Recruit mercenaries, find upgrades and build an indomitable army.Every action has far reaching consequences, as every decision you make is a march against your own descent into madness. Develop cunning strategies to overcome merciless foes. Choose your play style by specializing in melee and ranged combat, or by wielding devastating magical spells. With Blackguards 2, experience a turn-based tactical RPG delivering challenging hexfield battles and a gritty story of revenge. But for Cassia, time itself is a mighty foe, with each passing day taking a greater toll on her sanity. Teaming up with the infamous Blackguards and a loyal but ruthless army of sellswords, she heads out to wage an unrelenting war against the entirety of southern Aventuria. It may not be wax but I'd like it to have ripened a little more before harvesting.Having succumbed to madness following years of incarceration at the hands of her husband, disgraced noblewoman Cassia now has only one goal: to take revenge on him and seize his throne, no matter the cost. It's as if I've selected a toaster expecting to make some toast and my character has inexplicably decided to jam a fork into the workings instead.ĭespite all of that, I want to play more of Blackguards 2 and I hope I'll manage to ignore the wrinkles after a while.
They don't always behave as I'd expect them to and even in the couple of hours I've been playing, I've ended up clobbering my companions a couple of times, without fully understanding why. There's also an element of unwanted surprise when certain objects are activated. They're packed with interactive elements but I feel like I'm supposed to find precisely the right moment to use those elements rather than integrating them into a flexible plan. The tactical battle maps, attractive and replayable as they are, still retain some of the original game's sticky points as well. Cassia's free-form development didn't feel it was planting me at a crossroads and allowing me to choose a direction - it felt like I'd been dropped in the ocean and left to flounder. Given the right amount of devotion, Blackguards 2 may well be a rewarding game but I don't find the majority of decisions meaningful enough to keep my interest. You can decide just how unpleasant she'll be once she gets the upper hand on the folks who have wronged her and, more importantly, you can shape her skillset and class as well.Īnd that, at least partly, is where the old problems persist.
That change aside, the biggest difference appears to be the ability to mould the main player character Cassia into the hero/antihero/bastard of your choice. It's now possible to take territories, hire mercenary defenders and then fight to reclaim them when the mercenaries get killed during a counterattack. Well, not quite the worst, I suppose, because I did like the idea of battle actually causing changes on the world map. Given the speed with which Blackguards 2 has been released, I expected the worst. I love tactical RPGs but the early missions of Daedalic's villain 'em up felt like puzzles with a single solution rather than reactive scenarios.Įnter the sequel, with a somewhat dynamic strategic map and increased scope for customisation of the main character. I saw it sitting there in the fruitbowl of the internet - shiny, red and tempting - but when I plunged my pegs into it and tore off a mouthful I made a face like Stan Laurel chewing a wasp. The original Blackguards was like a wax apple.
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