TDE Blackguards

[Mala]

Blackguards is available as early access on Steam for a while and the first chapter is already playable.
Its a storydriven  tactical RPG ( a bit like Expeditions: Conquistador) based on the "the dark eye" aka "Das schwarze Auge" lore and ruleset.

So far the story is pretty interesting and the battles are fun and later quite challenging.

My gang and me on a typical battle map. they work with a simple move/action system (like xcom or shadowrun) and you can use the environment to your advantage as well (on this map the water tiles are quite slippery)

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Obviously there is no open world, you have only some points of interest which can be inspected. Dungeons work similar, there is a small map with several waypoints, most of the time you have to fight but sometimes you have to solve a riddle, too.

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The towns and villages are only slightly animated pictures and you have to click on the icons to trade or to stay at the inn.

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The only thing what i do not like is that there is no real character customisation. You can change toe faces and the hair a bit but there are only three starting professions (aka classes) and there is no way to reallocate some skillpoints.

[Bulzur]

Looks interesting.

Is there some difficulty settings ? If yes, on wich one are you playing atm ?
Saying it can get quite challenging, how "easy" did you find Shadowrun main campaign ? To know if challenging for you is impossible for me. Or vice-versa.

[Mala]

there are serveral difficulty tiers, but have played on normal and a quick test has shown no difference for the hard setting during the tutorial level.
if it works like other tde games, then you should get less skill points to spend and the skills itself are a way more expensive to raise.

challenging fights, well this was to some extent because of the masses of enemies, your lack of special abilities and your improvised eqipment (after a jailbreak you are on the run).
the final battles of chapter one are similar to the final mission of Shadowrun. there is lots of fighting and you have only limited resources, so my support mage was quite soon out of mana.

[Bulzur]

Thanks for the reply.
I'll wait a bit more (finishing other games, busy with Armored Princess atm) and i'll definitely give this game a try.

[Mala]

by now chapters two to four are avialable and the final chapter will be released at the end of january.
while chapter two was quite short and linear offers chapter three a lot of side quests and room for "exploring" besides the main story line.
well the quality of the side quests varies. there are some simple ones like "i need your help to kill some bastards" others tell nice little stories.

the fights are still hard, sometimes you need a bit luck. every chapter has its own frustrating battles.
on the other hand there is a quite interesting main story line which forces me to keep playing.

oow, and because the community has nagged that much they will add a better character customisation for the final release.

[Mala]

Finally i have beaten the game.
In the final chapter there were less fights with rage potential but a way more filler battles. The story itself was ok (no huge surprises after chapter four). But then there is the Deadlic issue. All of their games (that i have played so far) start quite funny and turn quite depressive towards the end.

[[ptx]]

I found the battles too dependent on randomness, the random factor made me GTX in the end :/