Blackguards

Blackguards is a turn-based tactical RPG set in the dark fantasy universe of The Dark Eye, a German pen-and-paper system that most English-speaking players will be coming to cold. You build a character from one of three archetypes - warrior, mage, or rogue - then watch that character get framed for murder and thrown into a party of criminals, mercenaries, and general human wreckage. The story premise is genuinely solid: you are not the chosen hero. You are the suspect. That setup promises morally complicated storytelling, and Blackguards delivers on it in fits and starts, with some sharp dialogue and a few story beats that actually land. Do not expect Planescape-level writing, but the tone is consistent and the world feels lived-in rather than decorative. The combat is the real reason to be here. Battles take place on hex grids with environmental hazards, elevation, and destructible elements that you will learn to abuse or suffer from in equal measure. There are over 180 maps across the campaign, which sounds impressive until hour 20 when you realize the pacing leans hard on combat encounters as the primary content delivery system. Some of those maps are genuinely clever, asking you to defend positions, manage multiple objectives, or deal with enemy compositions that punish lazy tactics. Others feel like filler - waves of enemies on flat terrain that exist to drain your resources before a more interesting fight. The game does not hide that it expects you to lose and retry; difficulty spikes arrive without much warning and the auto-save system is not your friend. The Dark Eye ruleset underneath the hood is dense. Attributes, derived stats, and a skill system with real breadth mean build variety is legitimate - a glass-cannon mage who blows up his own party is absolutely possible, and so is a melee tank who moonlights in poison crafting. The problem is that the game explains its systems poorly. Tooltips help, but new players will spend a few hours making quietly bad decisions before the character sheet stops feeling hostile. If you enjoy cracking open a mechanical system and reading the internals, this is rewarding. If you want the rules to stay out of your way, Blackguards will fight you. Narrative payoff is uneven. Side content exists but is thin, and the main campaign can feel like a corridor with hex tiles on the floor. Character arcs for your companions have some interesting material - these are broken people with real backstories - but the writing does not always have the space or budget to follow through. Replay value is moderate: trying different class builds does change how encounters feel, and harder difficulty settings add genuine challenge, but the story branches are limited enough that a second run is really for combat optimization rather than new narrative discoveries. Blackguards is a niche recommendation. It is for players who want punishing tactical combat with mechanical depth, who do not need handholding on complex rulesets, and who are fine with a story that is good-not-great wrapped around a very solid hex-grid engine. The mixed review score on Steam is honest. This is a game that will click hard for a specific kind of player and frustrate everyone else.

Monika · Scout Team

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