Blackguards Special Edition

I have not played through many games in the last years, but this one gave me such a good time I played it to the end. I do know the pen-and-paper games of The Dark Eye (3rd and 4th edition, and yes, I am from Germany) Blackguards is a well-done simplification of the rule-set making it a very accessible and deep experience. Mostly it is like a strategy game (focused on fights) (despite the pnp version is rather less battle-based than d&d, people say.) Like with the pnp games winning requires good tactics and luck. So, yes, you may end up trying a tactic several times, because it _might_ work. However I found the game quite diverse in tactics it offers. It felt like reacting on what happens and finding your way. Once I found one of my characters running away from the beast while the other character left shot arrows. That game scene was not intended this way, but could end up with this situation. Your road to success heavily depends on how you equipped your characters and then you'r in sandbox battle creatively finding a way to win. Very satisfying! Always demanding. I did every side quest because I felt like never well-prepared for the next battle. There were so many surprises awaiting you throughout the game. Once a character leaves your party. And you spent so much time&thought levelling it! And another time, close to the end, another character left my party and I am very much convinced it was because of a lot of bad in-game decision I made. (In DLC charackter was suddenly back) I had to do the final dungeon with one character less than supposed! Hard, but doable. Some hugs to the developers for that! And I ended up winning the final battle before its last round. I tell this, because I want to illustrate that open design of this story-driven strategy game. Everyone plays a little different adventure

I played many giants of D&D CRPG: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights. But I never really figured out how those games adopted the tabletop D&D rules. Blackguards has a pretty short in-game tutorial, all text, that explains clearly how the game adopted the rules of The Dark Eye tabletop RPG. Blackguards gave me an appreciation of the tabletop RPG that much more popular CRPGs did not. The other plus that stood out to me is the quality of the voice acting. My whole party, including my PC, sounded so in character, if a little over the top. There are plenty of opportunities for the voice acting to shine. There are quite a bit of light humor spread throughout the game. A lot of players complain about the simulated dice rolls in the game. I got into Blackguards late, so maybe the problem was patched out. But I did not have a single stretch of bad dice rolls that caused me to restart a fight. The worse stretch I can remember was missing three hits with 90-95% hit probability, but it did not matter in the end. This is not a strategy or tactics game. Two things matter the most to the turn based combat: party composition and map mechanics. Each of your party members start with some talents or spells that hint at what they might be good at, I expanded in those directions and had no problems at the normal difficulty level. My PC was a mage that mostly dealt damage with his crossbow, but I think a melee build would have been viable. Having at least two mages by the end will make your life easier. Many of the battles have a bit of a puzzle feel, with map mechanics that you need to exploit to make it easier. Most you can win by brute force if you party is right. One tip on something that irritated me: any character that can only deal magic and piercing damage (maybe slashing too; I didn't have any slashing damage) is useless against crystals that heal enemies. They are present in some battles.

It is ok after the first 2 hours. It is sad, that I cannot move freely within the cities in Drakensang. It is more combat oriented.

If you don't know "Das Schwarze Auge" (German D&D clone): Try this if you like turn-based hex combat. I didn't even know this was a DSA game when i played it. All those names, gods and locations sounded familiar somehow. Google destroyed all fun and suspense though. :(

Like the Story, characters, and the system. Allthough probably not for everyone, lots of details to keep track of. Also some bugs and flaws, no game breaking ones. Recommended.