Blackguards Special Edition

Completely agree with Faenrir review. The entire combat mechanics are broken to say the least - the game heavily favors bows and crossbows, to a point where it is impossible to progress without at least one fully specialized archer. Furthermore, as already been mentioned, the fights feel way too random. I'd add there are lot of questionable design choices (both story-driven and regarding mechanics) The interactive environment feature is just a gimmick. When you can interact with stuff on the battlefield, it usually means you have to do so, or you will be flatout defeated. The story in Blackguards serves its purpose and is solid (even though predictable), voice acting is hit or miss. For me, the main problem is that the game feels extremely unnatural, dull and static. It created a huge immersion problem for me, where every play session was a grind and I often found myself not really wanting to play this. 1,5 stars at best.

Nice game, conceptually. The problem is that anything below 90% hit/success probability for a player's party member results in something like 50% chance realistically, usually the first attempt resulting in a miss. The developer likely deemed fair, evenly distributed dice rolls and playing by the Das Schwarze Auge rules too easy, so they rigged the dice generator against the player. Did they really have no idea how to balance the difficulty in some less blatant (and insulting to the player's intelligence) way? Beside this, the difficulty curve is very uneven, spiking up abruptly towards the end of the game. So, the player maxes out their hit chances, only to find out that special combat moves no longer work on endgame monsters, because of a <90% hit chance against them. A disappointing experience, ruined by developer laziness.

I very much enjoy the dialog between the well developed characters and the hint of a darkness or wrongness of important people in the setting. The game sections could be better. You can tell Daedalic's team put a lot of thought into the combat, attempting to include terrain hazards and a few choke points. Giving your characters orders even from the beginning gets you unclear results, the random swing of numbers is one thing but hitting and missing actually feels random. Healing is inefficient during battles regardless if you want to use magic or potions so you end resting a lot if you get a run of bad numbers. Character death is avoided - K.O. characters return to the next match on their feet with 1 hit point. Pretty wobbly experience that made me want to play other games instead of fighting with the UI just to play the game.

- An RPG in which you do not have to walk for hours and do nothing - without walking the game is 40 hours +, so yeah, there is a lot of content; - Focused on the part of a game where things happen - Every little detail matters: those who complain that it is too tough and insane etc. could not understand how the game works - you need to think before you act: check the possibilities of the environment, make sure your characters can see - torch, make sure they use the appropriate weapons and wears, make sure that you develop characters specialized in one or maximum two narow direction(s). - The story is great and I like the characters too - I did not like the mage for the first time but then it changed. So I love this game, it is made for me because I don't like running for hours in any game from one place to another to accomplish something, I like long games which are long not because of the distance between two towns but because you have to do many things. I came to like this game even more than baldurs gate or any RPG. It freaking addictive and I hope they'll improve it even further - like adding more gear, battle grounds, more complex gear system - rings, amulets etc. that affect the game and more skills.

First, the positive: the characters seemed like they could develop into something interesting. I don't know for sure, and I definitely won't stick around to find out. I found the combat to be a grind, especially with the high failure rates of key abilities like spells. Enemy crits regularly turned a generally good strategy into restarting the map. Generally the game felt really slow with moments of sudden misfortune. Loot and xp (AP) are scarce, so recovering from bad luck is not easy. If you love games where you need a strong strategy AND the RNG needs to go perfectly, you have found your game. If you're like me, stay away.