The Dark Eye Blackguards - turn-based tactical RPG set in The Dark Eye world

[Infinitron]

Lots of games use this particular type of encounter design.

Such as?

 

[Markman]

Spent a bit more time with this, still cofused a bit about the system, few bugs like invisible crates in baroness fight and one instacrash when I tried to click fast through the text but Im having lots of fun.
Some fights I'll get wrecked, spend some AP, do another fight, and then come back whooping through barely touched.

Also, how much is it worth investing in Warcraft and Animal lore, does it give any more bonuses besides me being able to see their HP, status and a % to hit? Not that worth investing for a bit of visual feedback, IMO.

 

[Duellist_D]

Warcraft seems to sometimes give you a bonus on initiative.

I have both sitting at 8 to unlock the first upgrade, imho not worth wasting more points atm.

 

[skyst]

Speaking of that, give a rough percentage of encounters that require some puzzle element that must be used to beat the encounter.

None would really qualify as "puzzle elements", rather maybe 10% of the encounters are easier if you use battlefield terrain/features to your advantage. For example, there is a hard enemy very early in the game that you encounter in a swamp. There is an NPC is the town prior that speaks about swamp gas being highly flammable. Should you happen to get that hard enemy into the gas and use a torch or fire spell, your fight will be a lot easier.

There are quite a few encounters where I see some other minor gimmicks, but they are never very frustrating and can usually be solved with brute force or tactical supperiority if you don't want to play along with the puzzle.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Isn't playing along with the puzzle tactically superior?

 

[LeJosh]

For example, there is a hard enemy very early in the game that you encounter in a swamp. There is an NPC is the town prior that speaks about swamp gas being highly flammable. Should you happen to get that hard enemy into the gas and use a torch or fire spell, your fight will be a lot easier.

I got him down in 2 fire strikes. He stepped on all 8 hexes of swamp gas and it took 2/3 of his health off. Then lured him into another, was a thing of beauty.

 

[Markman]

Aah, that was the fight Alec Meer bitched about in the RPS preview. Omg 2 haard, game is shit, also bad translation. lol

 

[clemens]

Tier 2 secondary abilities seem to be good enough to get the feedback you need. I think it's survival for outdoors areas and streetwise for urban areas that will give you a bonus to initiative. And yes, most encounters are solvable without caring too much about the environnemental features. However, starting with the later fights in the arena during chapter 2, you'll definitely have an easier time if you take them into consideration. I would hardly call them "adventure game puzzles", though.
And, no, I don't recall that many games either that had that kind of combat encounters. And yes, they're pretty well designed and fuckin' enjoyable.
Also, I love the wounds system and the bonus/maluses that result from them. You can basically ignore opponents that have been heavily wounded, because they will miss, instead of having to end them because they will continue to inflict damage to your party as long as they have 1 HP left. There's a lot of little things like this in this game that make it surpass the competition, imo - in terms of combat system, at least.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Speaking of that, give a rough percentage of encounters that require some puzzle element that must be used to beat the encounter.

None would really qualify as "puzzle elements", rather maybe 10% of the encounters are easier if you use battlefield terrain/features to your advantage. For example, there is a hard enemy very early in the game that you encounter in a swamp. There is an NPC is the town prior that speaks about swamp gas being highly flammable. Should you happen to get that hard enemy into the gas and use a torch or fire spell, your fight will be a lot easier.

There are quite a few encounters where I see some other minor gimmicks, but they are never very frustrating and can usually be solved with brute force or tactical supperiority if you don't want to play along with the puzzle.

Thanks for the information. I have been resisting playing this until is it fully baked.

 

[Morality Games]

Played it to what I expect was the end of Chapter 1 and then called it quits. There were traces of fun, but it lacked challenge. I'll wait for the difficulty modes to be properly implemented before tackling it again.

By the way, in the side quest 'Brotherly Love' is it possible to know who is evil between Sarino and Oranis? I talked to the bandits but I got the sense it was an indecipherable trick.

 

[Markman]

Played it to what I expect was the end of Chapter 1 and then called it quits. There were traces of fun, but it lacked challenge. I'll wait for the difficulty modes to be properly implemented before tackling it again.

By the way, in the side quest 'Brotherly Love' is it possible to know who is evil between Sarino and Oranis? I talked to the bandits but I got the sense it was an indecipherable trick.

Did you play Dwarf Games? I found that quest pure evil, I reloaded like 5 times before I decided to skip it.

 

[Morality Games]

Played it to what I expect was the end of Chapter 1 and then called it quits. There were traces of fun, but it lacked challenge. I'll wait for the difficulty modes to be properly implemented before tackling it again.

By the way, in the side quest 'Brotherly Love' is it possible to know who is evil between Sarino and Oranis? I talked to the bandits but I got the sense it was an indecipherable trick.

Did you play Dwarf Games? I found that quest pure evil, I reloaded like 5 times before I decided to skip it.

Ran into it by accident, reloaded, and then couldn't find it again. I assumed some kind of bug was making it appear earlier than it was supposed to since it seemed pretty elaborate for having so little context. I reloaded pretty early thougjh, since it seemed like there was money to be made.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Played it to what I expect was the end of Chapter 1 and then called it quits. There were traces of fun, but it lacked challenge. I'll wait for the difficulty modes to be properly implemented before tackling it again.

By the way, in the side quest 'Brotherly Love' is it possible to know who is evil between Sarino and Oranis? I talked to the bandits but I got the sense it was an indecipherable trick.

Did you play Dwarf Games? I found that quest pure evil, I reloaded like 5 times before I decided to skip it.

They are not that hard if you go there as 4, going in as 3 really makes it challenging

 

[Markman]

Ye, I went as 3, right before baroness fight. Its good money in those chests but it wasnt worth the hair pulling lol. That crossbow dwarf was a fucking menace with 20+ damage and knockback.

 

[Longshanks]

So... Wasteland 2, Blackguards and Divinity Original Sin all start off with murder as a central plot point. Let me ask you this: does murder even mean anything in an RPG game world? You start off the game and "oh my god ! a murder has been commited!" yet five minutes after that your PC heroes are slaughtering through foes without a second thought. In RPG games, the hero is essentially a mass murdererer so using the murder of one individual as a central plot point doesn't make much sense to me.

I used to mull this over as a kid watching Superman cartoons. Superman would get into a fight with, say, some bank robbers who just happened to have nice equipment on them. In turn, the ensuing battle would lead to much destruction of the city. And I would sit there, as a kid, and wonder if Superman's quarrels here were really worth it, or if just by intervening he was doing far more damage than his enemies ever could.

And, interestingly enough I guess, the rationality behind the pursuit of evil - or rather, the savagery committed to ending it - actually shows up in literature. There's a part in A Man for All Seasons, for example:

Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

So I'm kinda surprised we don't see more people trying to subvert this obvious and overused trope. You'd think at some juncture your vilified 'bad guy' would also turn around on the party of heroes and ask, of all the destruction they've caused, might it be possible that they have done more harm than he? Heroes can make a bad guy forfeit his life by essentially making him feel bad, but rarely do we see those same tables turned back at the player. It's not very often you get to see a game try and dress down its protagonists for what is, as said, blatant hypocrisy. Hell, it doesn't even have to be the villain doing it (though a villain with justified goals is always superior to that black-and-white cliche shit), but it'd be nice if every so often someone in the game questioned your motives or your means. Too many games strap you and your characters into an almost solipsistic world view. A lot of memorable games find ways to knock players out of that thinking, even if it's just the little things (like some of the comments you get in Deus Ex from the grunts and supplymen if you go on a warpath).

In Max Payne 3 the final bad guy does do this, but the game is so dumb, the death count so large (over 3000 in my playthrough) and the motivation so slight that I think it got to the point where even the devs were wondering what the fuck they'd done.

 

[StaticSpine]

Ye, I went as 3, right before baroness fight. Its good money in those chests but it wasnt worth the hair pulling lol. That crossbow dwarf was a fucking menace with 20+ damage and knockback.

I've also tried before Baroness rescue, I couldn't manage so I gave up. And actually I started to hate the gulping sound of dwarf taking healing potion.

So the main tip is to try again when you have one more companion or anything else?

 

[Infinitron]

CHAPTER FOUR RELEASED: http://steamcommunity.com/games/blackguards/announcements/detail/1892934239531370190

Darth Roxor felipepepe

 

[Darth Roxor]

Darth Roxor felipepepe

So? I've stated repeatedly that I have no intention of going past chapter 1 with the early access build and instead am waiting for the full thing.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Bah humbug, I'd need a couple of weeks just to download the entire thing.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I missed the steam Discount Sale for BlackGuards

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I missed the steam Discount Sale for BlackGuards

You'd probably get it off the gift thread anyway.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

If not, I will probably wait till next year's sale. : Metro:

 

[HiddenX]

CHAPTER FOUR RELEASED: http://steamcommunity.com/games/blackguards/announcements/detail/1892934239531370190

Cool I'm at the end of chapter 3 today (40 hours in the game)

 

[Markman]

Maybe they'll repeat the sale on the last day, you never know. But even without a discount its pretty cheap at 25 euros.

Finished the first chapter finally. How the story progresses I think it would be easier if I made a tank instead of a ranger at start. Only the dwarf is melee while I got 3 ranged chars. Heal from Zub and Move as a lightning(?) from Niam keep him alive most of the time but if the focus shifts to the back line fight suddenly gets more tense.
Also game is trolling me

Thats what you get for not paying attention, lol

 

[Grunker]

awesome