Blackguards - Previews

Here are a few more previews for Daedelic's Blackguards.

Games.on.net

Battle maps aren’t simply static backdrops either. Some examples of interactivity we saw included: chests that can be looted mid-fight; barrels you can roll into enemies; beehives and swamp holes you can lure enemies into; even a heavy chandelier you can drop onto enemies. Some battle maps have optional objectives beyond defeating your opponents. One fight we saw took place in a prison where you’re able to free prisoners from their cells to fight on your side. The developers say that fleeing from battle can even be a valid option in some situations.

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GamrReview

Where the innovation comes in is the game’s use of choices to decide how the battle will play out. Scattered throughout you will find objects that you will be able to interact with or characters to converse with that will affect the course of the game.

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NZGamer

The party increases in size as the story progresses, and other skills are added to the group. Seven members can join the group, with up to five being able to take the battlefield at a time.You can also interact with objects in the environment, such as blocking paths with crates, or pulling a structure down to collapse on enemies. Or your team mates... friendly fire is an issue, and you can all too easily kill off your party members if you aren’t careful.

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More information.

One problem with turn based games on anything but very small maps is that movement of your whole squad across the map becomes very cumbersome. For instance, RPSs recent play Xenonauts video http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/07/lets-blather-all-over-xenonauts/ shows the problem, particularly when you have no indication as to which direction you need to explore.

On the face of it, I very much prefer the approach being adopted by Chaos Chronicles, which is real time switching to turn based when an encounter is triggered, which presumably is harder to implement. Will have to see how how these different approaches work out in practice though.

tl;dr Exploring large maps in turn based strategy games isn't much fun.

I loved playing Fall from Heaven and HoMM 3 on large maps and exploring. The part I did not like is when you had the map won and destroying the last few cities. Also, chasing down the last few armies sucked But I could explore all day.