Blackguards Preview

Rock Paper Shotgun’s Alec Meer clearly didn’t enjoy the time he spent with Daedalic’s Blackguards for previewing and streaming purposes, though he concedes that at least one of the fights he got into was entertaining:

I tried streaming it on Twitch earlier, and quite understandably the viewer count dwindled away in tandem with my enthusiasm. It’s a dispiriting enough game to play to spectate must be oppressively dull. There’s a dwarf with a naff Yorkshire accent, there’s a wizard with a camp accent, there’s endless exposition between characters who are clearly voiced by the same person, there’s a loading screen every two minutes, and once in a while there are more involving but glacially slow and uninspiring turn-based battles that involve combing through an interface made up of all the tiny, infuriatingly similar circles in the world. It plays a bit like Warhammer Quest on iOS, in that it involves using a small squad of players thoughtfully in order to contain and destroy more numerous opponents, but it doesn’t have the pep, the speed, the sense of purpose it just wants to talk, talk, talk, talk.

There was one moment of ingenuity on show, though I’d argue it arrived too soon, presenting a stiff challenge before there’d been a chance to get to grips with the unwieldy interface. Doesn’t help that the key to surviving this scene is uttered as one apparently throwaway line among the deluge of comedy-accented bullshit earlier on. I found myself, for what I think was just my fourth battle in the game, in a swamp, facing an enormous Wood Troll, which was essentially a fatter Ent. Its waistline was matched only by its colossal amount of hitpoints, which my trio of weak, poorly-equipped newbie characters had little chance of whittling down before the damned thing clobbered us.

However and I must admit it took a viewer who’d already played the thing to point this out to me the swamp was filled with gas, shown as conveniently static bubbles atop certain hexes. Gas + fire = fiery explosion. Fiery explosion + creature made of wood = ow. So, off you pop, fireball-wielding mageguy. The fat Ent was an imposing threat, and there was satisfaction in discovering that it could be defeated by carefully kiting it around the map, ‘˜sploding swamp-farts when it stumbled into them, taking chunks rather than splinters off its health. It was a challenging, stressful fight that I’m amazed I survived