Blackguards - the brown eye

[Xilren's Twin]

TL&DR – I like this game a lot.  More turn based strategy please.

Yes, there are minor plot spoilers in here if you care about the plot, which I don’t.  (As far as I’m concerned the plot is pants on head stupid so far, and also presented poorly with badly voiced cut scenes and flashbacks, but that’s not the reason I’m playing anyway.)

Not having much experience with the Dark Eye rpg system (Realms of Arkania used this many moons ago but I don’t remember it well other than being hard and lots of disease), the early game of Blackguards is a little rough - really the first 2 chapters.  They start you off with your main guy and 2 npc’s doing the ole prison break routine, which basically means you start with no armor or weapons other than using torches as clubs.  Plus, you start with pretty low skills in the 2-3 main skills a character begins with, so missing on attacks or fizzling on spells is not uncommon.  There are no levels in this system; you earn AP (xp) which you can spend to increase your abilities like strength or cleverness, learn and increase weapon and spell skills, and unlocking special active/passive abilities (assuming you can find a trainer or spellbook).

So, starting with a warrior npc with no armor or weapons, and a mage character with low skill spells and no potions to regain astral points (mana) is not easing you into the game.  My experience would recommend you not go with a straight melee fighter as your main, but either a mage with a ranged attack and healing, or an archer (rogue).
Priority one is following the quest trail to gain some AP to pump up your main attack skills/spells, and getting some basic equipment.  Putting a full matching set or armor does grant some minor bonuses, which is desirable, and you will get side quests to get a decent axe and mage staff for your NPCs, but one of the other things you will notice is this is not an equipment centric game either.  Once you have decent gear, you probably won’t be changing it much.

Course in chapter 2, you will have to surrender to enemies and become a gladiator fighting in battles with no gear, or very limited gear you had to rebuy for a few fights.  Yeah for fighting mostly naked! Again!  If it happens a third time I may write a strongly worded letter.

Some of the tactical battles are more like puzzles you will probably have to fail before learning the best way to beat it.  For example, having a timed encounter (5 turns to do X) and moving towards an objective only to walk into a trap which totally screws you.  Or learning that moving through water may require a Body Control check to avoid falling down.  Or spending all your mana during a fight only to have to jump into another battle with no chance to rest/heal.  Or learning to close the crypt louse holes so you don’t get buried by the continuing reinforcements.  Or fighting a horde undead that keep getting up until you kill the necromancer.  Or destroying the magic gem that fully heals all the lizard men each round. Or realizing what a bitch poison is and how many freaking enemies use poisoned weapons!?!  Swinging crates, explosive barrels, collapsing platforms of rocks, wasps nests, swamp mud holes, enemies with weapon immunities, reducing stone golems by breaking mirrors, etc… there’s a lot going on in the Tactical battles.

There isn’t much room to roam and earn AP during the first two chapters but in chapter 3 it really opens up and you can visit many towns on the map, talking to characters and doing side quests.  Saving those AP to unlock special abilities when you find the right trainer is very important.  For example, mages could learn Astral Regeneration to gain back 1 magic point a round, if they have a staff equipped that can go up to 2 a round, if you learn Astral Regen lvl 2, that’s 3 mana a round, which adds up nicely.  My current max is 5/round due to skills plus equipment, plus the reduced mana cost skill means I can basically cast a free lvl 1 healing spell every turn for the entirety of combat.  I have found myself leaving a weak enemy up after giving him 2-3 wounds and passing turns just so my guys can regen mana (did the same thing with some of the healing fountains in the gladiator fights).  With fighters, until you level up the battle tactics ability you can’t really tell what percentage your move have for success, so figuring out when to Power Blow vs Feint can be quite important.

Parries and blocks are quite common in melee and investing in armor, shield and dodge skills in your fighters seems good.  Body control is pretty important too to avoid the knockdowns/slips that waste your whole turn (or multiple turns if you get stuck in a mud hole).  Also good is Attack of Opportunity so your fighters can get free swings at enemies trying to get by them to attack the mages.  Oddly enough, I have yet to have a character who uses swords; the first fighter NPC is a dwarf who uses maces/axes.  The second uses spears.  My mages use staffs and bows and the elf is a pure archer.

In terms of magic thus far, in late chapter 3 I am only now beginning to branch out beyond straight damage spells (fire bolts, witch’s bile) and healing.  To learn a new spell, you either need a trainer or a book, plus a couple hundred AP to spend, then you need to spend AP to level it from skill 1 to a useful number.  The Spells themselves have 4 levels which are tied to skill level numbers 1, 8, 13 and 18.  So firebolt 2 can be cast if your skill in that is 8 or more, but you can always elect to use the lower power (and less costly) firebolt 1.  Managing your mana costs is definitely needed, so giving the mage(s) useful skills like bow or crossbow to save mana is a good idea.  Area effect spells are few, expensive, and generally don’t to a ton of damage, but you can try to bottle enemies up to hit 3+ to make that useful, but the line of sight targeting can end up making them tough to use.  Cure poison is helpful, but a lot of the buffs/debuffs haven’t gotten any use yet.  Some of the lvl 4 versions of spells can effect all characters on the battlefield which is great, but the success % is still about 50% at max skill.  Oh yeah, mages can’t wear metallic armor without having the astral regen suffering, so while you can put mages in whatever you want, leather or cloth is preferred.

The rogue character really just seems like archer who can disable traps or lay them, but I have yet to find a battle where I wanted to spend a turn laying down a trap or poison my own weapon.  Most actions consume a turn, so drinking  a potion, using an interactive object, switching weapons, all use your turn up.  Since there is no hit point inflation due to “levels”, it’s pretty easy for 1 turn to make a huge different in combat so planning your “do nothing” turns is important.  I think the highest HP creature I’ve seen so far is like 80 or 100, and my characters are in the 25-45 range, so while you don’t generally have to deal with meat sponges, you will constantly be outnumbered by enemies that act appropriately.  Other than enemies occasionally running over the same hidden spike traps that your guys can, I cannot recall an instant of brain dead AI in combat, which is nice.

This is not a loot centric game.  Successful combat will net you AP, maybe some money, and perhaps 1-3 basic items (mostly 1, often none).  You will have to deal with weight limits, but generally are not picking up much loot at all.  Haven’t seen anything resembling a “magic” weapon yet.  I think I have found maybe 4 total that grant a skill bonus of one kind or another (i.e. +1 Charisma, +1 Astral Regen, etc)

Money is generally low amounts, and you will find yourself spending cash regularly on healing wounds, and resting at inns.  Provisions can be used to camp a turn to regain full health and mana when exploring some of the dungeon maps that have multiple waypoints (like the initial prison map), but camping doesn’t heal wounds and wounds are bad (negative modifiers in combat; a character with 2-3 wounds is mostly useless for fighting).

The setting and plot is fairly nonsensical, and some of the quests you can do and decisions you can make are fairly gray alignment wise, but no one seems to care.  There are some things that might pass for humor in their original german, or the game just might be that weird.  While I wouldn’t call it a grimdark setting, it’s definitely not a happy high fantasy kind of place and man of man is there a lot of Brown.  I’m still in Chapter 3, pretty much ignoring the main plot doing all these side quests.  I am also pleasantly surprised that I have had only 1 bugged fight in the game so far, and no lockups.  Not bad for an early access game.

If you like fantasy TBS games at all, at least try the demo on Steam.

[Signe]

I'm just starting Chapter Two and I like it.  Being turn based makes me feel young again!

[Hawkbit]

Dat thread title.

[Wizgar]

There are no levels in this system; you earn AP (xp) which you can spend to increase your abilities like strength or cleverness, learn and increase weapon and spell skills, and unlocking special active/passive abilities (assuming you can find a trainer or spellbook).

So, starting with a warrior npc with no armor or weapons, and a mage character with low skill spells and no potions to regain astral points (mana) is not easing you into the game.

I hate when games do this. Unless your game's magic points are functionally or thematically different than the mana found in every other game, just call them god damned mana.

[amiable]

Just started playing and I am having a lot of fun.   I restarted a few times to play with stats and I would have to disagree with playing a mage or an archer rogue, it is much easier to  play a mace/board warrior with the abilities that let you shrug off wounds (at least on expert).   Magic seems really weak (at least the direct damage stuff, the buffs/debuffs seem awesome) and I don't see it getting much better as spell costs seem to scale WAY higher than your regen.

[Xilren's Twin]

Just started playing and I am having a lot of fun.   I restarted a few times to play with stats and I would have to disagree with playing a mage or an archer rogue, it is much easier to  play a mace/board warrior with the abilities that let you shrug off wounds (at least on expert).   Magic seems really weak (at least the direct damage stuff, the buffs/debuffs seem awesome) and I don't see it getting much better as spell costs seem to scale WAY higher than your regen.

Getting near the end and i think i'lll give another run through trying a warrior.  But it sure seems that a mace/shield is superior to the other melee styles.  I have yet to run into a mob where it's ineffective where piercing and slashing immunity mobs exist.  Still love running 2.5 mages though.  Some of the level 4 spells are great.

[Zetor]

My warrior (Naurim)'s weapon setups are mace/shield, mace/shield, 2h axe; the first mace set does fire damage, the second one bashing damage. 18 in warcraft for the free weapon swap is invaluable, since infantry and fire damage bypasses a lot of defenses, but sometimes you need bashing damage to break things.

So far I put 35 hours into this game (some of that during Early Access) and just finished chapter 4. The story is kinda forgettable, but my experience with the battles has been really good... except for two annoying battlemaps featuring crypt lice (one of them was a flashback scene too, ugh). Thankfully both of those will get patched soonish.

Speaking of which:

[Xilren's Twin]

Speaking of which:

Eh, it took me about 6 attempts , but it was really about positioning the melee guys to intercept the oncoming spearmen befofre they could take out the rest of the team.  Still lost 1 mage pretty much immediately.  The spell i used the most was the haste level 3 on both warriors since it gives the extra action.  I was able to get the mobs into decent groups where wrath of the elements could do damage and get a knock down or too.  That was a tough fight to be certain b/c they move fast, hit hard and the 2 range on attacks of opportunity are just brutal.

[Zetor]

Yeah, I eventually got past it after a few attempts. The key was blunt arrows (with the -AP poison) keeping their caster locked down, casting MAL3 on Takate for moar deathblow, and casting berzerk on 2 of the enemies while burning them down one at a time. Still got pretty hairy, had to spam heals on both my casters for most of the fight.

[Xilren's Twin]

So the first run through took about 45-50 hours.  Now that i know what im doing, i restarted as a warrior and we'll see how it rolls.
Don't think i missed many side quests.  And yep, the plot was pretty awful all the way through.  After you win the last battle it's just brief cutscene that's like "you guys go back to this city.  No one knows what you do and there were no phat lewts anyway, so you feel good about yourself saving the world but no one else cares and the world still generally sucks.  Fin."

[Strazos]

I can appreciate what the game is trying to do, but is it just me or is it a bit on the...bland, or basic side of things? Not enough classes, not enough variety in possible actions.  Most battles feel pretty easy to me, and the tough ones just come down to getting the right rolls. The lack of fancy loot doesn't even bother me - my archer only having the option to shoot an arrow, shoot an arrow harder, or poke with a spear - it's just not enough for me.

[Xilren's Twin]

I can appreciate what the game is trying to do, but is it just me or is it a bit on the...bland, or basic side of things? Not enough classes, not enough variety in possible actions.  Most battles feel pretty easy to me, and the tough ones just come down to getting the right rolls. The lack of fancy loot doesn't even bother me - my archer only having the option to shoot an arrow, shoot an arrow harder, or poke with a spear - it's just not enough for me.

I agree with you to a point.  I do think their implementation of the Dark Eye ruleset has perhaps streamlined a bit too much.  While technically a classless system, since you only get to make 1 guy and the most important decision for a character is whether or not you can cast spells (since you can't add that post creation), all NPC's do feel effectively like classes.  For example, the first archer is just that; the second is an archer mage so you can really develop her in a different ways. I wish they would allow you to full on create at least 3 characters.  The most nebulous part to me was figuring out why my guys could have such wildly different spell success chances in different combats.  The whole spell casting (well all skills really) checks being tied to 3 different stats seems overly complicated but does make buffs/debuffs more valuable.  As do wounding attacks.

The world itself is very bland (and brown) so not a fan of the whole depressing fantasy motiff.  But i do think they did a decent job with the variety of combat encounters.  How far along are you?
My overall impression is i surely have gotten my money's worth, but i also bought it on sale for $12.50.  Not sure if i would pull the trigger on full price.

[Strazos]

Eh, I just crossed the border.

Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience with the ruleset, I went with a pre-built Archer, which...well, I would probably build it differently today if I had the choice.

Also, could you expand a bit on the spell bit - why would it change from fight to fight?

[Xilren's Twin]

Eh, I just crossed the border.
Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience with the ruleset, I went with a pre-built Archer, which...well, I would probably build it differently today if I had the choice.
Also, could you expand a bit on the spell bit - why would it change from fight to fight?

Here the section from their help guide:

"Casting spells is very similar to Talent checks; you roll 3 dices against your character attributes, and can use the Spell Value to adjust if necessary. Note that each spell uses a different set of attributes, so Attributes such as Constitution and Dexterity may also be important for mages.

Magic Resistance - The Resistance to Magic (RM) is used to resist spell effects by increasing the caster’s fail chance. So, if you have 6 points in the “Karnifilo Frenzy” spell and try to cast it on an enemy that has a RM of 4, you’ll only have 2 spell points.

Example:
Capitu wants to cast “Cold Shock” on an enemy archer. The ruling attributes of that spell are Charisma (CH), Agility (AG) and Constitution (CO), so she rolls 3 d20 dices. She needs all rolls to be lower than her attributes; if any of them are higher, she fails the test.

She rolls 8 for CH, 11 for AG and 14 for CO. Since her stats are 10 CH, 12 AG and 11 CO, she passes on both CH and AG, but fails on CO by 3 points. She has 5 ranks in “Cold Shock”, so she would be able to use those points to compensate the bad roll, BUT the enemy archer has a Resistance to Magic of 3, reducing her effective rank in “Cold Shock” to 2, which leaves her one point short and causes the casting to fail.
Remember that you can see an enemy’s RM if you have a high Warcraft talent level. Naurim has a higher RM than average, since he’s a dwarf."

So spells that suddenly take a huge nose dive in success % usually are b/c there is MR involved.

[Ingmar]

You know, I've played pen and paper RPGs practically my whole life, and that paragraph even makes me want to push someone into a locker.

[Zetor]

You know, I've played pen and paper RPGs practically my whole life, and that paragraph even makes me want to push someone into a locker.

For what it's worth, I think Blackguards has the best implementation of the DSA pen-and-paper system to date. That said, I don't think it's a particularly good system to begin with.

Speaking of DSA: If you want pain, I recommend playing Realms of Arkania 1-3, and watching your fighter unable to raise his combat skills during level-ups because he keeps failing his rolls.

[Tebonas]

Don't remind me of all the reasons I quit playing the pen-and-paper version.