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. Also 25€ for the boxed special edition is extremely good value, hopefully not too good of a value that you don't make a fair cut.Ī Better Class Of Criminal: Blackguards 2īy Adam Smith on January 22nd, 2015 at 3:00 pm. Sure, that will change once I'm getting used to the new system, which is not that difficult to understand, but in the beginning, it makes it less intuitive for veterans / TDE players.Īnd to say something nice – already the first maps had some good ideas in them, like the controllable spider and the split party. Just hovering over the different rusty weapons in "Cassia's collection" showed different numbers in read and green, but I honestly couldn't immediately judge which was better. It's a bit like analog and digital clocks, the latter you actually have to read, while with the first, you pretty much can get an approximation of the important information without actually exactly reading the time.
Being versed in the TDE ruleset, 1d6+4 has an immediate meaning for me, the equivalent of the Blackguards 2 stats system doesn't (yet). My observations are all about the context and the relation information has to things you already know, recognizing patters. I'll give more feedback on this after I played more – like I said, I'm currently at the first couple of maps after the conquest game starts. In the end, I have to ask this question: what was this for? Why was this done? For this reason, the game seems rotten to its core. Especially since most of them concern the very basic design principles of the game. And seeing as there is just over a month till release, it seems fruitless to hope that any of these terrible changes will be revoked.
Did it need to remove all randomness in favour of instant gratification? It most certainly did not. Did it need readjustments when it came to raising Dexterity on melee fighters just to get Death Blow? No doubt about it. Did it need some UI streamlining? It sure did. When the previews and showcases (Gamescom included) showed this game and talked about "streamlining" and "ironing out pointless mechanics," I felt certain that this time it was for a good cause. I feel disappointed, but I also feel somewhat cheated. I really wish I could stop ending articles with the same old, tired mantra of "I don’t know what happened, but has screwed up everything it could." Because this is exactly how I feel about Blackguards 2.