Blackguards
Skip · RPG · 2014
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $9.99.
- Length
- 40.9h
- Value
- $0.24/hr
- Reviews
- 62% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, nVidia GeForce 8600 GT, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, 20 GB of storage. Windows only.
What happens when the only hope of a threatened world lies not with heroes in shining armor, but in the hands of a band of misfits and criminals? Blackguards, a new turn-based strategy RPG, explores this very question. You will discover over 180 unique hex-based battlegrounds within a dark and mature story of crime, drugs, and murder.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $0.99. That was June 2019. 130 discounts in the 13 years on record. They run about 90 percent off, roughly 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
It is pricier than 61 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 92 percent. Tactical Breach Wizards ($19.99, scores 83) outscores it, and so does The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos ($34.99, scores 70). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
Of the 623 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, none come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 40 percent of the 362 reviews written there were positive, against 62 percent overall, and those are 12 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
36% start to 1% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
9 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Briefly about this game: If the chance of hitting is 90%, you will miss 3 times in a row
If you like the World of The Dark Eye and if you like turned based rpgs, this could be a pick for you. I prefer Drakensang 1 and 2. The game feels unfair and a bit random sometimes. But it has its pros. Since I am a fan of the world, it was interesting to see another side of it. Also every dialogue is voiced and it was motivating to spend AP to make my heroes (or antiheroes) better. The leveling system is a bit...
I have only had the patience to play the first hour or so of the game, so the full extent of the game is unknown to me. However, what I have seen of it is generic and overly complicated. The leveling system requires careful and intelligent allocation of skill points across a few dozen abilities, skills, and traits. The combat isn't bad, but is bland by turn-based standards. The story seems rather standard. Not bad...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Blackguards scores 11/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/249650/blackguardsThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 17, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.