Blackguards Hands-on Preview

Blackguards is, perhaps, a little too complex for its own good. Released on Steam Early Access last week, you can buy and play it now, though the game could do with a lot of polishing.

A turn-based tactical RPG coming from Daedalic, Blackguards is set in The Dark Eye universe, the same one as Memoria and a host of other games. It’s entirely standalone, however, and a completely different style of play.

The majority of Blackguards takes place on a series of hexagon battle maps. A little like XCOM, each character has a two-phase turn of movement followed by action but with one crucial difference – you can opt to wait after your move phase, allowing all the other characters to proceed. At the end of the round, you can then take your action (or second movement), which can be very useful to draw in distant characters and then finish them off in melee combat.

The story itself is mildly interesting but serves more as filler between battles than anything else. The game itself features over 180 battle maps, many of which have environmental quirks that you can use to your advantage. In this preview build I fought through a cave filled with giant lice in which stalactites fell from the ceiling onto the fighters whenever my team used an explosive spell. Other maps hold stacks of crates that can be toppled to delay an oncoming fighter while many sidequest battles have unique challenges of their own. Sometimes you have to make a choice – do you take a lot of damage rushing across the map to save the damsel in three turns, or proceed with caution and let her die?

While the battles are interesting, it’s the interface that lets the game down. There’s a huge range of weapon options but no easy way to see what each character is good with, nor to compare current equipment with new items. Instead, you’ll be flipping back and forth between half a dozen screens every time you want to change gear, make a purchase or upgrade a skill. It’s great for flexibility – you can train anybody with almost anything – but improving your characters can feel more like work than play.

However, a lot of that could be fixed. Even a simple pop-up showing the stats change between a new weapon and old would be very welcome. A tutorial covering the effect of investing in skills would go a long way, too.

Blackguards is available for PC through Steam Early Access now.