I really wanted to like this game. In the first few minutes I spent in En Garde!, I was intrigued. I really liked the vibrant comic style mixed with a rather unique swashbuckler / Three Musketeers setting. I also enjoyed the humorous writing quite a bit. The game's protagonist is your typical witty Zorro/d'Artagnan-inspired loudmouth who takes up arms against the mischievous and corrupt Count-Duke, fighting for justice and equality. I really liked that setup.
I also enjoyed the gameplay in the first chapter. This is a fencing game that mixes fast-paced action combat based on parries and dodges with a highly reactive environment that you have to utilize in battles to prevail. Simply fighting enemies one on one is usually not the way to go. You have to use what's in your vicinity like buckets that you throw on peoples' heads, or boxes that you can kick in their faces to stagger them. This is cool and the game gets really creative with it. Soon enough, you'll have so many options at your disposal to deal with enemies. You can drop chandeliers, throw grenades into fire pits, kick down oil jugs to make the floor slippery and so on. This approach to combat feels novel and fun, at least in the first hour or so of the game.
Maybe I'm one of the few people to feel this way but using environmental traps and objects to deal with enemies loses its charm rather quickly for me. I had the same issue when playing Dark Messiah some time ago. Yeah it's fun to kick enemies into weapon racks or drop vases onto their head but when I do the same thing 100 times, I just get bored. Even in a short game like En Garde! that I finished in 4 hours, this approach to combat couldn't keep me hooked for too long. My biggest issue with the game was how messy most of the group battles were designed. In the first chapter and parts of the second one, fighting groups of enemies was pretty fun. Running around searching for traps and throwables was cool and taking enemies apart bit by bit felt motivating. Much of that is due to the smart and open level design in these first areas. However, the game soon starts to artificially increase its difficulty in the most annoying ways imaginable. For one, it just throws you into combat situations where you have to deal with multiple elite enemies in rather cramped rooms which made it super difficult to focus on a single enemy. You see, as soon as you have to fight more than one dude at a time and can't rely on running away finding traps and stuff, the game just kinda breaks. You try to focus on one guy, dodging and parrying at the right times only to get stabbed in the back by another. The problem is, that, for elite enemies, their health/stagger bar immediately regenerates once you make a "mistake" like getting attacked by someone else. I'm sure you can adjust that in the difficulty settings but I wanted to experience this game on its intended normal difficulty.
Another thing that really bugged was some of the boss encounters. There's one in particular where you have to fight on a bridge and it was just the worst. In general, the fight is pretty tough (for me this was the hardest in the game) but I'm a sucker for tight one-on-one boss battles. I should have liked this but I ended up hating every second of it. There are two reasons for this. For one, fighting on a bridge is a stupid idea for this kind of battle. Whenever you parry or dodge, your character moves. Even if you time your actions correctly, you can easily drop off the bridge. You don't lose health but falling and respawning can mess with your timing which means that even though you were close to decreasing the boss' health, your progress is reset. The second reason is the camera. There were so many moments in which I didn't see what my opponent was doing because the camera was stuck in the wall behind me or it didn't turn fast enough. The camera itself is its own issue in this game. For some reason, the devs refrained from using a lock-on system and implemented a sort of automatic targeting system which mostly works but often doesn't. So many times, I tried to attack someone and my character would just not target that person but flail away in the air or attack someone else. I just don't get why they didn't simply use lock-on, it would have made combat so much more manageable.
So yeah, I was somewhat disappointed with this one. I still like the humor and setting which felt fresh and entertained me for an afternoon. The fighting seemed promising in the beginning but turned into an annoying mess towards the end. If this game is on sale, you can definitely check it out (I got it in a humble bundle) but for me, this is definitely not a must-play.
I also enjoyed the gameplay in the first chapter. This is a fencing game that mixes fast-paced action combat based on parries and dodges with a highly reactive environment that you have to utilize in battles to prevail. Simply fighting enemies one on one is usually not the way to go. You have to use what's in your vicinity like buckets that you throw on peoples' heads, or boxes that you can kick in their faces to stagger them. This is cool and the game gets really creative with it. Soon enough, you'll have so many options at your disposal to deal with enemies. You can drop chandeliers, throw grenades into fire pits, kick down oil jugs to make the floor slippery and so on. This approach to combat feels novel and fun, at least in the first hour or so of the game.
Maybe I'm one of the few people to feel this way but using environmental traps and objects to deal with enemies loses its charm rather quickly for me. I had the same issue when playing Dark Messiah some time ago. Yeah it's fun to kick enemies into weapon racks or drop vases onto their head but when I do the same thing 100 times, I just get bored. Even in a short game like En Garde! that I finished in 4 hours, this approach to combat couldn't keep me hooked for too long. My biggest issue with the game was how messy most of the group battles were designed. In the first chapter and parts of the second one, fighting groups of enemies was pretty fun. Running around searching for traps and throwables was cool and taking enemies apart bit by bit felt motivating. Much of that is due to the smart and open level design in these first areas. However, the game soon starts to artificially increase its difficulty in the most annoying ways imaginable. For one, it just throws you into combat situations where you have to deal with multiple elite enemies in rather cramped rooms which made it super difficult to focus on a single enemy. You see, as soon as you have to fight more than one dude at a time and can't rely on running away finding traps and stuff, the game just kinda breaks. You try to focus on one guy, dodging and parrying at the right times only to get stabbed in the back by another. The problem is, that, for elite enemies, their health/stagger bar immediately regenerates once you make a "mistake" like getting attacked by someone else. I'm sure you can adjust that in the difficulty settings but I wanted to experience this game on its intended normal difficulty.
Another thing that really bugged was some of the boss encounters. There's one in particular where you have to fight on a bridge and it was just the worst. In general, the fight is pretty tough (for me this was the hardest in the game) but I'm a sucker for tight one-on-one boss battles. I should have liked this but I ended up hating every second of it. There are two reasons for this. For one, fighting on a bridge is a stupid idea for this kind of battle. Whenever you parry or dodge, your character moves. Even if you time your actions correctly, you can easily drop off the bridge. You don't lose health but falling and respawning can mess with your timing which means that even though you were close to decreasing the boss' health, your progress is reset. The second reason is the camera. There were so many moments in which I didn't see what my opponent was doing because the camera was stuck in the wall behind me or it didn't turn fast enough. The camera itself is its own issue in this game. For some reason, the devs refrained from using a lock-on system and implemented a sort of automatic targeting system which mostly works but often doesn't. So many times, I tried to attack someone and my character would just not target that person but flail away in the air or attack someone else. I just don't get why they didn't simply use lock-on, it would have made combat so much more manageable.
So yeah, I was somewhat disappointed with this one. I still like the humor and setting which felt fresh and entertained me for an afternoon. The fighting seemed promising in the beginning but turned into an annoying mess towards the end. If this game is on sale, you can definitely check it out (I got it in a humble bundle) but for me, this is definitely not a must-play.