Just purchased it, although I already have a huge backlog. DRM-free on release, german language files on release and the extremly fair price (not too expensive, not too cheap) got me. On top of that: I'm a huge fan of The Dark Eye (played the P&P many years) and I love turn based combat. Now I just need to find the time to play the game... :/

Ah, so you were trying to be edgy. Got it.

I wouldn't even bother arguing with them. The Jaded One is just that: jaded. They're bored and annoyed at pretty much everything, and they roam these forums just to say no game -- no game whatsoever, mind you -- is ever good enough. I would recommend them to just chill, relax, and enjoy the games for what they are, but apparently they want the games to be living, organic creatures, independent from the human beings that make and develop them.

Just... don't even bother. Simply don't. Trolls will be trolls, especially sarcastic, passive-aggressive "righteous" ones, but just like any other kind of troll, they shouldn't be fed. Which. by the way, I'm aware I just did, myself.

Broke down and got it. Couldn't resist a brand new rpg that is drm free. I have only played about an hour so far, but really looking forward to the rest. No regrets yet! Next up will be Banner Saga if that other company gets their act together.

While the price is rather steep, I have no regrets either. I am rather enjoying the pseudo-pen and paper feel of character creation/leveling. Though I also like that you can build a character as you wish for the most part too; it kind of almost puts me in the mood to get a table top game going. My only minor complaint is the save game is in the appdata folder rather than My Documents, which is just a little bothersome due to I'd rather not have that many writes going to my SSD. I know they are small data transfers and won't amount to much, but I moved My Documents to an HDD for a reason. Hopefully with a patch they could correct that, that being said the game itself is very enjoyable. :)

No, you missed the type of point being made in my original post, which was this type of sandwich is missing the meat and instead contains a noticeable amount of fecal material.

(And please note, this is an analogy meant to illuminate the kind of point being made. It should not be taken as direct commentary on Blackguards.)

I'm not going to waste my time arguing about why one shit sandwich sucks or rocks compared to other shit sandwiches. I'm trying to explain that if the fecal material were removed and replaced with just a bit of meat (or at least something we can more easily pretend is meat), more people might like the sandwich. (Well, maybe start over with a new sandwich rather than just brushing off the fecal material, but I hope you got the point.)

Your post is meaningless to anyone trying to find out what kind of transmission fluid to put in their Toyota.

And even though reviewing the game was not the point of my post, I still gave more information about the game than 90% of the posts in this thread, including a goofy game mechanic, the similarity to king's bounty as well as a major difference, and a link to a review on youtube. Your whining here about how "meaningless" my post is as the review it was not even intended to be is a transparent sham.

The actual point of my post was that this type of game is deficient to other types for certain gamers such as myself, and subsequently I don't plan on buying it. Furthermore, I wanted to point out to Daedalic that the missing ingredient here is adequate support for immersion (which I explained in some detail), to let them know that if they put that in future games (maybe they'll make a proper RPG at some point), then I might buy that game. (The treasure chest nonsense is a pretty clear indication that immersion was not only not a top priority for this game, but they were willing to effectively stab it in the back for a cheap game mechanic, or perhaps out of laziness in copying the king's-bounty formula, either of which really does not bode well for immersion in the rest of the game.) Finally, I wanted to explain in as clear a fashion as a I could to other gamers who may be experiencing similar dissatisfaction with certain types of games, but perhaps can't put their finger on exactly why that is, why they might be having such an experience. That may help them more accurately predict whether or not a given game they are considering will be one they would enjoy.

The message is not for everyone. Some people like king's-bounty type games (and adventure games, and pointless/repetitive tactical battles). Don't complain if the message is not for you and/or assume that just because it's not for you that it's not for anyone.

Wrong. It does not say "tactical RPG". (Just in case you are not aware, note that the words "tactical RPG" have a specific meaning to some people. For example, "A distinct difference between tactical RPGs and traditional RPGs is the lack of exploration.") Rather, the release announcement says it's: an engaging RPG in the world of the Dark Eye with deep tactical combat mechanics

I'm perfectly OK with RPGs having "deep tactical combat mechanics". In fact, when done well, it can make the RPG more enjoyable. (And if an RPG has lots of combat, it should have an interesting combat system so that part of the game doesn't become a drag.) And "deep tactical combat mechanics" is not in any way incompatible with a game providing an "immersive, living world" experience -- having "deep tactical combat mechanics" does not imply that other features need be missing/shallow/silly.

The text says it's an RPG with "deep tactical combat mechanics", not "deep tactical combat mechanics" instead of an RPG. My post was pointing out that some gamers may find the RPG part lacking (practically missing as they may find it plays more like an adventure game with tactical battles glued on than an RPG).

Not exactly true. I am fairly jaded, but I am not just jaded. (For example, I still have hope that the kind of RPG I would like to play can and will be made, even if I have to do it myself.) Also, it's worth noting that being jaded is not an inherent quality, but one created from without (in my case from bad games and stupid people):

jaded: "The end result of having a steady flow of negative experiences, disappointment, and unfulfillment fed into a person where they get to the point where their anger circuits just sort of burn out and they accept disillusionment."

Definitely not true. First of all, let's set a useful definition for "good enough": A game one enjoys rather than wishing that the experience of playing it, the time spent playing it, the time spent reading its manual, and the money paid for it could all be taken back. For games not played yet, this extends to games that one believes will be "good enough" per the previous sentence.

Given that definition, I will say that I do not believe that Blackguards, for me, is good enough. However, your "no game whatsoever" claim is simply false. Just a few days ago I described DROD as "a fairly nice puzzle game" . Sure, I include some "nits", but we're not discussing a game that's "perfect" here, just one that's "good enough". (And though I don't think I've posted about it on GOG before, [url=http://qrostar.skr.jp/index.cgi?page=jelly&lang=en]Jelly no Puzzle is an excellent (and free) puzzle game.) If you want more examples, here's a post where I point out about a dozen good games.

Sorry, but that is just idiotic. Might as well hand someone a shit sandwich and tell them to "just chill, relax, and enjoy the sandwich for what it is". (Note that I am not calling Blackguards a shit sandwich here, but merely using an analogy to point out the problem with your logic.) Some things in life are not choices -- what you believe and what you enjoy are not choices. (If you want to argue that, feel free to go to some gay website and tell them they should just start enjoying females.) You may change over time, believing different things and enjoying different things at different points in your life, but it's not something that can be forced. (Though, there are a multitude of ways in which one can cause themselves brain-damage, and perhaps enough of that would result in one liking a shit sandwich, so I guess I would have to say that forcing in some cases might be possible, but not desirable. There are also psychological conditioning techniques, but those are probably also undesirable as they leave you not you anymore.)

If you want a game that can provide an "immersive, living world" experience (and for RPG-type games I would like that very much), that may be the only way to do it. If you know a better way to provide that kind of experience (especially one that wouldn't take the entire annual GDP of the US to produce), I'm all ears.

And you are over-generalizing here (both with this statement and your use of "they"). Not every game needs such features, because not every game really depends on providing an "immersive, living world" experience. E.g., pure puzzle games and strategy games do not need this. Pure puzzle games are about applying your mind to solve puzzles. Pure strategy games are about applying your mind to achieve some goal. (Which reminds me, another decent (free) game is TripleA -- eventually you may figure out the AI and then perhaps the game becomes too easy, but until that point it's IMO time well spent.) This is unlike role-playing games (real ones, not role-playing-in-name-only), which require you to have the freedom to actually play a role (make decisions and take actions that make sense according to the rules of the world you are in and the character you are playing), and in order for your choices to be meaningful this has to happen in a world that reacts appropriately to your actions. That is basically all that is meant by "immersive, living world".

Furthermore, although the immersion factor in cRPGs is far from where I wish it were, some do better at immersion than others, and I can sometimes enjoy those. I basically said as much when I asked in my original post "Why should I play a game like this rather than more traditionally formatted RPGs?" That implies that I do play "more traditionally formatted RPGs", and an even stronger indication of that can be found in my How to Play Eschalon Book I (minor spoilers) posts (especially since the second includes a screen shot of my character near the very end of the game). Currently no cRPGs provide the deep immersion I would like (so they're certainly not perfect), however, as long as they provide a good enough facade so I can at least pretend I'm in a living world (I pointed out this "pretendability" factor in my original post), and don't do anything to smash that very delicate state of affairs, then I may be able to enjoy the game. If they can't manage to do even that (and Blackguards apparently does not), then the game has no value to me as a role-playing game.

So to sum your post -- two false statements, an idiotic claim, an over-generalization, and now name-calling.

I don't know what you mean by that, but thanks!

Uhm... Do you know why I don't review VR Soccer '96? I'll tell you: Because I don't like soccer or sport games. My review would sound like "Shitty sport put into a shitty game". Maybe I'll do such a review one day (never say never!), but there's one thing I'll never (oops) do: Telling people that VR Soccer '96 would be a better game, had the developers removed the soccer part and added some shooting instead...

Don't play turn based tactical combat games, when you don't like turn based tactical combat games oO

Your post might make the tiniest bit of sense if they were marketing this as a tactical combat game rather than as an RPG and I had actually ever suggested removing the tactical combat from the game.

What (IMO) should be removed is stuff that makes no sense (like the treasure chest mechanic where if you kill your opponents before you steal their loot, you loose the loot -- you have to steal their loot while they are attacking you if you want it). What should be added is minor things that help with immersion (e.g., a more expansive tactical area so it feels like you are fighting a battle in a believable world rather than in some kind of puzzle/cage-fight -- an example of such a tactical area in a game with some similarities to Blackguards would be Darklands, if you check the Darklands screenshots, you'll find an example of an "in-city" tactical map on screenshot #5 and an example of an "outdoors" tactical map on screenshot #14).

However, because I saw enough problems with the game that I already made the "no buy" decision, I have not delved deeper into the details of the game so I do not actually know if such tweaks would be enough to salvage this game or not, nor can I at this time provide a complete list of tweaks that might be needed.

From what I've seen in the demo, you can play a female character, but the party members who join you in the beginning are male and you can't just kick them out. Does that answer your question? ;)

yes, yes it does... thanks :)

Uhm... From GOG's gamecard: You can find the exact same words on every single site (Steam, Amazon, ...) that's selling the game. They're not advertising this as a RPG. They're clearly advertising it as a turn based strategy RPG. Yes, you're right, it's not The Elder Scrolls or the next Ultima, but character creation, stat-developmentg, dice rolling, skill tree, experience points... All this makes this game a RPG. A turn based strategy RPG (as it is clearly stated everywhere), but nevertheless a RPG.

If you compare this to reality, it definitely does sound stupid, you're right. I would never loot the chests in battle. Why should I? There's enough time after killing all the foes. But you have to realize two things.... First: It is a game. Second: It is a turn based srategy game. Putting chests with loot on the battlefield wouldn't make any sense, when you would auto-loot them after the battle. No one would go for the chests during battle. They would just waste space. It would be a useless concept. So you have to see the chests as what they really are: Additional loot for those who're willing to handicap themselves in battle (using a character to go for the loot instead of using him in the fight) to get some extras. They're achievements (not the useless pop-up that Steam will ive you for playing the game). A challenge.

That's at least something we could argue about. Tactical maps with "natural" cover, posssibilities for an ambush, high ground advantages and other stuff are a good thing. Something like the new XCOM, just in the world of The Dark Eye. Sounds great. That's not what Daedalic tried to achive, but definitely an improvement they should consider for Blackguards 2, should they ever plan to make it.

Fantastic release! Thanks for Chains of Satinav.

In regards to this issue, I have what may be a ridiculous question. When the concept of having to get loot during battle is introduced in the game, one of the characters says we need to go for the crates. But I'm reading people only talking about opening the chests... Is there a point to breaking open crates during battles, or is it only the actual treasure chests that you need to bother with? I've been doing both, as I wasn't sure, but it makes some of these fights damn tough.