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Tactical role-playing game Blackguards 2 understands that letting out those inner demons to play a villain can be one of the most cathartic things.
It’s funny how the German equivalent to our American Dungeons & Dragons, The Dark Eye system that Blackguards employs, is still so overlooked and considered so obscure. With three very successful games ( Blade of Destiny, Star Trail, and Shadows Over Riva) having come out during the DOS era, and the two Drakensang games having gained a rather sizeable cult following in the west, you’d think it would get a bit more respect than it currently does.After all, were it not for this tabletop system existing, all of the great European CRPGs we enjoy now would have probably never existed: no Witcher, no Gothic, and probably no Might & Magic Legacy, since the German programmers that crafted its world cut their teeth on Das Swarze Auge games in their youth. A large portion of our hobby relies on Europe, and the continent’s current RPG-hungry state is mainly due to these 30-something programmers having grown up with it.Blackguards, a strategy-laced CRPG that employs this well-hewn decades-old system, is the latest in what has now become a long line of turn based games. Though not kickstarter-born, as most of its other recently released hardcore brethren have been, Blackguards still has that “indie” feeling you find in Shadowrun and Wasteland. That is to say, the game has rough edges that are as equally annoying as they are charming. A curious little dichotomy that flavors RPGs of this type and turns off as many gamers as it somehow manages to turn on.Blackguards is often mistakenly referred to in reviews as a strategy RPG, but that’s actually not correct.
Although battles play out in a turn-based manner on giant hexagonal battlefields, it is no more a strategy RPG than the original Arkania trilogy from which it evolved. Granted, the game’s combat.is. highly strategic and requires a fair amount of micro-managing, but the largest portion of your time will be spent cycling through dialog and watching animated scenes. Simply put, Blackguards delivers more exposition than most story-heavy “standard” RPGsand for the most part, that’s a good thing.As is the case with most European CRPGs, Blackguards has a high-minded design document but doesn’t always stay true to what its programmers wanted it to be. The story, which centers on your main character and a small group of especially “free-spirited” (read: slightly immoral) prison escapees and slaves, is supposed to be about redemption and revenge, a story in which the main character attempts to clear his name and find out why his old friend betrayed him, while also winning back the admiration of his true love.Controlling morally bankrupt characters who care little for anyone but themselves seems like a great premise for an RPG, and would create a lot of very unique and controversial dialog opportunities.
Unfortunately, you spend the vast majority of your time doing fetch quests and kowtowing to fat-faced NPCs while they make fun of your pathetic place in the social structure.Which is sad, since the choices you do get to make end up not really creating much of a difference in the plot. Bribe people, kill them, avoid them it matters very little except where achievements are concerned. You never really gain the feeling of being dastardly, evil and immoral that an RPG with the name “Blackguards” would normally entail.No whipping of peasants, no shaking down people for money in fact, you often find yourself killing the bad guys that you probably went into the game expecting to be your allies. Granted, the Dwarf Naurim rushes to judgment and attempts to battle every single NPC you converse with, but other than a few missions dealing with weed and a pot-addicted elf, you very rarely get any chances to act on your darker impulses.That being said, the characters themselves are actually refreshingly unique. That’s par for the course with European CRPGs though, since many of their characters have profoundly apparent personality flaws, and Blackguards doesn’t attempt to break this tradition.You have the paranoid schizophrenic dwarf Naurim; Niam the weed addict; Zurbaran the spoiled, rich lothario; Takate the stereotypical spear-wielding tribesman; and Aurelia the witch who also happens to be the love interest.Overall, they do a fine job of blowing up in each other’s faces and generally not getting along. Though I can sit here and criticize the actual story choices, one thing I cannot find a flaw with is the party dynamic, which is basically the equivalent of throwing random animals in a barrel together and shaking it really hard. None of the characters ever truly get along aside from the player and Aurelia, and it really shows in the dialog they have with each other.Naturally, this comes in handy when the game’s story line starts to slow down.
I noticed this twice in my play-through of the game, once during the entirety of chapter two and then again during the final half of chapter three. I nearly abandoned the game during those moments due to the slowly progressing storyline and directionless meandering of the party, but the belligerence of Naurim and the arrogant bluster of Zurburan kept the dialog fresh and exciting even if the plot that attempted to frame it lacked those features.Which makes me wonder why on Earth they decided to spend an entire chapter with you trapped in a gladiator arena.
It not only stifled the plot but resulted in zero personal growth. The entire second chapter’s purpose is beyond me, since it only served to make your party appear weak and never resulted in a feeling of true accomplishment once you broke free.Though I understand you are meant to rescue Aurelia during your stay there, it could have been accomplished in true “Blackguard” fashion through back-room deals, bribery, blackmailing of the arena bosses or sabotage.
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Even after you escape, you feel indebted to your former masters and their sidequest dialog is rife with condescending language.Earlier, I mentioned the battle system, and as fun as it is to watch your party members hurl insults at each other it’s even more of a riot to engage in highly statistical turn-based combat alongside them. Thankfully, Blackguards doesn’t skimp on the dice rolls and is a game that requires more than just a passing knowledge of the Dark Eye tabletop system to competently play so much so that I would probably suggest that anyone who isn’t all that familiar with other Dark Eye system games should completely ignore this RPG.
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