Blackguards Demo

FinneousPJ

New tactical turn-based RPG Blackguards has a demo version available now. I've played the first 30 min so far, not sure if I like it or hate it... lol

http://www.gamershell.com/news_160065.html

CrevsDaak

What is is about? It is good to play?

Aristillius

Im abit skeptical, it seems slightly generic and clunky - the fact that you play badguys as the only interesting factor. But i would be very interested to hear some gameplay experiences!

ajwz

Not to be confused with Blackguard, which was released about 3 months ago which was a pretty terrible vampire themed action rpg

Maybe next we will see "Blaggards". A game in which you wander around 18th century france getting drunk with your gambling friends and starting fights with musketeers.

FinneousPJ

@CrevsDaak It's basically a turn-based fighting game with some dialogue, little to no roleplay and no exploration.

@Aristillius See above. I'm not far enough into the game to say whether the battle system's good enough to remain interesting. But it's a free download!

@ajwz Sounds awesome!! I'd def try that game out.

CrevsDaak

Well, I give it a try, seems good for a free download (well, 2 Gigabytes is lot for a demo, hope it does work with bad graphic cards too....).

FinneousPJ

I finished the demo. I'd say it has a lot of content for a demo. It's a nice battle game but that's all it is... I'll make a note to buy it when it's on sale.

scriver

I played the demo. Character building seems mostly robust from a first glance, talent tree seems interesting, possibly a couple of "main attributes" too many. System is based on the German PnP game Die(/Der/Das) Schwartze Auge, which I'm not familiar with beyond the Arkania series of video games, do I can't really say how closely it follows it. Didnt get into the magic options, but there seems to be at least a decent amount of variation of spells.

Characters are bland. World building thin. Exploration basically nonexistent. Plot didn't grab me at all, and is basically nothing but a railroad.

The combat is pretty interesting. It hits a nice spot of being challenging without being too unforgiving. Lots of environment effects and use if objects possible, so it's not just beating your enemies with a stick - it's setting the bushes in the area on fire and then gleefully watching as the silly swamp apes burn to their undignified deaths. It kept getting better throughout the demo, but I'm not sure it would carry the whole game for me.

There's one last thing I'd like to mention: The minimalist approach they take to cities/villages/hubs and dungeons. For example most hubs areysuwlly just one screen of streetside overview of the town square (or one or two more for bigger places) and dungeons are limited to a map/route with points of interest that you can visit (99% of them meaning combat in some way). This may sound boring to some, but I actually think there's a lot of promise to this method and particularly for smaller devs without many resources (Granted, I have no idea how small or big Daedalic is). However, to realise that potential, you gave to fill the lack of visualization with another way of exploring: flavour text! And more importantly - text adventures and random events. Those are things that can really bring a dungeon alive in ways that are hard to recreate if everything you do needs a "physical manifestation" on the screen and are sadly missing from modern games due to the industry's focus on graphics. It would be the perfect way to fill out a minimalist implementation, hut sadly, Blaggards does not deliver on this point. Thus the dungeoncrawling is basically just clicking from one fight scene to the next, and to me at least, that leads to dome pretty strange pacing. So yeah.

Also, though I know it should be irrelevant I can't help but compare it to the old Arkadia games because if the memories the Schwartze Auge system brings back to me. I really miss the exploration from that game, and the part/exploration management and "adventure simulating" those games offered. Stuff like having to send your hunter out to get food each night or risk running out of provisions. The fear of being ambushed in the early morning light while your party is still sleeping because half your party is injured and you had to put the wizard in third watch. How your boots could break and your badass orc-slayer would risk going ill and dying from a stupid bloody fever. Made me feel the adventure was more real in ways that better graphics certainly haven't done.

Anyway, back to Blaggards. The single biggest, list important issue this game has: There is a complete lack of Blaggardry. Very disappointing.

FinneousPJ

@scriver Spot on.

iKrivetko

Too repetitive for me.