I finished Blackguards about a month ago, and I've been thinking about it for quite a bit since then. I went into it expecting the usual kind of codex favorite: one or two very strong areas (in this case combat, the character system, and the DSA setting), with everything else being rather lackluster. But Blackguards doesn't really have any areas where it clearly excels, it meanders between mediocre-bad C- and mediocre-good C+ for the most part.
Character system
The character system is incredibly simplified compared to DSA 4.1 and most of the apparent complexity is smoke and mirrors. Details are spoilered:
The lack of depth in the character system isn't much of a problem for the first two chapters because experience points are still relatively scarce and party size is restricted, both of which make prioritization somewhat tricky. But once chapter 3 opens the experience flood gates the character system becomes at best an afterthought.
Combat
The combat system didn't click with me either, and once again it is a case of superficial complexity not translating into a deep system. As with the character system, this becomes much more pronounced from chapter 3 on. This has already been described several times in this thread, in particular the damage-multiplying maneuvers which are a no-brainer. If the to-hit chance is too low, a debuff will fix that (at least for enemies without broken to-hit calculation like those psychedelic plants). Not enough emphasis is put on positioning. Spears, for example, are not subject to DSA 4.1's close combat penalties, so that a spear-wielding party member need not worry about maintaining distance. Placing the party in a tightly-packed group has no disadvantages since few enemies have AoE attacks. There is no high ground and cover is rarely used. As long as the party can find a natural choke point (or create one via Fortifex), there is little to worry about.
Set Pieces
Most of the challenge thus arises from set-pieces, which are a matter of taste. Personally, I hate it when a game constantly changes rules and victory conditions, something that Blackguards does quite a bit in the first two chapters. Occasionally the game is also shockingly bad at signaling what those victory conditions are. For example, there is no way of knowing that
This has been described as puzzle-like gameplay by some here, but a good puzzle game has a few core mechanics and combines them into increasingly complex patterns. Blackguards feels closer to puzzles in a point-and-click adventure, each one of which may follow its own idiosyncratic logic (and each one of which invariably sucks). One never quite knows what a lever or push plate may do, so the first battle is often little more than a trial run. And things that one might expect to work do not (cutting a rope with a rope cutting arrow). This is something that actually improves from chapter 3 on, but mostly because the battles become much more cookie cutter at this point.
Little Freedom
The combat system also limits player freedom by an excessive amount so that one never feels in control. No matter the circumstances, there is no preparation phase to position the party or place traps (as in Expeditions Conquistador, for example). This is particularly egregious in cases where the party is clearly on the offensive, for instance the ambush on the caravan. And it also makes the dozens of same-ish battles after chapter 2 even more boring. Considering that Wizardry 8, Might and Magic 6+, the IE games, a streamlined tactical game like NuXcom, and even Diablo provide more freedom in how to approach engagements, this is simply inexcusable for a purely combat-focused RPG. Let's not even talk about the variety of approaches available to the player in JA2.
Little Enemy Variety
The game also suffers from a lack of enemy variety. While the total number of creatures encountered throughout the game is pretty impressive, an estimated 90% of encounters involve only humans. Discarding graphical differences, the majority of enemies fall into only a few categories: melee attack, melee attack with poison, melee attack that can temporarily incapacitate, ranged attack, and very rarely magic attack. As weird as it might seem, the difference between a cript louse and the average human mook is only quantitative in nature: HP, AT/PA, damage output. The AI is exactly the same.
Path Finding
All of this is compounded by several other shortcomings that aren't deal breakers but quickly become highly annoying. The main offender in this category is the atrocious path finding, with party members happily stepping into traps even after they have been detected. Routes have to be carefully mapped out by hand, provided one can do so: one mission requires the player to rescue an NPC that is being attacked by giant birds in the middle of a swamp. Even after the swamp holes have been uncovered, the NPC will happily run into one after the other, with each misstep adding a couple rounds to the fairly boring battle. This encounter all by itself makes Haste the most important spell in the game.
A Wasted Setting
The game's bland presentation also does a huge disservice to the setting. While I usually do not care about story, this one was not only predictable and generic but also incredibly wordy. I actively loathed every line of dialogue I had to click my way through. Most tellingly, the story is so detached from the settings that I wouldn't haven been able to figure out at what point in the history of Aventurien it is supposed to take place if it weren't for the existence of a winched crossbow. According to official lore, this type of crossbow was developed by Leonardo the Mechanicus who was born in 951BF. So the game must be set at some point after ~975BF.
The lowest point settings-wise is reached barely an hour into the game, when the player first comes to Neetha. Neetha is not only the capital of Chababien, it is also famous for its buildings of white and pink marble, its lavish gardens, and one of the biggest and most important temples of war goddess Rondra. The saint Thalionmel died near Neetha when she single-handedly held off an army of Novadi invaders, and to this day pilgrims come to Neetha to celebrate and commemorate this event. This is not just easily accessible lore from the source books, there are also two lengthy novels about the life of Thalionmel. Given Blackguard's focus, I did not expect more than one or two nicely rendered screens, maybe an establishing panorama shot to show off the beauty of the city and a statue of Thalionmel. What do we get instead? A dinky screen that makes Neetha look like a small Hanse town with a couple shacks. At that point I was, for lack of a better word, exquisitely Butthurt, with capital B.
tl;dr
There's some other minor points, but those do not really affect my verdict: Blackguards is not a horrible game, but it has no outstanding qualities either. The accolades some Codexers pile on its combat and character system are undeserved imho. Both may be better than what we got in other RPGs recently (though I wouldn't even put them above Dragonfall DC or Expeditions Conquistador), but they are not good enough to carry an entire game.
Character system
The character system is incredibly simplified compared to DSA 4.1 and most of the apparent complexity is smoke and mirrors. Details are spoilered:
While there are many attributes, they are mostly a function of whatever special abilities you want to use. Combat skills involve little more than picking a skill and boosting it to max, maybe two additional ones later down the road if you want the melee expert trait. Non-combat skills pose no hard choices either. Just make sure somebody in your party with high initiative has senses at max so you can detect all traps at the beginning of the first turn, and keep athletics and self control at a decent level (sorry if those aren't the English terms, I played it in German). Other skills are nice-to-have but not essential. The spell selection is less impoverished, but there's also some clear winners there (anything that can buff/debuff the entire field at highest level). This leaves special abilities, which are also self-evident depending on the build: heavy-damage melee, spear-melee, ranged, mage.
The lack of depth in the character system isn't much of a problem for the first two chapters because experience points are still relatively scarce and party size is restricted, both of which make prioritization somewhat tricky. But once chapter 3 opens the experience flood gates the character system becomes at best an afterthought.
Combat
The combat system didn't click with me either, and once again it is a case of superficial complexity not translating into a deep system. As with the character system, this becomes much more pronounced from chapter 3 on. This has already been described several times in this thread, in particular the damage-multiplying maneuvers which are a no-brainer. If the to-hit chance is too low, a debuff will fix that (at least for enemies without broken to-hit calculation like those psychedelic plants). Not enough emphasis is put on positioning. Spears, for example, are not subject to DSA 4.1's close combat penalties, so that a spear-wielding party member need not worry about maintaining distance. Placing the party in a tightly-packed group has no disadvantages since few enemies have AoE attacks. There is no high ground and cover is rarely used. As long as the party can find a natural choke point (or create one via Fortifex), there is little to worry about.
Set Pieces
Most of the challenge thus arises from set-pieces, which are a matter of taste. Personally, I hate it when a game constantly changes rules and victory conditions, something that Blackguards does quite a bit in the first two chapters. Occasionally the game is also shockingly bad at signaling what those victory conditions are. For example, there is no way of knowing that
the alligators eating the meat in the arena will hurt the person you have to keep alive.
Little Freedom
The combat system also limits player freedom by an excessive amount so that one never feels in control. No matter the circumstances, there is no preparation phase to position the party or place traps (as in Expeditions Conquistador, for example). This is particularly egregious in cases where the party is clearly on the offensive, for instance the ambush on the caravan. And it also makes the dozens of same-ish battles after chapter 2 even more boring. Considering that Wizardry 8, Might and Magic 6+, the IE games, a streamlined tactical game like NuXcom, and even Diablo provide more freedom in how to approach engagements, this is simply inexcusable for a purely combat-focused RPG. Let's not even talk about the variety of approaches available to the player in JA2.
Little Enemy Variety
The game also suffers from a lack of enemy variety. While the total number of creatures encountered throughout the game is pretty impressive, an estimated 90% of encounters involve only humans. Discarding graphical differences, the majority of enemies fall into only a few categories: melee attack, melee attack with poison, melee attack that can temporarily incapacitate, ranged attack, and very rarely magic attack. As weird as it might seem, the difference between a cript louse and the average human mook is only quantitative in nature: HP, AT/PA, damage output. The AI is exactly the same.
Path Finding
All of this is compounded by several other shortcomings that aren't deal breakers but quickly become highly annoying. The main offender in this category is the atrocious path finding, with party members happily stepping into traps even after they have been detected. Routes have to be carefully mapped out by hand, provided one can do so: one mission requires the player to rescue an NPC that is being attacked by giant birds in the middle of a swamp. Even after the swamp holes have been uncovered, the NPC will happily run into one after the other, with each misstep adding a couple rounds to the fairly boring battle. This encounter all by itself makes Haste the most important spell in the game.
A Wasted Setting
The game's bland presentation also does a huge disservice to the setting. While I usually do not care about story, this one was not only predictable and generic but also incredibly wordy. I actively loathed every line of dialogue I had to click my way through. Most tellingly, the story is so detached from the settings that I wouldn't haven been able to figure out at what point in the history of Aventurien it is supposed to take place if it weren't for the existence of a winched crossbow. According to official lore, this type of crossbow was developed by Leonardo the Mechanicus who was born in 951BF. So the game must be set at some point after ~975BF.
The lowest point settings-wise is reached barely an hour into the game, when the player first comes to Neetha. Neetha is not only the capital of Chababien, it is also famous for its buildings of white and pink marble, its lavish gardens, and one of the biggest and most important temples of war goddess Rondra. The saint Thalionmel died near Neetha when she single-handedly held off an army of Novadi invaders, and to this day pilgrims come to Neetha to celebrate and commemorate this event. This is not just easily accessible lore from the source books, there are also two lengthy novels about the life of Thalionmel. Given Blackguard's focus, I did not expect more than one or two nicely rendered screens, maybe an establishing panorama shot to show off the beauty of the city and a statue of Thalionmel. What do we get instead? A dinky screen that makes Neetha look like a small Hanse town with a couple shacks. At that point I was, for lack of a better word, exquisitely Butthurt, with capital B.
tl;dr
There's some other minor points, but those do not really affect my verdict: Blackguards is not a horrible game, but it has no outstanding qualities either. The accolades some Codexers pile on its combat and character system are undeserved imho. Both may be better than what we got in other RPGs recently (though I wouldn't even put them above Dragonfall DC or Expeditions Conquistador), but they are not good enough to carry an entire game.
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