Review - Expeditions: Conquistador

- An rpg strategy game from Logic Artists.

INTRO

Expeditions: Conquistador is billed as a Tactical RPG. And it is that. However, it is in the sub-genre that is sometimes called RPG Lite. All of the normal elements of the RPG can be found in Expeditions: Conquistador, but those elements are largely in a basic form. The bulk of your time with the game is not even spent dealing with the RPG aspects of the game, but is spend gathering the necessary supplies to keep your people alive. That and the story are the two core elements of the Expeditions: Conquistador experience.

Don't get me wrong, there is a character building page - a couple, actually. But in the end, they play second fiddle to the other aspects of the game. They're there, but they do not have the greatest impact on the course of the game. Far from it. As the game progresses, the strategy and story components take center stage, and never leave it after. They even overwhelm the combat portion of the game in a game billed as a tactical RPG.

And thus, the rated aspects of Expeditions: Conquistador will be Combat, Exploration, Resource Management, and Story.

COMBAT ●○○○ (poor)

I enjoyed the combat of Expeditions: Conquistador - a whole lot actually - but it is bad. Which, at first glance, may seem like a bit of an oxymoron. But it is quite possible when the core of the combat system is good, but there are heaps of glaring issues that riddle that system full of holes. The core system is still fun, though, and one can get a lot of enjoyment out of it, if one is able to look past the flaws.

And the greatest of those flaws is enemy variety. There is none. Well, better to say there is so little that it often seems there is none. There are roughly a dozen classes in the game, but most are repeats of others with a minor variation. And that is a dozen classes for both you and the enemy both.

You see, in every battle, you are facing yourself. Over and over and over. It is such that, in one battle when you actually face a real mirror of your party, it is not one whit different than every single other fight you have ever faced. And with that realization, the entirety of the tension that such a battle should have engendered immediately evaporates.

Yes, there is some variation to the fights. Sometimes you will fight two Hunters, a Doctor, a Scout, and two Soldiers, and other times you will fight on Hunter, a Doctor, two Scouts, and two Soldiers. Of course, technically, you are often outnumbered, so there are further - slight - variations on that one theme. And then there are Indian versions of those classes, which have the remarkable feat of having one (sometimes two) different battle skills than their European counterparts and slightly different weapons.

But, there is no such thing here as fight against a single enemy with lots of hit points. Nor are there fights against masses of weak creatures to be found here. There are no enemies with unique abilities. There are no enemies with unique tactics. Here, there is only the same set battles against the same set enemies.

The real trouble in all this lies not in the above fact, though, but in that fact it is coupled with an the utter lack of variation from one member of a class to another. One Soldier is so close to the same as every other Soldier that they might as well be identical. There are no Attributes in these characters, you don't choose equipment for them, they don't have different battle options. Each and every member of a class is exactly the same barring their one differentiating stat - level. A level that can be 1, 2, or 3, for the most part. And soon after the game's beginning, you don't see 1s any more.

So, every Hunter you meet will be almost exactly like every other Hunter you've ever met or ever will meet. There aren't even the slight variations in function one might expect from, say, an elven Hunter versus a dwarven Hunter, since races aren't a factor in this game. Technically, there are Europeans and Indians, but they have only the barest differences in their combat skills, and thus they function on the battlefield exactly the same as each other.

And when I say that you don't equip your people, that is because there is no equipment in the game. At all. You do not buy equipment in Expeditions: Conquistador, or even maintain it. Characters start with a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and a suit of armor, and they will keep that same setup for the entire game. You can have a character switch to one of the other two available melee weapons or the single other available ranged weapon by choosing a feat to give you that other weapon. For instance, changing from polearm to sword & shield. But there is, in practice, rarely any reason to spend one of a character's few feats on a minor change to weaponry.

The only "equipment" in the game is the "Equipment Pool", which is a pool of a single resource, much like, say, gold or rations is. The entire party has a pool of equipment, and you can attach these pieces of equipment to your weapons or armor at will, thus increasing their damage or defense value respectively. So, you can stick a bunch of equipment in armor for one battle to improve defense, but decide that for the next battle you want to improve damage, and yank all of the equipment out of the armor and stick it in your weapons. It is a freely interchangeable pool of bonus points, not actual equipment.

This system has several issues, one of which is the lack of diversity mentioned earlier. But there is a worse one here. Since Equipment is a single pool of points, there is no need to go in search of certain equipment. Wherever you go, wherever you are, there is only the one item available to purchase. And the stores periodically reset. Thus making it really easy to acquire enough "Equipment" to max out your characters. And once they are maxed, the Equipment Pool largely becomes a useless stat.

Now, put all of that together. Lack of enemy diversity, enemies the same as the player characters, no variation in combat techniques, no variety of weapons and armor, and only one combat resource. All of this comes together to form a highly repetitive combat system. So, you will develop a few tactics early on to win fights with, and never need to change your tactics thereafter, since there are no different fights.

Now, occasionally Expeditions: Conquistador will throw you a hitch with a unique battlemap that requires a slightly different approach. But the necessary change is always minimal, and those unique battlemaps are few and far between. There is a surprising variety to the normal battlemaps, though. A lot of locations have unique battlemaps - at least in their decoration. Most have a functionally similar battle area, beyond those rare few uniques, but I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with the variety of locational battlemaps available. Would that there were other enemies to fight upon them.

This heavily restricted combat style does have one advantage, though, in that combats are always pitched at the expected difficulty level. This can make for some tense and exciting outcomes. Especially in early days, or especially if you took Hunters into the combat. Because, in another odd decision, melee units always hit with their attacks, while ranged attacks have a percentage chance of missing. This mean Hunters (the ranged unit) tend to be wildly less effective than melee units. That is, they are until they are raised to at least level 3 and have a decent chance to hit.

I will state that again - melee units always hit. Now, place that next to the fact that you are always fighting the same fight. That means, when using melee fighters, there is very little change in outcome. Once you have a winning strategy developed, that strategy will always win. Always.

Since this is supposed to be a tactical RPG, there are a lot of fight here. A lot of fights of the same fight. There is no excuse for that in a tactical RPG. And that is what makes the combat bad.

The sad thing is, it is so close to being good. One little smidgen of variety to keep things new and different, to make you change your tactics, and the combat here would blossom. A simple element added, such as a wider variety of equipment (for the enemies, at least) that requires a change-up of tactics on the ground to defeat would do wonders for building excitement and tension into the combats. Or the introduction of animal enemies. Or, well, anything that made you reconsider your tactics. Any variety at all.

EXPLORATION ●●●○ (good)

Exploration is the highlight of Expeditions Conquistador. In fact, it's almost exploration in its ideal form. One doesn't simply explore here to find special stuff. Rather, scattered around the world map are cairns, which kind of represent mapping goals. The cairns are grouped into sets, such as the Swamp Set. Discover all the cairns of the swamp, and you have mapped the swamp. You get a smidge of experience for each cairn you find, and if you find them all, you can then collate your maps during camp and in so doing double the total of experience from each cairn.

The whole process really adds to the sense of you being an explorer of this new world, charting new territory, discovering new realms. And, indeed, that is one of your ostensible goals as a conquistador sent to the new world. Would that this aspect of the game was more written into the game proper. While it is ostensibly one of your missions, it is never mentioned by anyone. It isn't integral to the plot, nor to your overall, unstated goal for Spain (which is to amass a heap of gold). It is, instead, a replacement for treasure chests lying in hard to find places. And in that, it is an excellent replacement.

This, alone, almost makes the game. I have never had more fun exploring the map than I did searching out the cairns. And it almost almost almost gets this aspect of the game top marks, all by its lonesome. Unfortunately, it is by its lonesome. One little tweak somewhere, and this would get top marks. For instance, having mapping the world more integral to the storyline. Not necessarily central to the plot, but a secondary quest, or a part of the tally of your accomplished goals. Instead of simply an experience booster.

Or even, instead, having there be a second part to the exploration. New vistas to see that you can't find any other way. Different people to meet. Or, best of all, a notation of flora and fauna discovered in the new world.

Essentially, the plain, flat maps are what lessens the experience. That, and those obscuring jungle trees. Because of those trees, goodies that might be hidden instead have glowing lines piercing through the trees and up into the sky. You can't really miss them. But they almost have to be there, because if the glowy lines weren't there, it would be hard to see anything through the obscuring trees that lie everywhere. Which could even be a good thing - very jungle-like.

But you're not hacking a path through jungle here. Instead, there are solid jungle tiles you can't enter and paths running around these solid jungle tiles, and you follow along the paths. Very few areas have anything like a plains that you can wander any direction in. You are, really, in a giant overland maze with not all that many possibilities of traveling in. Which is one of the reasons a decorative 2d map would have served this game so much better.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ●●○○ (mediocre)

At first blush, it seems that the resource management of Expeditions: Conquistador will be excellent. One actually must maintain adequate supplies of food and medicine to keep one's squad alive, as well as find ways to keep the money rolling in to pay for all of it. Not only that, there are other materials lying in wait, such as rope and metals, which are then used in the construction of traps.

And then, you have further resource management, in that your squad can only travel so far each day, and then they must camp, whereupon they begin consuming those resources. The more people in your party, the more they consume. But you can also use their skills to help you acquire more resources. It's all very exciting.

Until you start to really see it put into play. Metal, rope, stone, and everything else except gold, food, and medicine, are just found lying around in chests. It's an icon that is strangely disengaging. Wander around for a bit, and spot three chests lying on the ground, but these chests represent you mining metals or pulling vines, not finding treasure. Odd choice, when a couple of different static icons would have served much better.

But that's not the rough part. The rough part is, since there's all these chests and not many item types, one ends up with a whole bunch of those items sitting moldering away in your treasure carts. One can build traps with them, sure, but then one just ends up with bunches of traps sitting moldering away in your treasure carts, since one ends up with way more traps than one can actually use.

Food is similarly easy to stack. At the start, if you didn't bring any hunters along, it can be difficult to find enough food, and you'd need to buy some or starve. But bring a couple of hunters, and soon you're raking in so much food that you can actually start selling it in the markets for profit. And that's where the big resource management issue comes in. You can make way more gold doing that than you can adventuring.

This isn't a trade sim we're talking about here. This is an RPG adventure. It's an adventure where, in fact, your goal is to amass a certain amount of treasure. Do so, and you win. Fail, and you only kinda succeed. And you're supposed to be adventuring for Spain and the crown and yourself, exploring and gathering wealth in the name of Spain. But you make way more money and far more easily going hunting or doing odd jobs.

A good illustration is El Dorado. Yes, the legendary City of Gold. With a bit of exploring, one can find it in the game. It's a ways of the beaten path, so the road there is long and rough. And getting in requires a little work, since there's a guard wall that you inexplicably can't build a ladder to climb over when you can easily build rafts to ford rivers. But oh well, that's a bit off-point.

So, you've made your way inside, and you've found the legendary city. Time for your reward. So, this city, this legend, this place that is the central goal of many great stories - your discovery is tossed off in a couple of sentences, one of which is a joke. And that's it for your discovery. Not at all fitting for something that is a legend. Finding El Dorado should mean something in the game. Even if it's not going to have a part to play in the overall story, legends need to be acknowledged. If they're going to be in the game, they can't simply be throwaway like that.

Well, you may say, there's still the monetary reward. And there is. It's 1800 gold. In contrast, you can win over 3800 competing in a tournament back at the beginning of the game. And you can earn more than 1800 hunting for food all the way up to El Dorado, and all the way back, if you have skilled enough hunters.

Finding El Dorado - the legendary City of Gold - gets you pittance. Hunting for food is a more efficient means of earning money than finding the City of Gold. There isn't even something like legendary trinkets that can't be used now, but can be brought back to Spain to earn you wealth and/or prestige back home. There's just 1800 gold, which in the game world is pocket change.1000 is handed out as reward for fetch quests all of the time.

It just doesn't work. Not, it just doesn't fit, though that's true too. It just doesn't work. If one gets more rewards for hunting than adventuring, why go adventuring? If the only pressure on food stores is if I didn't build my party correctly to gather it, then what purpose does it serve during the game? If treasure is so important for me to earn, then why is it one of the least detailed aspects of the game? Why isn't there treasure storage with all of the lovely items I'm bringing back to Spain? Why is there just gold, even when you're running around bartering?

Which brings up another resource issue. The bartering economy could be quite interesting. Particularly if you couldn't barter for gold, but could only barter for other items, or if there was another coin in operation, a coin of everyday use. But instead, gold is one of the only four items on offer, and thus you can drain the economies of every village you come to, and then come back for more when they auto-restock.

But, at least there are resources, and at least you need to use them. They aren't just for show. Your people do need to eat. Keeping them fed isn't particularly difficult. And you can even feed them double rations, which automatically raises their morale.

Morale being another resource with issues. Your characters have personalities, and your actions in the game can affect their morale, which can lead to mutiny. Exciting concept. But in practice, you just need to hand out double rations for an instant fix for morale for any decision you make, however hated, and then you can keep everyone's morale at its highest level.

Which, all together, leads to the average rating. The resource system in Expeditions: Conquistador isn't bad, it's just raw and underdeveloped. "Lifeless" is the way I would describe it in one word. Lifeless and lacking in substance.

STORY ●●○○ (mediocre)

The story of Expeditions: Conquistador is a difficult thing to assess. The descriptions and dialogue are such that they put many high end games to shame. Most people probably won't notice, since there is no voice acting, but the dialogue in some parts adds a great deal to the setting and the mystique of the adventure, particularly during those times when someone is showing a personality fitting for the days of the conquistadors.

You are even allowed to take racist individuals into your squad, and later take racist actions that will keep them happy, or marry a native and make them very unhappy. And there are many such excellent setting touches interspersed throughout Expeditions: Conquistador. Which is a solid benefit to the experience, which effect is magnified even more by many excellent descriptions of people and places - a trait that is largely lost in this era of 3d visuals and spoken dialogue.

It has been so long since I have read a vibrant description of a locale, something that spoke to me of place and time. Instead of showing you only visuals, "describing" things with empty rooms and sparse repeated furnishing, here you have full descriptions.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, though, you don't get much of anything. Sometimes, there is a sense of bits missing. Like there was an intention of doing a much larger and longer quest with a lot of different aspects to it, but time and money ran out, and the entire affair got cut down and patched over with a simple fight to close things up and give it some sense of completion.

The overall goals also lack a sense of focus. You aren't even just not told that your actual goal is to amass a bunch of gold, your character actually doesn't even have any personal goals that are described to you. You are told that you have come to Mexico in search of adventure But upon arrival, you don't actually go in search of adventure. You go in search of fetch quests, ultimately.

It's a strange thing. The story is obviously meant to be one where you and your squad arrive intent on doing some conquistadoring, but then you get swept up into a tale of local politics. Which you can then manipulate to your advantage in multiple ways. It's a great idea, and it's even well done at many points.

But it doesn't have the initial groundwork. You walk into Mexico, and the only things you can do are hunt, look for hidden secrets like El Dorado to get a pittance of cash, or begin the fetch quests and final plot. You never get to do the conquistadoring groundwork. And while the main plot lets you be a conquistador, if it doesn't bug out, it only lets you do so in a limited way, here and there during the story.

Your people fare just as lightly. You actually choose specific adventurers to take along with you on your journey to the New World, picking ten people out of several dozen (though battles disappointingly only let you use six at a time). Each of these adventurers is supposed to have their own personality. And they do, sort of. But they don't have an individual personality.

It's an odd little thing, actually. Each adventurer has 3 personality traits. For instance, Racist, Adventurous, Pious. And during the course of the adventure, occasionally you'll run into a story moment involving your characters. But it's not an individual character who has a story moment, instead it's a personality trait.

So, you're walking along, and you hit the Adventurous trigger. If one or more of your squad has the Adventurous trait (and it's likely, as there aren't that many traits), then one of those with the Adventurous traits is randomly chosen to have a conversation quest with you. So, as long as you have a character with that trait when the event is triggered, you will see that event.

Which is interesting. But at the same time, limiting. There can be no real squad interaction, since the members of the squad don't have their own unique personalities. There can be no diversity if everyone is just a limited number of slots to fit a given set of pegs. While it does ensure that these events occur, and don't remain hidden by not having the right people in the squad at the time, it also ekes out a little of the replayability of the game, since you are very likely to encounter every single character based event over the course of one game. 

Like a lot of the facets of Expeditions: Conquistador, the story feels like a great idea, left unfinished. Even the name of the game somehow offers that sense. "Conquistadors" would be a good title, evocative of the game and the time, while also offering a touch of underhanded excitement. "Conquistador: Expedition to the New World" would be a decent title. Fitting an descriptive, at least. But instead we have what we have, and "Expeditions: Conquistador" feels more like a placeholder name waiting for the committee to give final approval on the actual title.

INTERFACE ●○○○ (poor)

The interface is one of the weakest points of Expeditions: Conquistador. The overall presentation of the world is 2.5d isometric, which is fine. But not as it's presented.

Essentially, the world map is a 3d build zoomed in tight on your character in 2.5d. Which is a huge waste of resources, especially the way Expeditions: Conquistador uses them. Despite the low-end look to the graphics, Expeditions: Conquistador is a huge memory hog. It plays fine on the island, but move to Mexico, and it becomes a huge drain on resources. An update has thinned the memory demands out a great deal, but it can only do so much when the game is build around being a huge resource hog. What's actually going on under the hood, I don't know, but it's probably processing the entire map all the time, or some such.

And there's absolutely no reason for it. A flat 2d map would have worked just as well for what you do on the world map, and wouldn't have caused this issue. The 3d assets that the world is built from don't add anything to the atmosphere. In fact, most of the time, they detract from it. You're traipsing through jungle most of the time. Which means endless jungle trees (of which there's not a lot of variety of type) scattered everywhere in 2.5d, with you buried underneath them.

Full 3d  might have given people that sense of immersion that everyone always talks about, despite the low end graphics. While in 2d, the huge amount of resources that went into developing that 3d map could have all been spent making an absolutely gorgeous and varied 2d map backdrop that you wander across.

But instead, what Expeditions: Conquistador gives is the worst of both worlds - the ugliness and repetitiveness of standard 3d graphics coupled with the awkward interface of 2.5d, ending with you constantly having to futz with  the camera just to try to see where you are and where you're going. Not that it really matters where you're going, since there aren't many 3d assets here. It's all jungle all the time, and the same few trees making that all jungle all the time happen.

And there's no reason for it. Because you don't really interact with anything at that level. It functions exactly like an overworld map of many an RPG, where you just traipse across it, and then when you get somewhere, it loads up the actual location - including whenever there's a battle loading up a separate battle map. There's no reason for the world map to be that awkward and hard to use, since it doesn't add anything to the immersion.

Portraits for your people have an absolutely beautiful painted look, as do the pictures of locations and the posters for the loading screens. Unfortunately, more of these resources seem to have been devoted to portraits and loading screens than for locations. As in, there's a village graphics and a couple of city graphics, and they get re-used to cover all locations. But you have a couple dozen portraits. If the painting are going to be limited, this should be reversed.

Since there's no flavor to the world map, the location picture becomes key to giving a visual differentiation to the locales. That can also be done with words, but you've really got to have a flair for evoking place, and then have that description available at all times while there - like in a corner box. Expeditions: Conquistador does neither, which merely adds to the sense that being at El Dorado is no different than being at Tenochtitlan.

The interface for combat is much better handled. But it's purely functional, not evocative. It does the job, nothing more. Which is fine, but then, since nothing special is invoked here, and nothing special is evoked in the world map, and nothing special is evoked in the location pictures, that means there's never anything special being evoked anywhere.

There's no sense of place. No meaning to being in historical Mexico. No feel of history and location. You could be traipsing any jungle anywhere. And since the storyline is constantly struggling to establish a sense of place (and not always succeeding), one is left with an empty, ever-present struggle with the camera as the main connection you have with the game.

STABILITY ●●○○ (bad)

This is the category I hate to include. But in the case of Expeditions: Conquistador, it must be included. This game has some serious issues. The memory issue has already been mentioned. This game can really push computers hard in Mexico, despite its low-end graphics.

But there's more than that. Much more. There are frequent crash-bugs. One that a lot of people encounter is when leaving the island for Mexico, the game crashes when loading Mexico. The issue is your squad, strangely enough. And the workaround is to unassign all your squad on the selection screen, then reselect them. This bypasses whatever issue it is. Sad, but true.

And it's not even a new issue. This is an old issue, still not fixed.

Another was save corruption in Mexico, occurring when you made a save, then loaded an earlier save. That one I encountered, too. It may have been fixed in the latest patch, but I didn't test for it. The workaround is - never reload an older save while in Mexico, always only load your latest save.

Even then, the save loads in with errors. The main error being - it borks the auto-map. All of your discovered locations remain on the map, so it's not so terribly bad, but the territory picture in between those points disappears every time you load a save.

Then some quests are bugged. You can even bug out the main quest and be unable to complete the game on your current save. Coupled with the save corruption issue, this one was nasty.

And on, and on. This is not a stable game, and don't expect all of its issues to ever be fixed. You will have to fight some serious bugs now and again to keep playing. There is a sense here, at all times, that Expeditions: Conquistador was sent out the door incomplete. Incomplete not just in features, but in programming.

ENJOYMENT 

The averaging of all of the above lands the totaling of the review in between two points, so - as always - I get to decide which way to round.

This is a tough one, though. I can't really recommend a game that is this unstable. On top of that, there are so many incomplete or undercooked features here, such as fighting the same enemies over and over and over again. But (and this is a big but), this is the game I've had the most fun with so far out of the latest crop of RPGs. And that's because, lying underneath all of the undercooked layers, there lies the core of a really good game here.

A little bit more polish, and that core could be brought forth to shine, exposing the gem that currently lies so very hidden. Unfortunately, Logic Artists will never be able to perform that polish. As in indie company without a bunch of extra funds lying around, they've got to keep moving or die. So, there will be patches, but there will always be issues. When playing Expeditions: Conquistador, you just have to accept that.

In the end, I decided to round up, simply because of the amount of enjoyment I had while playing, and all of the interesting ideas this game incorporates. Expeditions: Conquistador is a rare treat, and I dearly want to rate it higher. But in its current state, it can only be given a:

FINAL VERDICT ●●○○ (mediocre)

* this review was made after almost completing Expeditions: Conquistador on Hard on PC, but getting bugged out of completion. Grr!

Review - Dishonored

- An action/assassination hybrid from Arkane Studios.

INTRO

Dishonored is billed as a stealth game. However, it is not. Rather, stealth is simply one of the many powers that the main character has at his disposal with which to dispatch enemies, generally en masse. It is not needed - at all - in order to complete the game. On the highest difficulty setting, at one point I faced off against 9 enemies...and won. And that's without using any of the myriad powers at my disposal, such as time stop, which would have allowed me to slaughter them while they stood still. I did use a potion at one point towards the end when I was low on health, but it was unnecessary as I was never hit again and thus would have won even if I didn't use it.

The entire game can be completed without stealthing once, even on the highest difficulty. And while that is billed as player choice, it does cause one important effect - stealth, the core concept of the stealth genre, is unnecessary. And if the core concept of stealth games is stealth (and I hope we can all simply agree that that's true), but your "stealth" game doesn't ever require the use of the core concept of a stealth game, then you haven't made a stealth game. In order for a game to be of a particular genre, it must actually require the use of the core concepts of that genre.

And thus, Dishonored is not a stealth game. Ipso facto. It is, rather, an action game where stealth is one of the many, many powers at the main character's disposal. And as that is the case, the four rating categories of Dishonored will be Action, Equipment, Level Design, and Story. However, I will touch upon Stealth, since this was billed as a Stealth game and Stealth games are important to a lot people, though Stealth will not be a factor in the overall rating.

Stealth

This is not a rated category in Dishonored, because stealth is not one of the major components of the game. It is in the game, but as one of the powers that the main character has, and he never has to use it to complete the game. While this does allow the player to play the game however they want, it is impossible to call a game that never requires the use of stealth a stealth game.

For a game to be of a particular genre, the core element of that genre needs to exist in the game, and that core element needs to be integral to the gameplay. A "stealth" game where you never sneak cannot be called a stealth game. A "platformer" where you never have to jump platforms cannot be called a platformer. It's in the very name.

But, Dishonored does have stealth in it. It is one of the myriad of powers that the main character has at his disposal with which to dispatch enemies. You can shoot them with one bullet from your pistol, you can shoot them with your crossbow, you can teleport above them and insta-kill them with a drop-kill animation, you can throw them around into walls or off ledges or into electric walls with your wind power, you can cause them to be devoured by summoned rats, you can knock them unconscious with sleep-arrows and then throw their body somewhere that damages it, you can cast timestop and kill them however you want, you can time stop after they shoot at you and then posses them and walk their body around in front of their bullet and watch them kill themselves, and you can just confront them directly and slay them with your infinite-block ability and your dagger. And that's all on top of your stealth-attack insta-kill animation power. You are a god, able to destroy mere mortals at your whim.

One can stealth around in Dishonored, but with the ability to teleport and stop time at your fingertips, there's never any real reason to. Using teleport or stop time, one can easily get a "stealth" kill anytime, anywhere, and against anyone. Well, except cutscene bosses. While it is true that those powers cost mana, teleport is not a permanent drain on your mana pool if you take it slow, and time stop does take a lot of mana, but there are plenty of mana vials strewn about everywhere that you'll never run out. The only reason to actually sneak is for the self-imposed challenge, or just because you like sneaking.

Should you decide you want the challenge, one can ignore the powers and actually sneak around. The main character's penchant for attempting "stealth" missions during the daylight hours doesn't exactly make this a simple task. However, the environment is strewn about with a lot of debris, small structures, and chest-high walls, all of which can easily be hid behind. One can even lean around corners, and the enemy cannot spot a leaning character as long as the character's main body is blocked by a wall - as many jokes about "You can't see me, I'm leaning!" have noted. The enemy also don't have much of penchant for looking up, though on Very High they will look a little bit upwards. Between that fact and the ability to teleport, there is rarely any enemy threat that can't be instantly gotten away from just by teleporting upwards, and then it's merely a wait for the enemy to calm down and go back to their routines.

The enemy AI is reportedly not particularly aware until the Very High difficulty setting. On Very High, they are ready to go on alert on a second's notice. One can see their alert status, too, as a large series of lines glowing above their heads. When all the lines fill, that enemy is fully alert. On Very High, they fill really quick, but if you've got split-second reaction time, you can duck back into cover before they become fully alert. And as long as they aren't fully alerted, they will soon go back to doing their normal routine.

What's more, there are alarms that the enemy can ring. But, despite being very loud, these are only localized alarms. Leave the area, and you'll discover that no one else in the complex has been alerted to your misdeeds. Other than the last level, there aren't any alarm levels, either, so there's no real consequence for skipping loudly around out in the open, causing multiple alerts everywhere you go.

In many cases, stealth is also the easiest way to play the game. Many locations have multiple points of ingress. But each point generally is tasked with one method of entry, so there is often one stealth entry accessible by using powers and sneak, and that entry bypasses all of the challenges of the area, thus making an easy game even easier. So, it is balance issue. One only uses sneak for the challenge of sneaking, but sneaking often takes you on a path that lightens the challenge of the game - a game without much challenge even on Very Hard.

STORY  ●○○○ (poor)

The story of Dishonored is mediocre at its best, and it isn't often at its best.

The weaknesses start with the overall concept - as weak stories so often do. The main character is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. But before he is executed for that crime, he escapes the prison, and returning to a world much changed in his absence. A nice enough concept. Unfortunately, the main characters has only been sequestered for all of six months. Not much should have really changed in that span of time. Yet, the changes that the city have undergone are sweeping. For instance, a skyscraper-sized building made of metal is planned, organized, and built all within that 6-month span of time. A shocking change, to be sure. And not just because of the usual issues of building time and people, but also because the city was under quarantine during that time, which means no supply sips.

Okay, so in the midst of a plague in a quarantined city that has gone broke because of plague and isolation, the materials for steel girders were purchased, gathered together, transported to the city, and assembled into a massive structure - all within six months. Sure, buddy.

There are many other such headscratching instances that leave one wondering if the main character wasn't at one point going to be imprisoned for a much longer time. 20 years, for instance. And then he wins free and starts to exact his revenge after everyone has forgotten him, Monte Cristo style. Now, that would have been something. But instead, it's six months. Must be magic.

Except only the main character and a few other have magic, and it is largely hated and mistrusted by those in power. So, yeah...

And then there the fact that the main character goes from being a loyal guardsman to a master assassin at the drop of a hat. Was he always an immoral individual, that he could instantly take up that sort of job? Is he a psychopath? Does he enjoy killing people? Well, there's no answer to those questions, as Mr. Main Character a silent protagonist. Lots of game characters talk at you, but you never say anything in return. Just like Master Sergeant of HALO fame and fortune.

Actually, it a lot more like the Chosen One silent protagonists of RPGs, as there is a lot of other RPG stylings found in Dishonored. And here, I speak not just of the leveling up of gear and spells., I speak instead mainly of the structure of the missions. The main character, or the Chosen One if you will, is an assassin who takes jobs for the Resistance rather than a man seeking revenge (as is sometimes suggested). The Chosen One simply follows orders, like any good Chosen One. But he doesn't just follow orders to complete assassinations; he also takes on side quests for the various members of the city. Sometimes quite elaborate side quests.

So, the main character is an assassin in a city with some really dire stuff going on and who is killing for the Resistance in order to save the city and restore the throne to the rightful Empress, and he takes time out to do odd jobs to earn coin and other rewards from the locals. Yep, very video game RPG.

That structure does quite a disservice to the overall narrative. You're meant to be going out and slaughtering some rather vicious individuals, not for coin, but for justice. Which means, you're supposed to be focused on getting the job done. And you, the Player, are supposed to care about getting the job done. The game's story calls out to you to care over and over with (admittedly a bit hamfisted) attempts to tug at your heartstrings. But you spend so much time committing yourself to various side-quests that you end up forgetting what your actual goal is, what they represent, and why you're supposed to care about killing them. Your targets are just a picture on a loading screen. A job. A task to complete to move the story along.

A fate that is not helped by the lackluster introductions to each mission. The (shall we call them quest givers? yes, we shall) quest givers tell you the target, and say that they're bad. Yes, they say that they're "a bad guy" that needs to die - direct quote. And then the quest giver will give a simple explanation of why the target has to do die to help the cause. Not what the target has done to make them bad, but how the cause of the Resistance will be helped by the target's death. Then the mission starts, and there is a short paragraph in plain text on the loading screen explaining a little about what makes the person bad. So, no real character development here. Nothing to actually move you to wanting to complete your mission. And then you go off on your side quests, so to end up forgetting with thin motivation was handed to you.

There are ways of finding out about the "evilness" of the targets during the mission, generally through studying the "lore" in books and notes scattered about the premises, and there's often a short cutscene when spotting the target to add some poignancy to the character and the kill. But that's all after the fact. At the beginning, there's just rote job-like motivation - much as an RPG side quest. Kill these 20 wolves for me because they're bad. Or in this case, kill these two men for me because they're bad.

It's not terrible setup, just empty. Lacking in depth. As is the story of the city. There is an attempt - and a decent one - to create a decadent Victorian noirish atmosphere here in the setting and lore. But the attempt is marred by a lack of feeling in the story and characters, but most of all in the city itself. The city doesn't brood. There are no menacing characters. There is no threat (at least, not to the main character, who can slaughter everything that stands before him). No femme fatale. No dark places. No mood.

In a city beset by a zombie plague, there isn't even any fear of the plague. That particular little aspect moves a few things at the beginning, and then is largely written out of the story. The zombies provide an occasional change-up of enemies for a short stint, but the issues of the plague and zombies wandering about the city are never brought up again. And since that was technically one of the things that got the Empress removed from the throne in the first place (specifically her refusal to deal with the zombies as an enemy threat instead of treating the victims as innocents), the dropping of that element of the story is a grating loss of detail.

And really, that's the overall feeling of the story - that it is a mash-up of ideas that were thrown together over several rewrites, and which ideas never really gel together into a cohesive whole.

That mash-up of ideas is a huge issue in another, perhaps even more important, way. There's just too much story here for the running time. Dishonored is not a long game, any way you cit it. It's actually fairly short. But there's a plague, a stifling of the economy by uncaring foreigners, murder and revenge, issues of a totalitarian rule crackdown, a civil war, a resistance group willing to take extreme measures to win the day, and a decadent aristocracy ruling a besieged and belittled people who are ripe for revolution. And then there's zombies and deadly rats on the loose.

That's all too much - way too much - for the game's running time. With all of that story, none of those aspects gets dealt with fully, or even at all in many cases. Which is really unprofessional storytelling. If an important issue is introduced, you're supposed to at least have it be a part of the story. Even better if you the telling of the story examines that issue in some way, hopefully profound. But instead, the story of Dishonored is all a bunch of teases.

And that isn't just unprofessional, it is also unfulfilling. The players gets interested in some part of the story, and it gets dropped. They get interested in another facet of the story, and that gets dropped as well. And thus, the player is left in a constant state of unfulfillment. That is, if they listen to the story instead of simply being overawed at the nifty death animations (of which there are many).

Having one of those story elements in the story does not make the story about those elements. Just mentioning them doesn't get you any points. A theme like that actually has to be woven into the story, into the city and the motivations of the people within it, for the story to be about that theme. To do what Dishonored has done is the same as namedropping in polite conversation. It's empty and a bit rude.

The actual day-to-day writing of Dishonored is decent, if uninspired. The conversations of the various inhabitants fits, even if it mostly just rote material However, the uninspired writing mixes with the lackluster feeling of the writing to make more of a plodding story experience than a dark, decadent, brooding one. Which is not good for a noir story. Hell, the daylight setting probably wasn't a good choice for noir, either. A strange choice, then, all around. A stealth game and a noir story set during daylight hours.

It all leads to a lackluster story that is easily forgettable. In fact, I've already forgotten most of it.

EQUIPMENT ●●○○ (mediocre)

Dishonored has way too much equipment. Now, before anyone jumps down my throat, having lots of equipment is a good thing, if all of that equipment has some use or there is a tradeoff between different items, thus making all of that equipment useful in some way. In Dishonored, though, there is no use for anything. Without any equipment but your knife, you're already a killing machine. Equipment just allows you to kill things in more fantastic ways.

Specifically, the main character gets access to a wide array of gadgets, from an insta-kill, heat-seeking pistol (that's not what it says on the box, but that's what it is in practice), to insta-drop sleep quarrels and a crossbow, to insta-kill sticky traps. All of these allow you to dish out death quickly and easily in a myriad of ways (as the "instas" suggest).

And then you start getting super powers.

Yes, you're already a killing machine by yourself, with just a dagger. Not only that, though, you're a killing machine with access to a bunch of gadgets that would make James Bond proud. And then you get super powers.

You don't need super powers. You're already way more powerful than anyone you meet in the game, even on the Very Hard difficult setting. But still you get them on top of everything else. And they allow you to stop time (and kill enemies at your leisure), teleport a short distance (and get behind or above enemies to kill them at your leisure), summon a horde of killer rats (which can consume enemies in a disturbingly short time), wind wall (allowing you to knockdown enemies at will, or throw them into various environmental hazards that instantly kill them), amongst other powers.

You have so much insta-death equipment that when you meet an enemy, you have to decide how you feel like slaughtering them today, not consider carefully how you're going to get to them to kill them. No, they're dead as soon as they come into your line of sight. It's just a matter of deciding how you want to do it. You become, literally, a god amongst men.

You're so super-powered that there is absolutely no challenge to the game. Dishonored can be won on Very Hard as easily as if it was a grade-school learning game. Nothing stops you, nothing challenges you, nothing threatens you - ever. In the entirety of a single run through the game on Very Hard (and the only run through ever made), I chalked up only two deaths. The first was when I was testing a trap wall that they said would instantly kill you if you touched it, which I did in order to see if it would actually instantly kill you (it does). The second was when I went out into the open to see how many people I could kill without ever using tactics, powers, gadgets, or potions, just button mashing (answer: 6).

Dishonored is so light on challenge that it is ridiculous. A setting of Very Hard implies that it should be at least hard. But nothing impedes your godlike progress. The only reason a competent action-game player needs ever to even contemplate reloading the game is if they're looking to get a clean run. That, or they're obsessive and won't use potions or powers (because those cost mana, which requires potions to replenish).

All that said, the powers are a joy to use, and it's a pleasure to pull out an old-school pistol and blast away with its single shot. Everything feels great to use, and it looks even better in action. The trouble is only how terribly overpowered everything is. After all, when did muskets become smart weapons (which is the only way I can think of that a shot from the hip fired merely in the general direction of an opponent always results in a shot to the heart and an install kill, and that on Very Hard).

It's all just plain ridiculous. And that sucks all of the joy out of the gameplay for anyone who is actually looking for a any sort challenge. On the other hand. those who are looking to fulfill their dreams of being a demi-god, Spartan, power-suited Master Sergeant, they will be overjoyed at what Dishonored has to offer them.

ACTION ●○○○ (poor)

The action of Dishonored is strangely absent. Well, not so strange, really. Without challenge there is no real action. Without challenge there is no hook with which to heighten the tension. Without challenge there is no substance upon which to build a foundation of excitement.

Without challenge there is just an empty hollow where a game should be.

Using your powers and gadgets is easy and exciting, and stealthing around has its usually thrilling charm. But none of it matters, since you're just playpenning with it all. And soon enough, the lack of challenge drains the excitement out of even the most fantastic powers. Being able to cast time stop and do anything you want to the enemy is thrilling a couple of times just for the sheer novelty of it. And then the fact that you're hitting unmoving objects begins to take its toll.

What sense of victory can there truly be if the enemy never stood a chance in hell? In Dishonored, you are Superman, flying around beating up on civilians. There's nothing much here but ego-tripping.

The only challenge that exists is in the rare boss fight. And that is when Dishonored is at its best - dueling against another opponent who also has magic. Those opponents can face you on something like your own terms, even if they don't have as many powers as you do and have no support gadgets. Those people, and only those people, have a chance of killing you. (At least they do on the Very Hard difficulty setting. It's doubtful they're much of a threat on lower settings.) What's more, those battles are the most well-thought-out. They are compelling, since you know these people and what they stand for and their place in the world long before you ever confront them. They fight with unique abilities, making them interesting and at least challenging in having to adapt to their fresh abilities. And they fight you in a unique location that is adapted to their particular skills. All that makes for good and compelling combat.

On the other hand, Boss Fights and Stealth are anathema. Stealth and mandatory fights or pretty much anathema. Thank god Dishonored isn't a Stealth game. As an action/assassin game, there is no reason at all why it can't have boss fights. And as the only remotely challenging part of the game, they would be sorely missed if they were removed.

Of course, if the rest of the gameplay were made at all compelling, I might change my tune on that particular aspect of the game.

LEVEL-DESIGN ●●○○ (mediocre)

The locations of Dishonored are often inventive. Maybe not inventive in choice of locale, which is pretty bog standard, but in the interpretation of that locale. Each location has its own unique take on the classic locales. Such as a bridge that must be crossed being a giant drawbridge with the ability to walk under, over, above, or on it.

But level design is much more than fanciful fantastic scenery. Though I was often impressed with the sights before my eyes, I was not impressed with the rest of the level design.  Though I enjoyed the fact the most locations had multiple points of ingress, good open level design is more than just slapping multiple entrances onto a location.

First off, the goal for a location with multiple points of ingress should be to have each entrance have its own challenge to achieve, each in its own unique way. But with Dishonored, the stealth entrance to a complex generally allows one to bypass all of the challenges of that area of a level. You evade all of the enemies, not just by sneaking by them, but by moving outside of their range of sight completely. When traversing that path, you are never at any risk of being spotted (or almost never on Very Hard), and since you teleport around, there's never any risk of falling or missing a difficult jump in order to reach a difficult entry point. Instead, the stealth entrance is the easy entrance. The only difficulty is in spotting the path to reach it.

The challenging path is to simply charge in, guns blazing. And it's not that challenging. Particularly with time stop and an insta-kill gun. And then there's often the true challenging path, which is using stealth to sneak along the ground. But you do that only by self-limitation, not because the game asks you to.

And on the other side of things, the enemy aren't all that astute, which becomes a problem because there aren't enough of them. Maybe there would be plenty if they were tougher, better armed, and/or more astute. Or if they could work together. As it is, though, they are usually thin on the ground and easily avoided even if you don't use powers. If you do use powers, they are often easily avoided so far out of their range of sight that they have no chance of ever even spotting you.

There isn't a lot of variety of enemies, either. So, it's not like there are later enemies with better eyesight. There are guards with sword and pistol, and on the criminal side there are thugs and then there are tough thugs. All of those being slight variations on Fighter. Then there are zombies, who are just what they sound like, though there aren't many of them in the game. Hordes of rats are very occasionally run into, but aren't really a challenge. Maybe if you cause more chaos than I did (which causes more rats to appear), enough would gather to make a viable opponent. Maybe. And there are some piranhas-like creatures in the water, not usually encountered unless you choose the water entrance as a route. And that's it for the bulk of the game.

Look at that list of enemies again. They're all normal creatures. Not a one has any defense against magic. And that list of enemies is what you run into for the bulk of the game. Thus, you are a god amongst mortals. There aren't even any regular variations, like archer or rogue to change things up. In an odd choice, it isn't until near the very end of the game that two new enemies are introduced - the only two special units that require a change-up of tactics. But even then, these two special units are few and placed such that they can be completely avoided. Not avoided as in being sneaked by; avoided as in moving so far around them that they are never encountered, only seen at a distance.

Much could have been done with those enemies, utilizing their powers and inventive level design to create interesting challenges for the player. But, as is the case for the entirety of Dishonored, the game carefully avoids presenting any challenge whatsoever by placing these new enemies where they are easily avoided. The only way the player must face them is if the player chooses to face them.

Traps do make an (exceedingly rare) appearance, but there is only one type of trap - tripe-wire launchers, or should I say, trip-rope. Yes, the traps use a nice, thick rope that is easily spotted. And that is the only trap in the game. Stationary turrets and electrified walls could be considered traps, or even opponents, but they are large, glowing, obvious, and also slow (in the case of the turret, as the wall is, of course, unmoving). The turret is no more a threat than the stationary wall is, and is usually even more easily dispatched since the wall is often placed in a guarded position, unlike the turrets.

A lot has been done to make the appearance of each location unique and decadently beautiful - a stunning feat considering what appears to have been a limited building palette. I was frequently impressed with the interesting take the developers had on what would otherwise be the same-old, same-old locations. It is only too bad that there was very little gameplay across all of these stunning locations.

The best and most memorable level turned out to be the aristocratic party. Most people would say it was the whorehouse, which has some interesting scenes, to be sure. But the whorehouse is remembered for its shock value, which isn't all that shocking with the limited palette and limited animations on show. The party, in contrast, is the only level the tells you about the world intrinsically in the way that it is built. You actually learn about the people of the city, and even do it by interacting with them in their own abode. And you interact with them not just for the sake of interacting, but with multiple level-based goals in mind. Everything in the level channels in towards the assassination of the target, even the sub quests. And the locked upstairs remains locked to even someone of your powers, and thus must be approached through alternative means. Not particularly challenging alternative means, to be sure. But still.

This was a cohesive and coherent level that actually said something about the world that we are interacting with.  Out of all of the levels after the first prison level, this is the one that said - you are here in this city and this is why you are here to do the deed. The level could have used more reliance on stealth and stiffer resistance from the enemy. But that can be said of all of the levels, even the ostensible last (but not final) level.

Speaking of the ostensible final level, even on Very Hard difficulty, the final level, usually a bear of a level, in Dishonored is a breeze. In fact, it can even end up being shockingly short, if you do everything right. Which actually was a nice way to do it. This isn't a remarkable level, like the party was, but it was level made with a cohesive design, and one where your actions actually mattered to the coarse of the level. Not to mention, the level is the only stealth level in the entire game. Which is not to say that stealth is necessary to complete the level. It's not. But it is a level where stealth is challenging (to a degree) and it matters. This is a taste of real stealth. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late, coming as it does very near the end of the game.

The background level-design of Dishonored is often beautiful, and sometimes shows sparks of great inspiration. And the multiple methods of entering complexes are a joy to see and use. Would that the gameplay parts of the level design were equally as varied and inspired. Would that the level design also offered challenge. When the Very Hard difficulty setting offers no challenge whatsoever, there is something seriously wrong.

INTERFACE ●●●○ (good)

The appearance of the world of Dishonored is compelling. Some amount of artistry went into the world design. Similarly, the player's interface with the powers and abilities of the main character are smooth and simple. The game does use a console wheel, but there is also a key line for PC users, in addition.

Despite the game's console roots, there is no hiccup when using a mouse and keyboard here. Porting was very well done, generally speaking. The icons for the powers are interesting, but even moreso, the effects when using the powers not only alert you clearly to your use of the power, but add a great deal to the exciting feel of using the power. For instance, teleport could have felt remarkably bland, since it's just a disappear and reappear somewhere else on the map. But the graphic of Blink and the slow-to-rush-jolt of movement adds hugely to the experience.

All well and good. On the other hand, when the best thing about your game is the graphics and UI, you've got some issues.

The music and sound is the main weak point here. Neither of those aspects adds to the intended ambiance of the game. Both are merely utilitarian. Only during the final push does the sound ever rise to the occasion and help to give impetus to the melancholy feeling that the ending was intended to give. And even then, I wasn't sure that the sound actually struck the intended note and did not simply strike a note. 

When looked at overall, because of the weak gameplay, the fine interface simply adds to the feeling that Dishonored is a slick exterior over a hollow core. Which does not surprise me, as that is also the feeling that arises when attempting to eke out enjoyment while slaughtering nearly the defenseless, unintelligent mooks that are all the game has to offer as enemies.

ENJOYMENT 

Dishonored looks cool and feels cool in action. But it's all surface appearance. Like a shiny summer blockbuster, it's all flash, no substance. There is some style, a bit, hidden away here and there, and those flashes leave me feeling better about the game than I otherwise would so. However, in so many ways, Dishonored is a jumbled mess of ideas.

And I have my suspicions (wholly without documentation) that Dishonored is a game designed by committee or suit-dictate, throwing together whatever sounded cool at the time, altering the game's plot and levels as needed in order to accommodate the new additions of "coolness". Which usually leads to a jumbled hack of a mess that is quite uncool and unfun. But somehow, despite its unenlightened committee design process, Dishonored managed to retain some of the "cool" from its messy mass of "cool" features. At least, that's my suspicion.

For the Final Verdict here, the average is between two points, so - as always - I get to decide which direction to round in. The average is really close to the upper point, which I do take into consideration. Plus, I did finish the game, which does not usually happen for me with games with such poor gameplay. I play games to be challenged in some way, not to live out power fantasies. But I did finish it, and that would normally mean that I enjoyed it, at least a little. And that would mean going up to mediocre.

But here, I am not sure. The game is short. Short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome despite its meager gameplay. Were it much longer, I'm not certain that I would have finished. The "coolness" did not have its intended awe-inspiring effect upon me. And thus, I am forced to round down - rounding down because of the sheer lack of gameplay.

It should be noted here, though, that most people will not be as mortally offended by that aspect (or rather its lack thereof), and would instead round up. In fact, enlivened by the "coolness" and the ego-trip of being a god amongst mortals, they are likely (as many have done) to round up an extra point or two. Because people like cool, just like they like slick summer blockbusters.

At least, they will round up extra for a while. Until time moves on and the graphics are no longer anywhere near the cutting edge, when the shiny cool fades away. Then it's back down to mediocre it goes, or even down to poor for those of us who want actual gameplay.

FINAL VERDICT ●○○○ (poor)

* this review was made after completing Dishonored on Very Hard difficulty on the PC

Review - The Dark Eye: Blackguards

- An RPG/Strategy Game hybrid from Daedalic Entertainment.

INTRO

A Role-Playing Game is classically a mixture of adventure, exploration, character building, combat, and possibly (though not necessarily) also story. Blackguards has exactly zero of the first two. There is absolutely no exploration or adventure here. This is a game of combat with character building and story. In other words, it is a series of combat maps with persistent characters - much more akin to something like Elven Legacy or Final Fantasy Tactics than classic or even modern RPGs. It doesn't go all of the way there, but it certainly does ride the line.

So, the four rating categories of Blackguards will be Character Building, Combat, Resource Management, and Story. However, I will touch upon Exploration and Adventure, since those are important to a lot of RPG players. 

EXPLORATION & ADVENTURE

This is not a rated category in Blackguards because the game has no exploration or sense of adventure. None. Zero. Your experience with exploring the world of Blackguards consists of clicking on an icon on the world map representing a settlement and loading up a marketplace view, said view having a few icons to click on that load up the various types of stores or that occasionally (a different icon) offer quests. And that's it.

There is no travel, per se. One clicks on an icon on the overhead map, and a line is drawn between settlements representing movement. The process takes a couple of seconds, at most. And that is your sense of travel.

The various settlements are highly detailed, but all of that detail exists on static backgrounds. (They take way too long to load for static backgrounds, though, which does make me wonder what is going on under the hood.) In almost all cases, what that static background depicts is the settlement's marketplace - which, in and of itself, also cuts heavily at the sense of exploration and adventure. There is little to no sense of place offered in any of these settlements. With the choice to depict the marketplace view rather than a backdrop shot of the settlement, one sees essentially the same scene wherever one goes - seen one marketplace, seen them all.

The backdrop pictures could have offered a great sense of place simply by utilizing a nice exterior shot. Indeed, this being a fantasy world, and one where there is a large variety of locales and size of settlements, exterior views could have added a great deal of wonder and adventure to the player's sense of the world. As it is, though, settlements are just a series of the same four stores with minor hints at the diversity that the world has to offer from a few extra flourishes added to some of the marketplaces.

This sense of sameness is not helped by the game's voice acting. The adventure of Blackguards takes place across several different countries that supposedly have differing customs and languages. However, the game is fully voice acted, and the voice actors of the minor characters speak with the same accent, for the most part. So, there is no sense of place offered in the characters of the world, either.

Nor is there a sense of place in the equipment offered in the stores, which is largely the same everywhere, with only minor variations from one location to the next. Occasionally - very occasionally - there is localized dress, but for the most part, the only difference between stores in different locations is how many of the same items are on offer (10 healing potions or 2).

Generally speaking, one's interaction with the world is on the level of an mmo. There are stores to click on and buy stuff, and there is the occasional quest giver that is met once or twice, says his generic spiel to send you off on your generic quest, and one never sees them again after. Leaving the game with no sense of underlying world or personality.

There is no sense of the people, the world, or of adventure here. And since that aspect of the RPG is important to a lot of RPG players, the choice by Daedelic to remove all of it is a rough one. It cuts out a fair portion of the potential customer base, and leaves the game's popularity and sales solely in the hands of those who love story or combat.

STORY  ●○○○ (poor)

There are several parts to a game's story. There's the overall concept, the character personalities, the dialogue, and the core writing. While the core writing is the main thing that players interact with, all of it combines together to form the overall story and one's impression of that story.

The overall concept of Blackguards is generic Chosen One gets chosen for unknown reasons to save the world. It's a bland and generic concept, but there's nothing inherently bad about it. One can take a generic concept and sprinkle originality upon it to make an exciting concept. Operative word being can. With Blackguards, the one conceit to originality is that the characters are "blackguards".

Except they're not. The main character is, in actuality, falsely accused of a crime he/she didn't commit. And he now roams the badlands, an outlaw hunting outlaws...a RENEGADE.

Some of your cohorts have committed crimes. But other than a few - very rare - jokes, this never really comes into play. The only character who is actually a criminal during the game is quickly killed off. The rest of the characters are more in the "gang of rogues and misfits" territory. And the things that that band of rogues and misfits are called upon to do during the game are the usual generic RPG quests. Find the lost "ring", rescue the damsel in distress, kill these bandits and then those bandits and the bandits over there, etc. There's no underhanded or even unique things to do here. It's all the usual goody-two-shoes messenger work.

With only that unused conceit to count towards originality, there is nothing original in the Blackguards storyline. It is, unfortunately, the usual generic, bland template upon which to hang an RPG. But it actually gets worse than that, because the various enemies and situations are also generic, and the core development is a jumbled mess, leading to no driving reason to progress through the story. (Stressing here that there is no driving reason to progress through the story, not the game.)

As stated earlier, most of the characters in the game are only met once or twice, and they typically are simply quest givers with no real function in either the story or the game world, a la mmo style. These individuals hand out generic quests and generic rewards, and that is the extent of the interaction with them. They have no place or function in the world except as quest/reward givers.

And the elite antagonists, the so-called villains of the story, are no more well developed. Most are also only met once or twice, if even that. All too many are given only an intro to make them seem a big-bad, and that's the entire lead-up to meeting them. There are a couple of guys who are meant to be leading villains, but they never actually do anything. Their interactions with the world and the party are so minimal that they never become hated villains. They're largely just a named bad guy instead of generic bad guy. That's the entire connection to them - they have a name. Thus they become just like named bad guys in - again - generic mmo style, despite some half-hearted attempts to make them seem more.

There's a core of a good story lying within Blackguards. Evil villains, saving the world, high adventure. But none of it ever gets used. Instead, the overall story sits in the background while the characters get captured - again - and drug around doing random combats against generic foes that have no personal stake in the overall story. The number of times that the party actually fights people who are involved in the threat to the world before reaching the final chapter is depressingly low. Instead, in a world threatened with destruction, it's mostly bandits, gladiators, various animals, and independent undead that the party meets.

The characters of the main party have some personality; however, that personality tends to be two-dimensional. Their personalities are well-written. But there is little there to most of them, and those personalities do not drive the story. The only driving force in the story is the Chosen One main character. The other members of the party simply offer some localized color here and there. And unfortunately, the best personality is killed off early and replaced by someone as bland as the Chosen One main character, who is one of the usual bland Chosen One archtypes, though the Lazy Chosen One hasn't often been used in games, to be sure, The remaining personalities are well-written, but bland. Which, as you may have noticed, is a common theme in Blackguards.

Meanwhile, the core writing is unfocused. The events of the story unfold with little sense of order, logic, or pacing. For instance, the game starts with the Chosen One captured by the authorities and falsely accused of murder, then making a daring escape. All well and good. Exciting so far, But soon after making their escape, the Chosen One and his/her allies are captured by slavers and taken along a long side-trip as gladiators. So a captured plot leading to another captured plot. Not a good decision there.

But not only that, there's a sidequest tied to those that sees you getting captured again and fighting more gladiator battles right after. So you can end up getting captured, which leads to getting captured, which leads to getting captured. And then you get captured again not long after. It's so ridiculous, it almost becomes farce. (Not to mention, the whole gladiator sequence of chapter two is already so silly as to almost be farce in and of itself.)

What's more, none of the time spend as gladiators furthers the overall plot, the development of the characters, or the development of the world. It is exactly what it says it is - a long series of gladiatorial combats. In fact, at one point 9 combats in a row (though a chance to rest after sets of 3 was later patched in at audience recommendation). And it takes up 1/6th of the game.

And after all that, you eventually end up going on a long series of sub-quests with no relation to one another in order to find the macguffin you're searching for, having multitudes of senseless combats along the way. Until at long last, a story combat arrives. It's all a jumble of seemingly random events that are randomly strung together, which would far better serve a road-trip adventure than a save-the-world-from-dire-evil adventure. And the entire reasoning of all of those random events randomly strung together is hung solely on the hat of the main character being the Chosen One.

Essentially, nothing in the story happens at the cause of either the protagonists or the antagonists. None of them actually do anything until the very end. There's just a random series of events, such as being captured by slavers for 1/6th of the game, that happen one right after the other with little rhyme or reason.  It all happens because the main character is the Chosen One, and for no other reason at all.

In effect, the story becomes just a series of filler excuses to have another fight (or usually a series of fights). Now, filler stories can work quite well. But they work at their best when told in a minimalist fashion - like many level-based strategy games use. As in a few paragraphs to tell what happened after the last battle and to introduce the goals of the next battle. But in Blackguards, there is entirely too much story for it to be minimalist. Thus, the player spends an inordinate amount of time following along with a series of jumbled and bland events, watching multiple cutscenes that attempt to string it all together, and largely fails in that attempt.

Which brings up one of the major points that are often brought up about games like Blackguards - "It's not about the story; it's about the combat. If you're paying attention to the story, you're playing it wrong". And while it is true that the centerpiece of Blackguards is combat, one also spends a lot (a lot) of time watching cutscenes following along the story. If the story isn't actually a major part of the game, then it shouldn't occupy a major part of the time of the game. If it does occupy a large portion of gametime, then it is a major part of the game. End of story.

Thus, the story is a major part of Blackguards. But much of the Blackguards's story is bland. From the overall concept, to the personalities, to the enemies, to the world - it's all flat and generic. And in the final two chapters, it's also rushed and dumb. And chapter three seems a bit rushed, in hindsight, as well. That seems to be the theme of Blackguards - an excellent setup in chapter one, followed by a increasingly rushed content through the remaining four chapter that heavily stress the cracks in the story and gameplay, which wasn't settled upon a solid foundation or ever really fully thought through.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ●○○○ (poor)

At first, the resource management of Blackguards seems like it will be an exciting and detailed system. But like so much else in the game, none of what is met in that first impression is ever fully realized.

Armor is broken up into body locations, and different armor parts can be placed in each location, with a bonus to armor encumbrance efficiency granted if the same type of armor is placed in each location. So, if a chain suit set is place on legs, arms, chest, and head, the character can use that suit with less of an armor penalty from encumbrance. A great deal could have been done with such a system. But in practice, there is never any reason not to place the same armor type in every slot, since there isn't much variety of suits of armor and what there is almost always is available in full-suit form. There's no reason to miss-match if one doesn't ever have a single armor piece that one wants to don despite it not being a full suit.

In fact, other than those (many) times when the game takes all of your stuff away from you ,your mages will be wearing the same armor-set for almost the entire game. Once you get your stuff back from whatever, it's re-don the same old robes or shirt and hat from the beginning of the game.

Warriors, on the other hand, have a few upgrades along the way. Stress - a few. But instead of going to one of the many armor stores and upgrading armor as you go along, it's more along the lines of - when you reach a certain part in the story, you find an armor upgrade, and you immediately put it on one of your warriors because there's no reason not to as it is superior to what you have in every single way. But you only ever put it on one warrior as you will only ever find one suit of that non-magical armor. At some point, you will find a different suit of non-magical armor, and then put that on your other warrior. And one day near the end, maybe you'll even find plate mail.

There are more weapon upgrades than there are armor upgrades, and there are even a number of magical weapons, though not many. Once again, though, other than those times when everything is taken away from you, you're not really choosing which weapons to use, as there is always a clearly superior one. Characters have to raise their skills in each weapon type in order to use them effectively, so each character will tend to use only certain types of weapons, but within that type, there is always a clearly superior one. So, if a character specialized in sword, there is no debate as to which sword the character will choose to wield, as there is always one sword that is superior in all categories, and thus there is no reason not to wield it.

The game also includes expendable resources, such as potions, arrows, traps, and rations. And at first, once again, this seems like it it is going to be an important and detailed aspect of the game. But none of it is ever really used.  The most glaring of these is rations. The sole use of rations is to allow the group to camp out on the world map. Yet, since there are no wandering monsters and no risk or real time involved in traveling, there is no reason not to simply click on a settlement and rest at its inn rather than lug around heavy rations units (other than the obscurely long loading times for the settlements).

Rations or inns, they heal the party completely, and there are only a few points where even time is a factor, so there is no reason not to take a few clicks and heal to full after every single battle. So the more usual RPG resources of hp and mana are not even a factor here. The only time when rations ever actually come into play is during the rare "dungeon". In these dungeons, a series of battles are strung together on a small, mostly linear grid. The party can tackle the grid points at their own pace, and can rest after each battle - if they brought enough rations. And this is the moment when the game is at its best, having the player manage rations and potions, fighting battles without a chance to restock. These dungeons are few and far between, however, and too many of them also allow retreating back to the world map and a store, making the resource management for those dungeons non-existent.

Ammunition is plentiful and cheap, and potions and traps quickly become of minimal use. At the beginning of the game, potions and traps can be utilized to great effect in the battles, giving the party a much-needed edge in tough fights on the Hard difficulty setting. But all too soon, nothing stands up for long enough to make any of the useable resources necessary. Taking the time to lay down a trap simply slows down the unstoppable juggernaut that is the party. Traps and potions just become another item to sell to get more (unneeded) cash, except for those rare instances when the mages need a mana infusion or an even rarer situation when a warrior needs a health infusion and there's no mage available to heal them.

There is a lot of meat here. The consumables system is highly detailed, with a lot to offer a game that put pressure on those resources. But there is never any pressure. None of the resources matter. The only one that is regularly bought are arrows, for those rare times when there aren't bundles of them found on the enemy, or when - much more often - all of your equipment has been taken from you.

As with so much else in Blackguards, resource management is a highly detailed system that a lot could be done with, but that never comes to fruition. Soon after it's introduction, it becomes left by the wayside. Yet another instance of everything seeming great and going somewhere in chapter one, only to soon dissolve into disuse and ill-thought-through consequences.

COMBAT ●●○○ (average)

This is widely reported as being the heart of Blackguards. Except it isn't. It is its saving grace, but the heart of Blackguards actually lies elsewhere. The combat starts out highly enjoyable, and would receive an excellent grade if it maintained the quality it has in chapter one and iterated upon it in the later chapters.  But instead, the game fades out, with good (instead of excellent) combat in chapter two, drifting to okay combat in a fair portion of chapter three, and collapsing in chapter three into becoming rote routine through the rest of three and all of chapters four and five. What drags it down is, in part, what turns out to be only a small number of ideas for antagonist combat styles, but is largely due to the heavily imbalanced character development system.

For all of the famed glory of the Blackguards combat system, there actually isn't much to it. The party is made up of five members, and they usually fight from 6-7 enemies, occasionally more, sometimes less. The battles take place on a hex-grid, and they take place in turns based on individual character speed and an initiative roll.

More than a few times, there are interactable elements on the battlemap, such as levers, traps, doors, etc which can be used to great advantage during the battle. And at first, that seems like it is going to add a great deal of variety to the combat. However, during the battles where there are interactable elements, generally those elements either must be interacted with to complete the combat, or they are so powerful that there is no reason not to interact with them. Those battles become, in essence, puzzle maps, with the player having to figure out how to trip the interactable in as efficient a way as possible, rather than how to fight the battle in the best way possible. And unfortunately, the game kind of plays its entire hand in chapter one here. You won't see anything new in this area in the rest of the game. One only sees variations of the same few interactables and interactable ideas introduced in chapter one. Worse, there is the very ill-thought-through "stealth" sections, which are really just movement puzzles, since there is no actual stealth in the game.

Still, those interactables do remain a nice change of pace, even if they remain underdeveloped. And its a change of pace that is woefully needed, since there isn't actually a lot of variety in the combat.

Unfortunately, the enemies are underdeveloped. There is not a great deal of enemy variety. There are a large number of enemy portraits to fight. But there are not a wide variety of methods of attack. Most enemies are melee grunts who attack using the same pattern and a single attack, whether they are mindless zombies, animal-level-intelligence scorpions, or (supposedly) intelligent bandits. There is no teamwork, and there are no special abilities beyond poison and power attack. A few combats have enemies with ranged ability, which they use in a largely random fashion, instead of a focused aggressive one. And a rare few have spellcasters, which use their spells in a largely ineffective fashion. Combats against opponents with special abilities beyond that are really rare.

And that's it. Making the combat of Blackguards for the most part a slog through simplistic melee mooks who lack intelligence or coordination.

On the other hand, it is good for the party that enemies remain stupid and unfocused, as the party are always outnumbered and usually fighting on empty square battlemaps, and thus a focused effort would likely easily overwhelm the party. As it is, the enemy AI strikes largely randomly, effective (such as it is) only by its superior numbers.

Likewise, the enemy do not have all of the special abilities that the party do. Again, this is a must for the survivability of the party. Technically, in the Dark Eye RPG that Blackguards takes place in, the enemy should have access to all of the abilities that the party does. But if the enemy were given full access to all of those abilities, then the party would just fall over when facing them. Much as the enemy does with the party during the latter parts of the game. The power feats that are available are just so intensely powerful, and there is so little defense against them, that having any of those abilities is essentially an I-WIN button.

And there are a lot of I-WIN buttons in Blackguards.

The character sheet is essentially divided up into Attributes, Skills, Abilities, Feats, and Spells. The names may be different, but that's what they are. The Skills are all combat skills, such as Two-Handed Sword or Polearms. Abilities generally provide interesting but minimally useful information, such as how many hit points the enemy have. Attributes provide bonuses to all of the other areas and - most important of all - are prerequisites for the Feats. Spells work exactly like skills, with a need to have a high spell-level in order to have a chance to effectively use a spell without missing/failing.

But the core of it all is Feats. The Feats tree is what the warriors use in combat to dish out damage, and everything else is just in support of those Feats. The thing of it is, though, the power gain from Feats is huge, and the Feat tree is fairly shallow. And it's a completely open system, allowing characters to buy whatever they want with their experience points. Which, all together, means character can gain immense amounts of power really quickly.

Specifically, the feat tree is largely a series of combat attack lines devoted to a particular fighting style. So, there's one line for two-handed weapons, one for spears, one for dual-weaponing, one for archery, etc. Then there's a few defensive trees, and one fighting-master tree. But most trees have exactly zero branches and are exactly three items deep (not much of a tree, true). Plus, most are essentially Power Attack. As in, first rank is Power Attack, second rank is Improved Power Attack, and third Rank is Super Improved Power Attack.

Each rank in a Power Attack line is technically a new attack type, but in practice, there is no reason to use a weaker Power Attack once a stronger is attained. So, once a character has Power Attack, they never make a regular attack again. And once they have Improved Power Attack, they almost never use Power Attack. And once they have Super Power Attack, they never do anything else - because it's super. The only actual negative for using a higher-grade Power Attack is a negative to hit. But the negative has so little gameplay effect, and the power gain is so huge, that it is not a real choice. You always attack with the higher-grade Power Attack.

So, in actual game effect, each new rank in Power Attack becomes an improved attack. And all the warriors then do in combat is run around hitting the attack button. It's now Super Improved Power Attack, but it's still Attack to all intents and purposes.

The power gain is just too huge to do otherwise. Damage output ramps up from 10 to 15 to 20 to 50 (with over 90 on a critical) with each power upgrade. There is just no reason to NOT attempt to do 50 points of damage instead of 10. While the chance to hit when a character first gains Super Improved Power Attack is low, it does not outweigh the damage output. Plus, in the early days, the mages can put a few experience points in the elemental attack spell, which has a high chance of knockdown, and there is a 100% chance to hit an opponent on the ground no matter the attack. That's automatic hit with Super Improved Power Attack!

And later in the game, the characters can ramp up their chance to hit so much that every attack they can make has largely the same chance to hit, leaving not even the slim old reason of a weaker chance to hit for choosing to make any other type of attack than Super Improved Power Attack.

On top of that, the mages gain access to haste at about the same time the warriors gain access to Super Improved Power Attack. So, the warriors abruptly jump from doing 20 points of damage a round to regularly doing 100, and sometimes 180 (on a double critical). It's an utterly ridiculous jump in power. Especially since only a handful of enemies can survive even one 90-point damage attack, much less 2.

Once the party has Super Improved Power Attack and haste, they can use just those two abilities to conquer 99% of the rest of the combats in the game. And half of the remaining 1% demand only the use of a couple of heals or an elemental knockdown on top of the above strategy.

The game does limit one's access a bit to the Super Improved Power Attacks by making those attacks only available at certain trainers. But the party can gain access to those trainers fairly early in the game. And after that, it's game over. The remaining 4 chapters (of 5) are a cakewalk. 1 chapter of tactical battles and 4 chapters of cakewalk does not a balanced game make.

Which leads to the main issue with the combat - the gameplay is badly balanced. It's simply a fact that open character development systems are really difficult to balance, far more so than class-based systems, and Blackguards is not even remotely in the balanced ballpark. There are some aspects of the character sheet that are hugely beneficial (Super Improved Power Attack), some that are only of minor benefit (Read Enemy hp), and some that are of no benefit at all (fireball). Thus, the difficulty of the game lies almost entirely in the character sheet.

And that means nothing you do on the battlefield matters. Not after chapter one. Tactical gameplay is thrown out the window, and the game becomes a game of character building strategy. Battles are won and lost by wise choices on the character sheet, not through brilliant tactics in the field. Which means the vaunted tactical combat of Blackguards gets lost in a haze of character builds and spreadsheeting.

CHARACTER BUILDING ●○○○ (poor)

This is the actual core of the game. And that is almost entirely because of the rapid power curve on a shallow character development tree that is the core of Blackguards. 

Different players will have hugely different experiences with Blackguards. Somebody who knows RPGs and who carefully reads all of the ability descriptions will have super characters about the end of chapter one, and the rest of the game will be boring. Such people would have to intentionally dumb down their character development in order to maintain some level of challenge across the bulk of the game.

Players on the other side of the spectrum, those who place points in fireball for instance, will swiftly find themselves on the opposite side of the power curve, their characters far weaker than the enemies who are suddenly using Power Attack on their characters and thus killing them, since the fireball-throwing party has no ability to Power Attack back and the enemy outnumber the party - always. That, and because fireball is nearly useless. It's the goto attack spell in most RPGs, but here it is weak and most enemies have resistance to fire, making it even weaker.

Because the game system is so unbalanced, the game developers couldn't realistically balance the enemies to an expected power curve for the party. There is no expected power curve. At any given point after chapter one, the party's fighters might regularly be doing 10 points of damage, or they might regularly be doing 50. And it's impossible to pitch enemies to the challenge level of the party when the divergence in power levels of different players is over 5x. After all, stick a tough enemy with 80hp in a fight with several cohorts, and the team doing 10 points of damage will struggle to get the 8 hits necessary to take him down while being attacked by the cohorts, while the tough team will kill him in one blow that does 90 points of damage, and then the attacker who killed the leader will turn and slaughter one of the dead leader's cohorts with their hasted second attack.

So instead of balancing the game on equal terms, the game developers had to keep the enemy weak, dumb, numerous, and 'suped up with resistances and magic in order to maintain a roughly even progression of skill level for the player. The enemy couldn't be given the actual abilities of the game system, as then they would slaughter the party. Instead, they have to become damage sponges. Which makes fireball even weaker than it would otherwise be (weak damage attack on enemies with resistance to fire and bloated hp)

The enemy can't even use Super Improved Power Attack against the party, since a 90-point attack on the party would instantly kill a party member too, and the enemy already outnumber the party. Were those things to be mixed with the ability to case haste (which they also can't do), then the party could be wiped in one round. That's wiped with just normally abilities that the party can regularly use against them. So, the enemy has to be dumbed down to make the system as it is even function.

This leads to gameplay that, while enjoyable in chapter one, becomes only enjoyable to power mongers after. Skilled RPGers will eventually become bored with endlessly rote battles of clicking on the same rote powers, while newcomers will find themselves so far behind the difficulty curve that they can't catch up, and it's restart the game from the beginning or give up. The initial enjoyment the game engenders in chapter one thus soon evaporates for all concerned, save for power mongers and the rare few who chance to remain in the narrow sweet spot that the game that the games power curve has to offer.

There isn't much variety on offer for character design, either. There are essentially two classes - fighter/mage and fighter. And since the system is open, a player can take whatever they want, Mixed with the fact there is so much xp awards simply thrown at the party that the player can max everything they want by the end of chapter 4, and I mean everything, and then will have a full chapter's worth of xp to spend on stuff they don't want, and, well, there isn't much reason to replay the game for a different combat experience, since the character will have maxed skills in everything you wanted to try out already. On top of that, most feats are simply variations of Power Attack, all skills are weapon skills and there is no variety to the actual function of weapons, and most of the spells are of little use.

Essentially, there are only two differing playthroughs here. One can go through the game as a spellcaster, and then can go through as a non-spellcaster if the player want to see what physical power ranks their character could achieve if they don't spend some of their points on spells. All mages are fighter/mages, so a mage can also max out any of the fighting skills, and there is plenty of xp to do so, but they probably won't max anywhere near as much as a pure fighter would, since they are likely to spend a fair amount of xp on spells, even though most of the spells are useless. After all, when one is mage, one at least wants to see what the spells all do.

With such an open character building system as Blackguards uses, in order to make a balanced difficulty curve, the xp gains have to be so low that the player is forced to think about what aspects to develop, or the power curve has to be smooth enough to maintain an even challenge for the bulk of players. The trouble with Blackguards is the power gain is so steep, swift, and abrupt that the gameplay cannot be balanced for most of the audience. No matter where the enemies' power curve was developed for, most of the audience is going to be either bored or overwhelmed. The system is just too unbalanced to have any other end.

After all, with a one-second jump to damage output of 20 to 100, the enemies from one dungeon to the next would have to suddenly have 5x the hp in order to stand up for an equal number of blows. But in an open character system, the developers never know at which point the players are going to make the buy that takes their characters from 20 to 100. So, they don't know where to put the dungeon with the sudden 5x increase in power.

And so, character building largely ends up being broken. Not out of any inherent weakness of the abilities, but because the overall system fails to support the players' needs in helping them to meet the challenges of the game at an enjoyable difficulty level. The only people the game does support are the power mongers who simple enjoy laying waste to enemies with their superior character builds, and then those few who happen to chance to keep their party's power level meshed within the power curve of the enemies.

And in the end, this is what breaks the combat. What starts out as intense tactical battles can't be maintained because the enemy lack the variety and power to actually challenge the party in different or direct ways. They can only have their stats pumped in various ways, but staying well below the difficulty that is achievable by the party so that people who make some mistakes in spending xp can still succeed. Because the power level of the party ramps up so quickly and easily, most enemies just end up falling over. And when you finally meet what should be a super-challenging creature that you think - aha, finally a tough fight again. No, it falls over in two rounds, just like everything else. All because the damage output of your characters ramps up from 15 to 50 by taking two Feats.

The character sheet is the heart of Blackguards. Since the potential power gain is so huge for some abilities, the experience that the players will have of the game lies on the character sheet. When and how they gain those abilities determines not only how difficult the game will be for them to complete, but how much enjoyment they will have with the bulk of the game. And that, in the end, is what drags the combat down from being excellent, to being mediocre, and finally into boring, rote busywork.

INTERFACE ●●○○ (average)

The graphics for the game are nice, overall. Nice, but not good. The locations are heavily detailed, but largely sterile.  Locations have the overall look of an average 3d build that was made into a still. There's a lot of detail, in that there are a lot of items and textures, but everything has the usual 3d generic look. There are very few unique details at any of the locations that help them to stand out.

Characters are also largely 3d sterile, with no emotion on their faces and little animation to anything they say or do. The main characters are all well-voiced, on the other hand (unlike the npcs), and some of their dialogue is rich, so they do have character.  But overall, their personality comes from their static appearance and voice, not from their actions or animations.

Combat is in 2.5d, and it largely functions well. Spells and abilities are easy enough to access, even if the interface wheel is clunkier than it needs to be with additional tasks that are non-situational. The wheel remains the same no matter what, while a dynamic wheel with only the actual options that could be used depending on what was being clicked and who was doing the clicking would be far quicker.

Moving characters across the grid is largely simple and self-explanatory. However, there are times when the camera angle and the limited access to the grid mixed with what appears to be some poor programming makes it difficult to access one particular hex to select it. When that one hex is the hex you need to move a character to, this can become highly frustrating. Movement involves highlighting and requires a confirmation click, so there rarely are any mis-clicks caused by this issue, but it remains angering when it takes five minutes to pan the camera into a position that exposes one clickable corner of the needed hex that actually allows you to click on it instead of simply appearing like you should be able to click it.

Menus and saves are functional. Character sheets are clunkier than they need to be, but not so much that it detracts from the experience. Descriptions of items and actions are often difficult to read due to poor formatting, and sometimes important information is left out, causing important aspects of the game to remain forever unexplained. A veteran RPGer will have no issues, and will simply power through these areas, but newcomers will have a terrible time figuring out what's going on.

Music is nice, but forgettable. Not much style or personality. There are different melodies for each in-world country, but the differences aren't really stark enough to provide setting detail. There also isn't much variety of music within each country, so the melodies will tend to get repetitive after a while. As with much else about Blackguards, the music does its job, but is otherwise bland and underdeveloped.

ENJOYMENT 

In the end, I have to thumbs-down the game. It is fairly enjoyable, for a while, but the enjoyment does not last through most of the game. The weaknesses of the game soon overwhelm its few good points, dragging the entire experience down into mediocrity.

In a world with few RPGs, though, Blackguards is better than most of the RPGs currently on the market. So, for RPG fans, this is still a thumbs-up. RPGs can be far better than this, but one wouldn't know it from what's currently available. Bland and underwhelming beats poor and non-existent any day of the week.

In the wider world of games, though, Blackguards is far too mediocre and unbalanced to be recommended. There's simply nothing here to attract those who are not wholly devoted to RPGs, and not that much to attract even RPGer who aren't wholly devoted to stat-building on character sheets, since the game outside of the character sheet is lackluster at best, while the character sheet is complex, diverse, and even artful in its design.

The Final Verdict is in between two points on the spectrum, and I usually would round down. But the afterglow of that initial first impression during chapter one lasted long enough for me to finish the game. The memories of those good moments cause me to average up here instead of averaging down. It's a close choice, though. I almost went the other way.

FINAL VERDICT ●●○○ (average)

* this review was made after completing The Dark Eye - Blackguards on Hard difficulty on the PC