En Garde! is a third-person swashbuckler recreation that means that you can use your surroundings to face off towards guards and enemies in fast-paced fencing motion. A debut for Hearth Video games, who developed and printed the sport, En Garde! swings into motion and instantly turns into essential this summer time.
En Garde! has some of the distinctive gameplays I’ve seen in a online game shortly as you’re taking Adalia on a fencing journey in contrast to every other. The fencing mechanic is easy and, coupled with parrying, blocking and dodging, feels immensely satisfying when battling a number of guards directly. The schwing sounds of your fencing sword clanging along with your enemies’ weapons is rewarding to the eyes and the ears in a method I could not have predicted, and it led me down a harmful path of swinging every thing and everybody that comes my method. That is made much more fulfilling if you get extra particular combos, most of which it’s a must to time fairly properly, and use your surroundings rigorously and shortly to trick, stun or watch your enemies get crushed by a chandelier. It is swashbuckling enjoyable!
The sport itself performs like an easy theatrical journey divided into 4 primary “episodes”, every of that are self-contained and distinctive in their very own method. There are numerous and colourful characters that Adalia de Volador meets (and bickers with) alongside the way in which in addition to set items and places when you attempt to cease the Depend-Duke from his tyrannical regime. Zaida, particularly, is a standout character you meet all through the sport, generally even labeled as “Undoubtedly Not Your Crush” which stuffed this participant’s queer coronary heart with pleasure. Adalia, our fabulous bisexual Spanish protagonist, has sufficient quips and witty dialogue to maintain you entertained for hours—round 6-8 hours complete, in my expertise. Typically, it is enjoyable to cease round and take within the new places as a substitute of following the markers that help you in finishing the present quest. Doing so can reward you with secrets and techniques and backstory scattered round every episode, including a pleasant contact to an already wealthy lore.
Aside from the principle storyline, En Garde! additionally incorporates an Area Mode, which is a novel strategy to maintain gamers coming again for extra Adalia and fencing enjoyable. I am personally at all times on the lookout for extra replay worth in video games currently after coming off of months of Hades runs, and the Area Mode appears like the proper mixture of randomized fight, waves of enemies, and beautiful locales—and it’s extremely addictive. It permits gamers to decide on between 3 optimistic modifiers in between arenas that parry a gameplay modifier used to buff enemies. This was undeniably one among my favourite issues about En Garde! because the unpredictability saved me coming again for extra swashbuckling—plus, I actually needed to kick extra crates and barrels in direction of the guards.
There is a slight issue curve within the recreation that I wasn’t too ready for, notably after the second degree/episode, however the brand new particular talents you be taught as you progress actually assist counter {that a} bit. It is slightly jarring after the fast-paced motion of the primary half of the sport and nearly Souls-like, however En Garde! actually needs you to strategize in real-time and make the most of every thing round you whereas making ready in your enemies’ subsequent strikes. This issue is, nevertheless, all forgotten if you understand you can pet the chickens!
The cartoonish environments are completely beautiful to take a look at. Whether or not you are in the course of a battle enviornment surrounded by colourful and wealthy locales or swinging from a rope atop the putting ocean, there’s at all times one thing breathtaking round you in En Garde!. Hearth Video games additionally cleverly maintain the environments from being repetitive by making every episode stand out by itself. It is actually a visible delight.
The sport runs very properly with little to no hiccups all through the totally different episodes, and it is price noting how exceptionally quick the loading screens are. For those who additionally end up leaping into the water for enjoyable—the place are my chaotic players?—then the sport reloads at your final pre-jump place nearly instantaneously, which is fairly spectacular.
Utilizing a recreation controller made the gameplay so much smoother a lot that I performed most of En Garde! each on the Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally. It is positively the sort of recreation that is much more enjoyable on-the-go!
The sport options a number of normal accessibility options, together with subtitles which had been on by default, a pleasant and much-needed contact. It was notably cool to see the digital camera zoom in on the characters that had been talking and the subtitles together with their names as a substitute of simply the voiceover.
Aside from the default Medium setting, gamers can set the issue to Simple or Onerous (the previous of which is useful) in addition to Invincibility Mode and Computerized Parrying, if gamers needed a extra relaxed and story-driven journey.
En Garde! is the swashbuckling journey you did not understand you wanted this summer time. The fencing mechanic provides a novel gameplay to a theatrical story jam-packed with enjoyable characters, wealthy and colourful environments, and real-time dodging and parrying. An Area Mode will maintain you coming again for extra, however the issue curve is unquestionably one thing to look out for.
