Blackguards

Blackguards is a 2014 Tactical RPG by Daedalic Entertaiment set in the world of and using the systems of The Dark Eye. The player is a young minor noble that is accused of murdering their friend Elanor, the local princess, despite (to your eyes) her being killed by a strange wolf. Conveniently before execution a fellow prisoner, a bad tempered Dwarf imprisoned for murder by arson named Naurim, happens to break out and decides to take you with him. They are joined by fellow prisoner Zurbaran, an enslaved mage and ladies man who has been imprisoned for impersonating his former masters. The group decides to investigate the suspicious death as they head south to the border.

Drawing from Daedalic's previous fame in the world of Adventure Games, every map and encounter in Blackguards is unique and many encounters are fairly open ended puzzles. The game also inherits The Dark Eye's fairly deep character creation system, though it was criticized for being poorly explained in game.


 * All There in the Manual: The "murder by" part of Naurim's murder by arson is not alluded to in-game, only the manual.
 * Bag of Spilling: You can select an initial gear setup in character creation but it is lost and unrecoverable when you are imprisoned. Can haunt players who didn't realize this gear selection would be used in flash back levels and selected it poorly.
 * The Casanova: Zurbaran
 * Killed Off for Real
 * Point Buy System: A natural result of being The Dark Eye based.
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender: Chapter 2 is clearly written for a male protagonist, regardless of the player's actual.
 * Upper Class Twit: The player character needs so much of the world explained to them not because they are amnesiac, but they're a carefree noble kid who has never been that far out of their family's compound. Zurbaran fakes being one.