Blackguards (2014)

Blackguards is a wonderful tactics game with some rough edges. The core gameplay and character progression elements are easily some of the best in the genre, but as battles tend to drag on and more and more enemies scream "owAUGH," the interest tends to fade. The story is easy enough to follow and interesting enough to keep players interested, so fantasy buffs should feel engaged the entire time. Even if the sound effects weren't satisfying, the gameplay itself more than made up for that, and it's easy to see that Daedalic Entertainment has a bright future ahead of them in the strategy sphere.

If you're looking for a turn-based strategy game with brutal combat, and you're into managing resources for a team of characters, Blackguards is just what you're looking for. It's a gorgeous game with memorable battles. But because the game's focus is obviously on combat, no matter how pretty the towns are, they feel like backdrops for your character sheets and inventory.

Masochistic stat-chasers will find much to enjoy, but Blackguards' varied combat is no substitute for a fully-formed RPG.

Blackguards is a nice change of pace from the Deadelic. The story is well told, if a little bit clichéd, and the slightly sub-par visuals are off-set by the interesting and addictive gameplay. It does suffer from a common strategy game issue, whereby if you fail at something, it can be hard to motivate yourself to spend another hour doing it all over again straight away. Play it in short bursts, however, and you could find yourself spending many an intriguing hour in Blackguard's universe.

Great graphics, huge, varied and interactive battlegrounds and a quasi-intriguing story are drastically hampered by shoddy RPG systems, flawed combat and terrible customisation. There's a fairly good game here hidden underneath a mountain of broken gameplay mechanics.