The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

I have on-board Intel graphics, but with an just an i5 processor, this game runs pretty well. I'm not far into the game yet, but just wanna let ppl know the GOG version "is" playable :)

Redguard is an action-adventure spinoff of the Elder Scrolls series. It introduced a TON of new things that would change the way Elder Scrolls games presented themselves forever. Dwemer, unique architecture and world design, dragons, Empire vs. provinces, I could go on and on. The best things to do at Redguard are: talk to characters, look at the environments, solve puzzles, soak in the incredible atmosphere, jam to the tunes. The worst thing to do in Redguard is actually playing it. The controls are garbage, the framerate is garbage, it's just not enjoyable to play. I'm a huge Elder Scrolls fan, the "just can't get enough" type, so I put up with the horrendous controls because I liked the places that these horrendous controls took me to. I suffered through navigating the admittedly awesome dungeons because I could at least derive some pleasure from looking at them and solving the actually well-designed puzzles (despite pulling my hair out after falling through a pixel-wide crack for the n-th time). I completed them so I could get that next story step, that next piece of lore or information, that new interaction with the colorful NPCs of Stros M'kai. Ultimately, like Battlespire before it, Redguard is technically not up to snuff to be considered worth recommending as a whole. While Redguard, like Battlespire, is clunky and frustrating, I would, again, be lying if I said I derived no fun or enjoyment from it. Everything about this game except its execution on the performance and controls front is really, really good. But this is still a game, not a book, movie or series, so if the main reason for not enjoying a game is in how you interact with it, well, I don't consider it a game worth recommending to anyone but the most dogged Elder Scrolls fans. Play it for the lore, the story, the characters, the cool dungeons. But be prepared for a lot of navigational suffering.

The game itself is great, however it is notoriously hard to make run on modern machines. I've tried running it myself, and it simply ran much slower than the current GOG version. While I can't play this on my mid-range laptop, on my moderately powerful desktop it is playable and enjoyable. Given the difficulty of the task, I believe GOG did a good job, thus my rating. I do hope improvements will continue until performance improves.

Just got a new laptop, and am finally able to play this game. I could not run Redguard on a laptop that could happily run Skyrim at medium/high settings. Basically, you need a pretty powerful machine to run this game at a playable state. This is because it is emulated- not only through DosBox, but also with a 3Dfx wrapper. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about, but that sounds like twice the emulation (both operating system and "hardware"). There most likely won't be a release that includes 'software mode'. Having tried to run this game many times in the last decade or so, and having had to do plenty of research each attempt: I remember that if you can get it to run without 3Dfx wrapper (which would run faster), there is a certain part of the game you cannot get past. In other words: You cannot complete the game in software mode. This is why there is no option to run software-mode. I set up a gamepad (controller), and it works well in that regard (*Redguard*) Hope this helps!

As a fan of the Elder Scrolls games since my childhood, I was really happy to finally be able to have the chance to play the two 90s spinoffs, Redguard and Battlespire. First of all, thanks to GOG and Bethesda for making this happen. However, I can't help but say that I'm a little disappointed. Not because of the game itself, but because of the technical issues. I can't run this game at a decent framerate to save my life. This is fine when I'm just exploring but combat is exceptionally difficult because of this. I've tried various fixes and they've only helped minimally, sadly. I keep hoping that the Daggerfall Unity team will try to port this to Unity as well but I won't hold my breath. Unlike the main games in the series, Redguard is not an RPG. Instead, it's an action-adventure title that could be compared to the Tomb Raider series. However, it's not just a cheap rip-off. It's an Elder Scrolls game: the emphasis is on exploration, lore, interaction with your environment, etc. The combat is great in concept, but in practice, it's difficult to use. Part of this is due to the performance issues but even if I got it running at 30+ FPS, it'd be difficult to manage. It feels like what happens if you try to PC emulate a game from, say, the N64, without a controller. Story- and lore-wise, this game is intriguing because it takes place centuries prior to The Elder Scrolls I: Arena. It's set between the events of The Elder Scrolls Online and Arena during the rise of the Septim Dynasty. Cyrus is a legendary Redguard hero and you get to see him become that hero in this game. Graphically, this game is amazing. For the time, they were incredible but even now, they're still awesome. They're certainly poor by today's standards but they maintain that classic 3D charm that a lot of us GOGers enjoy. In general, if you're a fan of TES, get this game but be warned that it may run like absolute trash. It's a very enjoyable game outside of the performance issues.