Blackguards Preview

There’s a fairly lengthy hands-on preview for Blackguards over at the RPG Codex, based on a preview version and the current Steam Early Access version of Daedalic’s turn-based title. Here’s a snippet:

Blackguards’ combat impressed me greatly when I played the beta/early access versions of the game. There were two reasons for that:

1. The fact that the combat was any good, because I totally expected the whole game to suffer from the typical (non-RPG company’s first RPG!) syndrome, where the biggest focus would be placed on aspects such as the narrative, while largely ignoring or streamlining the combat system to near-minigame status.

2. The fact that the combat was so damn good. There aren’t many games out there where almost every fight feels unique, challenging and genuinely fun, and Blackguards manages to actually fit into this category. This is due to a couple of well-thought-out design decisions.

First, let’s talk about the battle maps. There are no random encounters in this game – every fight is a set piece. This is pretty cool, since it ensures you won’t be getting any deja vus because of identical enemy compositions, and also makes each encounter unique in some way, even if it’s just different background art. But there’s a lot more to it than that, and I have to say this is where Daedalic have managed to strike the bull’s-eye. Thanks to the maps being fully designed by hand, just about every single one of them has plenty of neat quirks and stuff to play around with, other than just hacking the enemy to pieces. There are environmental hazards to use and avoid, hidden traps, enemy (lairs) that need closing, and much, much more. Many of them are also fairly big, which allows for lots of maneuvering around their hex-grids. When maneuvering, characters essentially have two available actions per turn that can be spent on running one distance threshold (usually up to 3-5 hexes) and then executing an action, or running two distance thresholds. The size of the maps also lets you use ranged weapons to their fullest, as they have four thresholds of effective range, and penalties are given not only for extremely long, but also for very short range.

I simply have to applaud the developers for showing so much creativity when setting up the combat encounters. Which leads to the game’s greatest strength:

The combat encounters are all incredibly pen-and-paper-like in their structure. A good gamemaster will always tell you that difficult fights are not just about sending hordes of enemies against the players, but also about giving each battle its own self-contained context. I’m incredibly glad that Daedalic understand this, as it’s a design element that’s criminally absent from many RPGs, including even the classic ones. There are tons of fights in Blackguards where the enemies themselves will be the least of your worries. Your party of 3 to 5 characters will need to perform desperate rushes under strict time limits, to split in the face of overwhelming odds to secure key objectives, to try to even the odds by manipulating the environment and luring enemies into traps (while trying to not step into a pitfall themselves), etc. Some of those set pieces are not just exciting and tense as hell, but also truly difficult, and you will often need to completely rethink your strategy to win…and even then you’ll still only manage to succeed with just one 5-health dude left. Allow me to illustrate with an example from chapter 2:

This battle is part of a whole series of encounters where your party doesn’t have access to their proper gear, and the only source of supplies is a shop with a limited assortment of goods that don’t get refreshed, which means that your assets are seriously limited, and each potion, missile or trap you use genuinely counts. As for the fight itself your party is composed of five characters (one of whom is (confused) and controlled by the AI) which are fanned out in front of a stationary NPC that you must protect. You are surrounded by six (or was it eight?) hungry crocs. In front of you is a row of spike traps. The crocs are set on not only murdering your heroes, but also the NPC, AND they are lured to two pressure platforms with meat as the meat is eaten, the contraption on which the NPC is placed starts putting out spikes. Have fun! And this is but one example out of more than 180 fights promised in the full game.