You can also opt to simply end your character’s turn, make them wait until later in the turn or order them to take cover which provides a defensive bonus, but also limits what they can do next turn. This distance where you can move as well as perform an action is usually about half of what a character can travel in a single turn, so heavy emphasis is placed on positioning your party so you can anticipate the enemy. A character’s possible movement is clearly highlighted using two colors: one is for the absolute maximum distance that character can travel in a single turn, and the other indicates how far they can move while still also performing another action, like hitting someone in the face with a sword or setting fire to whomever is unlucky enough to be in the way. You might not care about the plot, but you’ll stick around to find out more about Cassia’s companions.Ĭombat is what you’ll spend much of your time locked in and is a turn-based affair with a hex-grid system used for getting around. Thankfully the characters manage to somewhat balance this out. It’s like there’s entire chunks of the tale missing, and that’s jarring. The details surrounding why you’re doing things are rarely ever explained, leaving you to question how events are linked or why certain things have taken place. Overall the narrative just fails to get a hold on the player and captivate. It works, but it would have been far more interesting to see the writers let loose. Instead you can feel that the writers have attempted to mix in more traditional roguish elements to keep them likable. It’s just a shame that neither the overarching plot nor the dialogue manager to ever make full use of the characters and their fun personalities, partially because it never really commits to painting these people as true villains. There’s a testy dwarf by the name of Naurim who has lost his fortune in gold Zurbaran, a slave who Cassia purchases, and Takate, who was a gladiator. Likewise her companions are a seedy bunch all ably voice acted, if slightly too over the top at times. That’s not to say you can turn her into a Disney Princess, but you can pick just how cruel and evil she acts, opting to hang people rather than just let them go, for example. On her path to vengeance she’s going to spill a lot of blood, and along the way you’ll be given chances to prod her personality in slightly different directions. Cassia is bonkers, there’s no way around that, and in camp you even have the option to have her speak to herself, the resulting conversations usually falling into either the amusing box or the downright creepy box, or both at the same time. It’s not often we get to play as the bad guy, so Blackguards 2 immediately earns itself some free kudos for taking the more interesting approach. For this task she’ll naturally need some help, which she gets in the form of a group of morally questionable comrades and plenty of mercenaries looking for work. More than a little angry she does what any sensible person would do and declares war, intending on not only getting revenge on her husband but also claiming the throne in the process. The mere existence of the exit sets the stage for a story that’s enjoyable, but a bit rough around the edges. Presumably thanks to an idiotic architect who didn’t understand the concept of a prison properly she wanders through the labyrinth she was hurled into beneath an arena and eventually stumbles upon the exit a mere 5-years after her imprisonment. It’s good to be bad, as the saying goes, something which you’ll discover playing as Cassia, a woman dumped into a dungeon by her malicious husband Marwen and then driven mad by the venom of huge spiders. Luckily for me while this sequel does have ties to its predecessor, namely in a few returning characters, knowledge of the previous Blackguards isn’t required here. Confession time: despite it sitting in my library for nigh on a year I never played the original Blackguards, leaving me to head into this sequel with no expectations and a mild case of trepidation.
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