Maybe they should have called it Blackguards (Plus) because it is plus a few extras but minus everything you could consider a special edition.

Oh good I like lossless, though I also like to know composer and artist info which is usually in the tag info in FLAC and MP3 files. Is there an MP3 version as well so I can copy that information when I convert the WAV files to FLAC?

Now I'm tempted will have to think hard about buying this game, Lossless audio tends to sway me for a first day release, just that Australian currency at the moment isn't great against the US and my Christmas spending is still haunting me.

Thanks for the WAV version of the soundtrack atleast.

Plus FLAC supports tagging, so you can have artist details in there to see in your player of choice. WAV being raw there is no real support for that in the format.
Should in an ideal world be MP3 for those who don't know what a FLAC file is they also most likely don't know or appreciate lossless sound. I find that those wanting lossless tend to have a little knowledge so they can handle it.
An MP3 copy for the masses. That way we get compression and tagging information for those who like the lossless side of things and you cater for everyone else.

In my ideal world that is how soundtracks would be delivered, and the developers should take the time to ensure all the tag information is accurate on artist details etc, just nice to have.

Wait,...what...?

A Daedalic game with german audio and text support, right from the start?

Woohoo...the times they are a-changing, eh?

Ok, bought it - just to show you, that I appreciate this procedure. ;o)

Well you know; you can convert it in FLAC , which said above have tagging support

1 - Soundtrack weight less, without losing quality
2 - You can transcode the FLAC format to any format you want.(lossy or lossless)

So , WAV is fine, but less convenient.

BananaJane may or may not have been being sarcastic, but let me answer seriously.

Blackguards has at least one stupid aspect. If you are fighting someone and there are chests of loot about, you can't just kill them and take the loot. Instead you have to dance around with them, not killing them while gathering the loot in the middle of the damn fight, and only after you have all the loot can you kill them. The video here is an intro to the game, and you can see this stupid feature explained and demonstrated at about 7 minutes in.

This same stupid "feature" was in "King's Bounty: The Legend". It's unfortunate to see other games imitating this despite it being completely counter to any in-game-world sense. It's already bad enough that games don't add features that increase immersion, they really don't need to go out of their way to add features like this that actively attack it. (I understand it as a game mechanic, but that does nothing to reduce its immersion-destructive nature.)

The main reason I stopped playing King's Bounty (and did not consider purchasing later games in that series) is because the game format is adventure game + tactical battles + character progression, with the adventure game part separated out in a fairly in-your-face way, and I don't really care for adventure games, and that format makes it kind of hard to even pretend you are in a living world, leaving only the tactical battles and character progression. Blackguards looks like it does much the same thing. The final nail in the coffin for King's Bounty was that after a while the tactical battles became repetitive and boring (a bit of a chore actually). I can't say for sure that Blackguards will have that issue to the same degree, but considering that I already "learned my lesson" about these kinds of games by paying only $4 for King's Bounty (and many hours of my time), I don't think I want/need a repeat lesson for $40 (and a bunch more hours).

At least one thing Blackguards has going for it that King's Bounty did not is that all of your fighting units are progressible, whereas in King's Bounty all of your fighting units (except for one small set of special units that you didn't always have/use) were disposable clones and only the off-screen "general" was progressible. Maybe that will help keep Blackguards from becoming quite so boring.

My question would be "Why should I play a game like this rather than more traditionally formatted RPGs?" Minor tactical-combat features aside, so far I have no answer to that.

EDIT: I think another major thing that takes away from this type of game, compared to both more common strategy game and RPG formats, is that the tactical battles are horribly artificial. In strategy games with strategy+tactical levels (like the Age of Wonders series), the tactical battles (and exactly what troops both you and your enemy have in them) are direct outcomes of you and your enemies/allies putting forth a specific set of troops to a specific place, with both of you having a purpose in mind and the outcome of the tactical battle determining which (if either) of you has succeeded in that purpose. In King's-Bounty-likes, what enemies you face in a given tactical battle is just whatever the game designer arbitrarily set it to be, and success only moves you along the (already highly artificial) "adventure game" finite-state-machine the game designers have laid out for you. In most RPGs, the player can often influence who they battle and where the tactical battle happens. The player can be thief-like, silently picking off enemies one at a time. The player can try to lure one or more enemies away from a group to deal with them in more manageable pieces. And (unlike most if not all strategy games) there is no artifically constrained "tactical battle area", the battle area is "the world". So to sum, it's not just the repetition of tactical battles that hurts this type of game, but the limitations, artificiality and (ultimately) feeling-of-pointlessness of them. That said, if you actually like adventure games (and/or somewhat repetitive/pointless/artificial tactical battles), then perhaps none of this applies to you, and you may enjoy Blackguards.

Thank you for the complimentary copy of Chains of Satinav. I love coming to this site and finding things like this unexpectedly.

Of course, if you want a cheaper RPG based on Das Schwartze Auge, there's always the Realms of Arkania trilogy.

Man.... this is FORTY SEVEN dollars when converted to australian

Well I understand $47 is no small change for a game but it's a matter of if $47 is worth it or not.

There's a demo which you can download from gamershell.com (not sure if it's available to download somewhere else) to try it out and there's no playable time limit nor any features locked but you can only play up to the end of chapter 1 I think and the save file can be import over to the full version in case if you decide to buy the game or sometime down road when it's on sale if you can't afford it now if the game peaks your interest after trying out the demo.

Its better than paying & 70/80/90 bucks at EB or JB if it had been available at retail stores here :).
Plus atm GOG version seems to be the best deal going.....

Maybe you could write a small review here on the gamecard page. Just a bit of introduction, what makes the setting appealing, are the game controls difficult, what is the overall difficulty, how does it compare to Baldurs Gate, ... From someone who actually plays the game I would be delighted to hear something.

Fine release, wishlisted.
Thanks for free Satinav on reddit ;)

This looks like a fine addition to the GOG library, in my opinion, even though I'm not the hugest fan of turn-based stuff, let alone tactical RPGs. Hopefully, the pen & paper/turn-based RPG community over here will appreciate the game, all I can say for myself is that it feels nice to see GOG get some day-one love from a publisher. Also, being a Daedalic point & click adventure games huge fan (not that I have anything against Telltale, but Daedalic have way better point & click games in the market and yet they don't get the love they deserve), even though I know next to nothing about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye, I thank both GOG and Daedalic for letting me get a free copy of Chains of Satinav.

WAV wouldn't bother me personally, but you might still consider compressing it with FLAC as the quality will be the same while leaving a much smaller bandwidth footprint on the site.

Well, if these are the biggest negatives, the game actually sounds pretty good. The treasure chest thing sounds silly, but the gripe on battles basically just boils down to not liking this specific type of game.



How are the keyboard controls in the game? I know there's a demo, but I don't want to try it since I don't want to buy it at the moment. I watched a video and the gameplay basically is a board game -style movement and then battles? Can you move with the keyboard in the battles? Can you use the command selection with the keyboard? Or is it just mouse?