If there is one thing that that the Dark Eye and more specifically the Blackguards franchise does absolutely right, it's nailing the archetype of the anti-hero. From a storytelling standpoint, the anti-hero standpoint throws out the iconic hero tropes and allows for, well, anything. I love this. The Disney prince on the white stallion has been driven into the cold, dank, turf – let’s gravitate towards scoundrels with murky and less than valiant histories. Blackguards focused on this concept while Blackguards 2 advanced the concept even further.
So here we are, a few years after the events of the original Blackguards. Cassia, wife of South Aventuria’s ruler Marwan, was sent to exile where she ‘changed.’ Over four years of ‘friendship’ with an apathetic jailer and a spider I ingeniously named Eightlegs (you’ll never guess how I came up with that one), good ole noble Cassia starts to go a bit bonkers. As her once renown beautiful face starts getting deranged with more and more venom, Cassie delves deeper and deeper into the realm of crazy town. Due to the fact that you do play as Cassia means that you don’t get to generate your own personal character. How she is built though, is completely up to you.
This one way trip on the madness express is a powerful reccurring theme and one of the drives in the protagonist’s character development. The player will be confronted with some difficult decisions where sweet, sweet Cassia will have to decide her level of benevolence and/or tyranny. Hey, remember that guy that once scalped a statue in your honor when you were nobility? Yea him. Well, he’s blind now and has a suspicious message for you. Now that he’s ‘seen’ your camp, do you let him off scotch free, cut is tongue out to keep him blind and mute, or just let him go free? This is a real example. You’re going to be sculpting Cassia’s personality. Does she really care about the people and land or is this little soirée purely about bloodshed and revenge; your call.
Between battles you have the option to visit your camp, chum around with your champions (basically the living cast from the other game), organize you mercenaries, level your characters up, and decide your torture methods of your captured prisoners of war. With an attempt to not sound as sadistic as humanly possible, the torture options are done cleverly. Based on how hard the prisoner is to break or how frightened they are, you can use different options to extract intelligence from them. In war, intel is everything and the perfect blend of classic good cop and bad cop can take you places in this bleak environment. Torture is yet another tool that helps shape Cassia’s personality and ruling doctrine.
While gameplay feels and looks nearly identical to the original Blackguards, there have been several lovely tweaks and advancements. Over all, the system is just simpler. Take the once quasi-confusing mechanics of Blackguards, make them more coherent, and you got yourself the Blackguards 2 combat model. 'Missing' and that free dodge a round are near things of the past. Even spells don’t miss anymore – that used to be so frustrating. Abilities are simplified yet have a brand new mechanic called endurance. Similar to mana, abilities cost endurance and regen over time; even faster with the right talents. Endurance restricts the player for going slap happy with more powerful skills and brings tactics back to the table later in the game.
Speaking of tactics, Blackguards 2 upped level design and strategy ten-fold. Knowing when to push over a teetering tower of boxes, when to attack a rope to comically drop a chandelier on foes are all readily available to the player if he/she decides to go down that path. More maps have layers of objectives your heroes should be or can be executing. Rarely will a level just be just ‘kill all these dudes.’ I’m talking kill/hold off this infinite spawn while one or two of your characters run around open doors to let prisoners escape before taking control of those said prisoners to lead them to freedom. Your foes have a tendency of having ways of summoning more dudes or flying enemies will just join the fray uninvited. This sort of extracurricular activities get you into the mindset that if it seems too easy then you can expect the worse to come.
These tactics even go one layer further when you’re on defense. That’s right, a new aspect of Blackguards 2 includes a map control function. Not only are you assaulting new locations for strategic outcomes or simple as a middle-finger to Marwan, but you also have to keep defending these conquered locations. While defending, you choose where you set up traps which simulates you having the insider edge on the layout of the land. This also means you can choose which heroes and mercenaries to take in the map to maximize your efficiency.
Due to this constant game of back and forth tug of war, battles can get tedious and even repetitive. I know, I know, this is a strategy RPG, fights should be the main focus of the game. And I get that, but they also hamper your progression into the game. Often I found myself just wanting to continue with story missions and not have to murder the face of more and more of Marwan’s putties. So while the battles are so much better than before, there are so many more battles. At some point I became seduced with all the sexy character development occurring that I got grumpy when bloodshed got in my way.
For the reasons just previously mentioned, Blackguards 2 dawdled in pacing quite often. If you’re in it for the constant heat of battles and aren’t necessarily in it for the story or character development, you’ll be happier than a pig in s@#$. I found myself far more interested in this story of Cassia. The further you get into the game the more stressful the map management will become. If Marwan’s troops get on a roll and start mowing down our defenses, you’re going to find yourself knee deep in a mess you’ll have to spend several moves cleaning up. You have to keep a mindful awareness of the entirety of the map both off and in a battle.
While playing, I came across two bugs. While one was just entertaining, the other made certain battles impossible. While doing training with my mercenaries, only Cassia would start acting nutty. Her arms started straight out like she was in her paper doll form. Whenever I’d move her she’s either jog in place or imitate her version of what I’d assume is Michal Jackson’s Moonwalk. This didn’t alter the game in anyway other than sneaking some laughs out of me.
The other bug occurred the first time I could pick a location to attack on the map. The first map didn’t allow me to use my heroes and could only pick two mercenaries. Since I hadn’t done a battle yet, I thought this was just how it was. Cassia would even talk during it which I thought was off. I of course got squashed and honestly thought the difficulty was through the roof. When I picked the other map I had both heroes and mercenaries and it felt right. The next chance I went back to that original map and the bug seemed to disappear and I could use my heroes again. While the game somehow righted itself, whatever was happening made the game impossible to progress.
I liked Blackguards and I enjoy Blackguards 2 more. For the old school pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons player and strategy video game fan – Blackguards 2 has a definite allure to it. While I didn’t like being forced to play as Cassia at first, the story I crafted for her through hours of gameplay was something I became quite invested in. Seeing the companions from the previous game and having them as your champions gave an air of familiarity while leaving out the mystery of how they’ve fallen from prosperity over the last few years. Do you help fuel their rage or do you help them adapt to new days? The innate repetitive nature slows the pacing which can leave you in what seems like the same place longer than desired. With the right amount of dedication to time, Blackguards 2 has tons of hours for you to enjoy and conquer – in true anti-hero style.
