Blackguards - Review @ Strategy Informer

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Strategy Informer reviews Blackguards , and gives the game a final score of 6/10.

If you’re looking for an interactive board game with role-playing elements, a ton of stats and moderately interesting writing you could do a lot worse than Blackguards. If you’re looking for a proper RPG, look elsewhere. Throw some turn-based combat and XP into Memoria and it’d be more of a Dark Eye RPG than this. There is fun to be had and Daedalic have done their best to keep battles interesting, but often things can get very frustrating and it’s hard not to come to the realisation that you’re just doing the same things over and over again. Daedalic have made two excellent adventures out of The Dark Eye, but they’ve yet to make a good RPG.
More information.
 
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That's a harsh score. I guess it suits one who expected rpg and received boardgame instead. Anyway, Blackguards is exactly what i like, and my personal score will be 9/10 for the game. Thumbs up Daedalic!
 
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If you’re looking for a proper RPG, look elsewhere.
He probably ment to say: buy a proper RPG by my standards and that's DA2.

I say, don't buy elsewhere, buy Blackguards.
 
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Yeah, definitely too harsh.

Played a bit on the weekend myself. Pretty much as expected. Fun combat with clever maps getting increasingly more "involved" as you go(*). A competently made little SRPG.

I don't know if it will hold my interest to the very end, but it looks like quite a few hours of fun and definitely worth the price of admission, especially as I got it for like 12-13 euros on the Steam sale ;)

(* it seems like I must have gotten up to the first instance of actual challenge, playing on hard: saving a damsel in distress in 5 turns, had to leave the game at that point. Looks to become quite challenging towards the end, if it continues to ramp up at the same rate)
 
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First run on hard? Honestly, when it comes to Blackguards, knowing now what happens in the game, I'd never try that.

I believe you're talking about a sidequest fight against a shaman and 3 natives, now that one is very hard even on normal and practically you have to reload it to get at least one lucky crit. Or… I didn't know then but know now. Leave that sidequest for last before proceeding to the next chapter and do the main quest battles that reward you with huge AP amounts to pump up skills of your party. AoE damage spells won't help on this map as warriors use spears so they're never close to each other. Perception maxed on one partymember (bows/xbows) makes this battle also easier (trapdetection on the whole map) as you won't have to lose warriors' turns when they step onto a stun trap.
 
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Yeah, this was a tough one, even on normal difficulty. I waited to get Triple Shot with my PC archer to kill the shaman in the first round, then waited for the 3 guys to advance and roasted them with Zurbaran's level 3 Ignifaxius.
Only when this worked out, I had a chance to kill them quickly enough.
 
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the Al'Anfan fop's Baroness paramour…
Still early in chapter 1 :) No idea if the fight is indeed challenging as I had to quit before trying, but it seems that getting over that blockade in 5 turns will require some thought not to mention a bit of luck ;)

And no spoilers please. I like to discover stuff and tactics by myself or not at all ;) (more than half the fun generally speaking and even more so in a game like this).

I don't find the possibility of getting stuck before the end too difficult to imagine. In that case it depends: If I feel like it and there is nothing else to play I might restart. If not I'll put it aside and try again at a later date. No biggy…
 
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Ah that one?

Not a spoiler, not a strategy but a hint for that map: one ring to rule them all. :)

To avoid getting stuck in the midgame just remember what's said in other threads.
Basically it's a few hints:
Do not under any circumstances make jack of all trades characters. Max one weapon instead of investing some points into every possible one. Also do not make knowallspells spellcasters, maxing just a few spells per character is more than enough. And do not avoid fights. Some things can be bought with cash or talked out instead of fighting, but fights are fun and usually net you items you can't get if you solve a quest by talking!
 
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Also do not make knowallspells spellcasters, maxing just a few spells per character is more than enough.

That much was immediately obvious at least. My own mage is pretty focused (I always start small and cautious to test the waters) but potbelly needs to be brought into shape if he is to be any use (working on that). I'm making him and my own mostly supplement each other (both will have basic heal but I am focusing on different damaging and aux spells etc).

Anyways, thanks for the hints ;)
 
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I'm still in the first chapter, but so far I'd have to say that Blackguards is *much* better than a 6/10.
Indeed. I'm only at the first chapter myself too, but so far I'm having a blast. Sure, Blackguards is missing exploration and almost everything else not directly related to combat, and as such is not for those who don't like combat in their CRPGs, but for the rest of us it's pure tactical combat bliss. I much rather play through Blackguards' hand-crafted encounters (no matter even if "gimmicky" at times) than suffer through a nearly endless stream of trash mobs so common in e.g. Bioware's more recent CRPGs.
 
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Blackguards is missing exploration and almost everything else not directly related to combat

I believe if this title will be a success as I suspect it will, daedlic entertainment will come up with a new title including exploration. their adventures are pretty good, and the combination of this experience and of a very good combat system.. well, we'll wait and see.
 
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Well there is exploration. Some side quests won't be found unless you travel and talk to folks or cross paths in certain parts of the map. There's few quest markers (the dragon icons), so oyu need to chat people up to find many side squests. New quests pop up in places you've already been, after certain events occur, so yeah, exploration (and repetition) is rewarded. It's not obvious at the beginning before the map opens up a lot more…

Also, JoNik, here's another hint to save the baroness in 5 turns.
Fireball (and a little luck). ;) Also, rush the baillif to scare him off. Then you can take your time.
Also, Joxer, re the "new" maiden quest:
Fast as lightning is great to rush the spellcaster and the warriors before you get poisoned to death and run out of time. Also, a spellcaster with the poison removal spell at level 4 for the whole party is almost essential to maximize killing speed. ;)
EDIT: BTW, I've been playing on normal, and haven't once had to drop the difficulty level, or been tempted to increase it to hard. I did have to delay that "new" maiden battle until I got the needed the skills/spell levels.

EDIT 2: Strategy Informer was unavailable for a while. Now that I can read the review, I see that the reviewer missed a lot of the gameplay if he didn't make use of all of the skills and spells. Sure you can spam potions to make up for careless builds, but I haven't used a single potion yet. Oh well.

EDIT 3: This complaint
or the way the crucial description of a spell is right at the bottom of a page you can’t easily scroll down without accidentally moving to another spell.
This means he never bothered to contact the community to figure stuff out. I asked once and was quickly rewarded by a helpful soul who told me just to click on the spell name, and the description on the right will return to that spell when you hover your mouse over the description box. Somewhat unintuitive, since the description changes to whatever spell name you hover over, even after clicking on one. It should freeze once you click one.

This person should not review any game more complicated than tic tac toe.
 
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I basically solved the baroness quest in three turns, probably because everything fell into place correctly.
MC is archer/spellcaster.
1. Zub casts fireball into the crates. Norim runs as far as possible but stops in front of the fire. MC is positioned above the bridge and shoots at the 2nd bridge guards
2. Naurim runs 2/3rd into the space between the bridges. Zub runs north and casts at the 2nd bridge guards. MC shoots arrow.
3. [Guards from both bridges surround Naurim] Naurim crosses 2nd bridge through the middle path. After that I killed everybody the usual way.
 
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