The Adamant Fortress mission is just plain broken.Maybe if I’d come to it later in the game I’d have figured out a way to do it, but according to the hub it was the easiest mission I could take on! Unfortunately, it was so maddening that it totally sapped my interest in playing anymore. A dozen attempts and I got nowhere near beating it. Even knocking the difficulty down to easy it is still impossible. Either that, or it’ll get the ghost to sit on them so they can’t do anything. If you’re lucky, you can get by and flip the switch but when you do they’ll just mind control the folks behind you before you can smash the crystals. You have to crack a bunch of crystals that are hidden behind some spikes controlled by levers and an effectively invincible sand ghost protects the end. It’s not tough but rewarding in a Dark Souls kinda way, it is just broken. I was really enjoying playing until I got to Adamant Fortress and the second part of that level is just broken. It was all going so well until I got here… However, all of this pales into insignificance before the might of the Adamant’s Fortress mission. ![]() Similarly you move the screen using the traditional WASD or by moving your mouse but it moves painfully slowly and there doesn’t seem to be a option for speeding it up. This was particularly annoying because there were a ton of enemies on screen and so each turn seemed to take an age while you waited for people to wander about. The first one I ran into was where, after one quite long and tough battle, the enemy refused to take its turn, so I had to do the whole mission again from scratch. So deep customisation, interesting characters and big wide world to conquer and ravage so far so good there were, however, some issues… I never really understood enough about the creators or some of the side characters to care about torturing and killing them. The characters come across well with some good voice acting and decent scripting. The wider story is enjoyable, if somewhat sparse on the details. You can lop heads off prisoners, slaughter innocents and set your own people against each other. Your mates in camp are a varied bunch, but they are all basically bad people, drug dealing dwarves, murderous mercenaries and lazy slaves. Take a town and the head of your mercenaries will want to loot and plunder, crushing the traitorous ‘maggots’ who continue to work to undermine you. This is your camp, you’ll come here a lot to chat and beef up your comrades. There were a few AI blips where enemies would inexplicably not fight back, preferring instead to crouch as you slaughter their friends then turn on them, but largely the computer was pretty canny. The first ten or so battles moved on at a good pace with me leveling up my heroes and kicking the old ex-hubbies butt. Quite often it took a couple of turns before I knew the best way to beat my enemies, protecting a lever here or focusing attacks on a particular foe there. ![]() The battles themselves are pretty fun and surprisingly tactical. The game is split between a number of hub zones where you can banter with your buddies, execute people and shop – pretty standard RPG fare and the battle arenas where you drop in a team and take turns beating on people until only you survive (hopefully anyway). Cassia is a pretty hardcore dame though and fourish years and one 30 minute tutorial of spider bashing later, she is out, pissed and looking for vengeance on former squeeze Marwan. The game starts with Cassia of Tenos being tossed into a labyrinth full of giant poisonous spiders that are guaranteed to kill or make mad anyone they bite. ![]() Blackguards 2 is a turn-based strategy-RPG that promises to “deliver challenging hexfield battles and a gritty story filled with violence and crime”.
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