Truth to be told, it was a memory of the last play through. But, i did boot up Blackguards this wkend just to see how and what and i have to say, from a couple of hours playing that to me, the comparrison is not too far off the bat.

Of course we can go in depth about specifics such as, how many characters you can control or how the ui is organized, how the campaign presents its self but in the end i fear that the genre discription is actually pretty accurate in describing most of the games that fall into the category.

Not so much an rpg but.. rpg light would detail the specifics. I think i can say quite safely that every game in that category is known for

A - the turn based puzzleminded approach to skirmishes
B - the quite narrow upgrade paths for each character
C- a fixed path to a story with not to many branches for side missions

Xcom and for example Phoenix point and maybe that spy agency thing are more in a league of their own since they bring an extra layer of strategic thinking to the table.

That gears tactical game might be compared to this though i have not seen that game in full action as of yet (same goes for the warhammer variant with the grey knights and such though i imagine that one being also more strategic)

Baldur's Gate and its many many off spring are more truer to their rpg roots.

This does not of course mean that you would naturally enjoy all games that seem to fit within their part of the spectrum. A developers approach to puzzels and combat or upgrading might still make for a world of difference. Therefore it would be nice if you yourself are able to define what it was that you enjoyed about a game

Thank you.

It's been more than seven years since I last replayed Blackguards, so I may be misremembering some things, but here are some of the reasons I liked it a lot:
- Good linear story well tied to the gameplay
- No world map exploration (just nodes)
- No superfluous battles (all are tied to the story to some degree, and are diverse)
- No superfluous characters (more or less your entire party participates in every battle)
- All party members created by the game for story purposes (no generic player-created ones, except the protagonist)
- No battle replayability (no need to repeat battles, unlike say Fell Seal, where some battles optionally need to be repeated later on to get chests that could not be accessed before)
- Lots of battles (~175 battles)
- Challenging on Hard throughout, without being unfair

That's also why I liked Blackguards 2 less (still, a very good game):
- Adds mercenaries and defensive battles, which dilutes the game
- Mostly bland story and characters
- Much less content (~48 battles)
- Easier

Nothing on the rpg mechanics though?
Games such as 'The Banner Saga' and Ash of Gods also might suit you fine i guess. Or those latest Square Enix titles Triangle Strategy... Ogre Tactics.... Difficulty is of course always pretty hard to define.

Not that I remember. I am not one to be thrilled by skill point allocation.

Not at all. The caravan management and forced autosave pretty much ruined the Banner Saga trilogy for me. And the combat was quite boring too. So I didn't even try Ash of Gods.

But I am now playing an excellent game that is quite similar to Blackguards in my eyes --- The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk.

Haven't tried them. Way too expensive for me. I rarely pay more than $13 for a game (including all gameplay DLCs) and I have never paid more than $26 for the same, nor do I plan to.

Indeed.

P.S. You didn't say whether --- based on what I liked about Blackguards --- you think I would like Lost Eidolons or not.

I'm always inclined to spread my love for panzer general look a likes to other people. In this case that would be either the original fantasy general or its modern descendant fantasy general 2 :)

it might be an odd choice but i guess it is mainly that tactical games really come to life for me if there is a slew of characters that follow a path, enriched with an enormous amount of odd mercenaries to recruit and at least more then 10 individual controlled characters up against impossible odds.

A greater number of characters to control and multiple recruitment paths also opens up the tactical challenge in my eyes. Still, from my experience with Lost Eidolons i can say that, even with lesser numbers to control it actually does a pretty well job to stay away from an experience that could be described as 'to puzzly'.

Games that are more rpg in nature of course manage to also evade the puzzly verdict though in my experience on lower levels paths to follow to beat the game's combat challenges are by nature quite strict.

anyways.... long story short.

Point based Lost Eidolons seem as a solid recommendation

Ah, the Banner Saga trilogy... hopefully one day soon it will be on sale with a meaningful discount.

Interesting...

What are the similarities -- as you see it -- to Blackguards? (yes, I am a BIG Blackguards fan. still wish there would have been a 3)

- Good linear story well tied to the gameplay (plus humour in the case of Naheulbeuk)
- No superfluous battles (all are tied to the story or side quests to some degree, and are diverse)
- No superfluous characters (more or less your entire party participates in every battle)
- All party members created by the game for story purposes (no generic player-created ones)
- No battle replayability (impossible to repeat in the case of Naheulbeuk)
- No need to spend hours on loot, party and character management between battles (just minutes)
- Challenging on Hard throughout, without being unfair (very challenging on Nightmare in the case of Naheulbeuk, at least so far)

If you tell me what you liked about Blackguards, I'll let you know if it fits Naheulbeuk.

Disclaimer: Only played less than half the main campaign of Naheulbeuk (DLCs are additional smaller campaigns, I believe). Still, if nothing changes dramatically, it is going to be my GOTY for 2023.

Thank you.

Epic still has their regular free game give aways. Atm Qube and Qube 2 bundled are free to take. I myself picked up that Naheulbeuk game through their client, as well as the games i missed from the tomb raider trilogy, batman lego trilogy, city of gangsters, bioshock trilogy and Kingdom Come Delivery. Most of those titles don't even demand the always online safety mechanic their other new titles all come with.

Well, my love of Blackguards was probably quite simplistic... and mainly that it was my gateway to strategic turn-based games; I had a shoulder injury and thought my days of gaming were over until I found Blackguards and the joys of turn-based games, ;)

I loved the storyline, tone, characters, and the ability to use the environment to my advantage (it also got me very interested in The Dark Eye role playing system). There are many games that do similar (ie Divinity Original Sin) but none have given me quite the same "feeling." Although -- as I mentioned prior -- Demon's Rise and Shieldwall Chronicles seemed somewhat similar.

Thanks! I'll keep an eye open over there. ;)

The tone of Naheubeuk is very different from Blackguards. It is essentially a pretty good parody of dungeon crawling and traditional fantasy characters.

But as a turn-based tactical RPG it is excellent, in my opinion.

There are trade-offs to some of these design decisions, however they're done.

Having more controlled characters, for example, has the effect of making combat longer, to the point where, at some point, the game needs to implement some sort of mid-combat save. For example, when playing a Large Battle with Fell Seal's DLC, you need to have a significant block of time to play, as the battle will take a while. I note that Fire Emblem games do autosave the current battle state constantly, eliminating that issue (though I don't know if that's the original idea). (Fell Seal's DLC is nice if you like monster party members, but be aware that it can make fights with enemy monsters more difficult in a chaotic manner.)

There's a trade-off between the strategy elements and the RPG growth elements. For a game focused on the more RPG side of things, you can have a situation where the player can make a battle easier by fighting extra unimportant battles. Also, I think those RPG growth mechanics can work better if you can create generic characters, which may be at odds of the idea of having only story significant characters. There's also the issue is that too much character growth can have further issues with the strategic elements of the game; in Disgaea's postgame, it's rare to find a battle that isn't either trivial (to the point where a 1 turn victory is easy) or outright impossible.

Also, I note that you can have RPG and puzzle mechanics in the same game; it happens in the Disgaea series, even to the point where at least the first two games have a story map where you can softlock yourself if you're not careful. (Think invincibility, applied to the entire map, because you destroyed the wrong geo symbol.)

When you mention "too puzzly", I can actually think of the term "kaizo". It's usually used to refer to difficult platforming games or hacks, but I think the term can apply to this genre. You can have a battle where there's basically only one strategy to win, and you need to figure out that strategy. Some people like that style of gameplay, while others do not.

The heroes of might and magic series is also known for adding several of those sorts of mission, kaizo , throughout their campaign games over many different titles.

I think that the more strategic titles, for the pc at least, in general speaking all have the option to save at your delight.