upgrades few and far between but not in an exciting way as the improvements are usually minor.

Eventually combat became a drudge of repetitive fights linked together in chains with gimmicky floor hazards contorting play to specific outcomes. These may have been more exciting and even visceral to some degree if they didn't take so bloody long to slog through spamming the same abilities over and over on enemies that have too much health that you do too little damage to. I got to the near end of the gladiatorial line and just uninstalled from lack of excitement and interest. There are challenges to face and some fun nuggets to mine out along the way but the combat and leveling were more tedious than they needed to be and hurt the overall flow and enjoyment to be had. That said, if you are a tactical RPG fanatic, you will probably enjoy it enough anyway but it just didn't have enough to keep me hooked all the way through.

Gask_sl said:

Mana is not automatically replenished between fights (which can be and often are linked in succession) and in-combat regen is slow which leads to a miserly approach to spell casting; often doing nothing but healing or casting a debuff when appropriate instead of using the more entertaining damage options.

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This was my main complaint. Mage is just fucking annoying and often useless unless you engage in cheese like surrounding one final enemy and passing 500 turns to regen mana before the next fight. Also you pick up new spells with enough mana to cast them once, and like a 50% chance of missing with them until you put a shitload of points into them. It really sucks the fun out of it.

velk_sl said:

This was my main complaint. Mage is just fucking annoying and often useless unless you engage in cheese like surrounding one final enemy and passing 500 turns to regen mana before the next fight. Also you pick up new spells with enough mana to cast them once, and like a 50% chance of missing with them until you put a shitload of points into them. It really sucks the fun out of it.

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Yeah that guy is fucking worthless, I just use him to loot chests/boxes and heal the rest of my party while they wreck shop.

Hekotat_sl said:

Yeah that guy is fucking worthless, I just use him to loot chests/boxes and heal the rest of my party while they wreck shop.

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Get level 3 of the speed boost spell. Gives one person an extra turn each round for 4 turns. Pretty awesome. Wish I hadn't learned it on Aurelia. That and the Duplicitus Double Vision make someone unstoppable.

Hekotat_sl said:

Yeah that guy is fucking worthless, I just use him to loot chests/boxes and heal the rest of my party while they wreck shop.

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I trained him up from the start with crossbows and he is one shotting most stuff now with 90% hit accuracy on special attacks. Magic in this game, with the possible exception of healing and "Move as Lightning 4" is pretty much pants compared to straight up weaponry.

The official English lore video requested for the game by the publisher to assist the English release.

The Dark Eye: Lore Video 1 - Aventuria - YouTube

yup, that's us, the Germans. Always on time.

actually there's a sequel in 2 months

Has anybody tried the sequel to this yet? It was surprising to me that the original is more expensive than the sequel.

Blackguards 1 is now 75% off on Steam. Got it myself now, giving it a try.