so it's like Icewind Dale?
That's a fairly good comparison, BGD is a bit IWD TB. The comparison is quite valid because:
- Both have a global flow and story progression quite linear without dialog choices generating some branch even less alternate parts for the story.
- Both are on top of combat quality in RPG.
- Both put an effort to design specifically each combat which is quite amazing.
- Both have a solid layout for the Combat System.
But they are also quite different:
- IWD can have some large dungeons less linear, BGD don't have that really.
- IWD have elements of exploration, when BGD use travels from point to point on three layers, global map, local map, town map where (small) towns are only a series of point to visit, typically Shop, Smith, Healer, Trainer, one special NPC sometimes, and so on.
- Both have secondary quests but not a huge flow of them, but BGD put quite more efforts on that in some chapters.
- IWD is Real Time with Pause and BGD Turn Based, this changes a lot the feeling.
- IWD allows free party creation and don't have any companions. In BGD you fully create only your Main character and companions join you as the story progress. To compensate the Class system of BGD is a skill system very flexible so you can develop very differently a same companion.
- IWD is trying a bit to be a full RPG focusing on combats and party design, BGD is a lot more a Tactical RPG with an uncommon approach in the genre.
- IWD is based on a large subset of D&D rules, BGD is based on a fair but partial subset of The Dark Eye rules. One is heavily class based when the other is skills based but requires specialize enough to create sort of classes paths.
- IWD is a lot text based when BGD is full voice acting (not sure it's a good choice, they better have paid some pro talented writers than have paid all the voice acting).
- IWD succeed balance well the various core combats elements ie Close Combat vs Long Range Combat vs Magic vs Priest, and in fact balanced this a lot better than BG1&2. My current opinion is BGD have multiple non fair balancing, but I haven't enough experience in the BGD to be sure of this.
I haven't played MMX yet but have finished and replayed some time The Banner Saga. All three are Turn Based with RPG elements, TBS and BGD are much more Tactical RPG. I'm sad to quote BGD is far behind in term of sells. The Banner Saga have plenty big flaws but some rather strong elements, it is very special and quite original with a gameplay heavily based on dialog choices, and overall I found it very attaching and fun to play despite all the flaws. But I feel quite sad that Blackguards isn't on par in term of sells and number of players interested.
The interest level that succeed generate TBS is double edge, on Steam forums there's a heavy negativity because obviously many players bought it either a bit fast, either for wrong reasons, either expecting some AAA game just because 3 ex Bioware made the game (lol naivety and lack of sense of realism of many players is quite incredible).
But the point is a game needs attract interest and I'm very sad Blackguards failed it. It has its own large pool of flaws and weakness and no way is a classical RPG, but it succeed cumulate some design elements like:
- Tuned design of any combat.
- Complex characters design.
- A good implementation of resource management, at least in first parts.
The other element where the design put a focus on is the story, companions and dialogs. Alas, triple alas, it's just fairly solid stuff, no real quality here, some good points like multiple gentle smiles and some touch of mystery growing well. But if they had put more care in having really talented writers with a very talented main writer, the game would certainly have a much better impact and overall efficiency.
One important element to quote in Blackguard design is its gameplay design is tuned to have a budget cost that fits better a category of players not expected to be as large than for more standard designs similar to most modern AAA RPG. For example:
- There's elements not much developed like exploration.
- There's an effort to develop companions and integrate them to the story progression but with the price of not much companions.
- They choose a complex ruleset with EYE but choose implement only a subset to try tune its implementation design/adaptation.
- They choose tune the difficulty and craft carefully each combat and make each sort of unique, but they had give up introduce random to keep the target and budget cost.
The result is an uncommon polishing level of the design of some elements with the price of many weakness elsewhere. And I feel Blackguards is failing in term of success not because of such difficult choices and the weakness involved, but their original design plan was good but would have require an extreme focus on writing quality. Without this element well achieved with an impact level strong enough, the global plan fails. It's still a hugely attaching game, for me.