Welcome back to the world of Blackguards – Where the bad guys are scumbags and the heroes are bigger scumbags.

That’s right. Following the success of the first dark, gritty, turn-based strategy RPG from Daedalic Entertainment. Blackguards returns to us in the form of an evolved sequel. The guys at Daedalic have lovingly designed a whole bunch of new and revised features, as well as shape their Dark Eye storyline into something more befitting of the gameplay style they’ve created. This time around the story isn’t about you. Meaning the character creation has been thrown out. We instead follow the tale of Cassia, a beautiful noble’s daughter from a good, ruling family in Mengbilla a few years from the events of the last game. As an oddity in the Blackguards universe; in that she’s a kind and decent human being, naturally tragedy befalls her and kicks off the events of the game.

Arena master, slave trader, and all-around jerk Marwan, has married protagonist Cassia as a symbol of his growing status within the city. In his infinite wisdom Marwen decides that all the money, power, and fame that comes with owning the medieval equivalent of a mafia cartel, isn’t quite enough for him and he hatches a plan. With no remorse, he casts out Cassia, making her disappear for many years in order to gain influence and power over her friends and family. Imprisoned deep below the Mengbilla Arena, Cassia is left to wander helplessly throughout the dangerous, spider infested tunnels. As time passes, the bites from the spiders disfigure her body and poison her mind, plunging Cassia into a state of madness. Years later, after finally finding a way out of her prison, Cassia finds the whole nation now under Marwen’s rule. Having been broken from her experience, and out for revenge, Cassia sets off to conquer back Mengbilla, with the aid of the three heroes from the first Blackguards. 

Graphically the game remains unchanged from the original Blackguards. Right down to the text boxes and spell effects. The environments and character models can be quite stunning. The game has a gritty, dark aesthetic which is shaded and lit well. While the character models aren’t the best we’ve seen, they’re still certainly good. Considering your point of view is distanced throughout the game they aren’t noticeable enough to take away from the gorgeous scenery overall. The portraits are still stylised like the original, and the three returning characters all have the exact same faces. The cut-scenes are primarily told through drawings in the style of a novel, which happily keeps with the theme.

Unlike many sequels in the AAA games world, Daedalic have chosen to keep the game looking and feeling identical to the previous one, instead focusing on fine tuning the combat issues and adding features to enhance the experience. The whole plot has even been selected to play into the strengths of the gameplay style and it does it well. The end goal is to assist Cassia in her mission to conquer back Mengbilla. How you go about this and how brutal you wish to be is entirely down to you. Daedalic themselves describe how your choices will affect the natural progression and plot of the game. The world map is divided into territories that can be fluidly won and lost to Marwen’s forces.

As mentioned, this more active progression style works better with the map-based overworld. Having more urgency over your actions is great and is definitely enriching to the strategy title. The enemy doesn’t sit idle. Each territory I controlled could be invaded by the enemy and I was obliged to defend them. This adds a new combat play style where you defend instead of attack. In this mode you are even permitted to lay traps for the enemy like boxes, spikes, and bear-traps. With the game being strategic by nature, this shift in goal can change your method of play entirely. Even if you lose, you can fight to reclaim lost territory, but as things progress the enemy will begin to predict your actions, and will be better prepared which makes things harder.

Cassia and her allies are not alone either. You’ll be assisted by mercenaries and outlaws who are on your side to help take the capital of Mengbilla back from Marwen’s slimy hands. Each mission you’ll be allowed to bring 10 generic soldiers with you to assist with the fights. You can even command them to guard certain zones or carry out specific orders. As well as these new additions, Daedalic have also tightened up the combat and added a stamina system for non-mages to have a resource pool for balancing.

The hit rate of the Dark Eye rule-set has been tweaked due to the last game’s consistent problem with accuracy. Overall these changes equate to a much more solid experience. The lack of a player-created character is disappointing as I personally enjoy the ability to self-insert a character to the plot, but in this instance the game is no less rich for it. Cassia is a blank slate, free for you to form as you like. The skill tree has been updated to be more simple and clear.  All of this equates as it intended to create a more solid experience. Unfortunately even with all this work put in; there are still old issues from the first Blackguards which have been retained.

The main issue is the length of the battles. Despite the game length being shorter than the first overall, the battles still have a tendency to drag on past the point of becoming tiresome. Particularly on large maps with many enemies, you can find yourself waiting up to a minute or so for your next turn. This can really kill the flow and with no option to skip enemy turns, there’s no way to force the action. If you think they’ve added a save feature into the battles either then you’d be wrong. When you pair these together you can find yourself in a scenario where you spend hours trying to clear a fight only to fail at the last minute and start over. Still, the gameplay is solid overall.

Much like the first game, the voice acting and characterisations are great. All the returning characters have their original voice actors reprising their roles who give performances consistent to their personalities and motivations from the last game. In fact the voice actress of Cassia delivers such a good distressed heroine, that it genuinely gave me uncomfortable chills early on. In addition, the natural storytelling of the open mission structure and choices throughout the game give it some good replay value. Even more so with Cassia’s blank slate and freedom to build however you like. Daedalic also mention that the battles have randomly generated elements to them, such as spawn locations and random events.

In summary, Blackguards 2 doesn’t feel like a sequel as much as an expansion onto the first game with more features. This isn’t particularly bad however, as I enjoyed Blackguards. So naturally more Blackguards is extremely welcome. The plot and storyline have been well thought out and exceed the original in many ways. While the additions to the combat and gameplay as a whole improve it. If you enjoyed the original Blackguards then you should definitely play Blackguards 2, because it’s the same goodness wrapped into a new package.

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