En Garde!

[h2]TLDR:[/h2] En Garde! features likable characters, a light-hearted, stylistic premise and setting, and gameplay that becomes increasingly frustrating and tedious. [h2]GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW:[/h2] En Garde is a third-person melee fighting game set in a Renaissance-ish Spain. The protagonist, Adalia De Volodor, has made it her mission to bring down the evil Count Duke and his minions, and help the poor. Controls are intuitive and minimal. The game recommends a controller but I had little trouble with Kb/M. As Adalia, the player can attack, parry, and dodge with ease. Kicks stun enemies, fling barrels and crates at them, or knock them into objects which will collapse and knock them out. There are objects to throw for a brief attack or buckets to toss on an enemy's head to render them blind for a few moments. Adalia can climb on walls and canopies, and swing from bars and ropes to traverse areas, escape, or find a new angle of attack. It's got dashing parkour vibes and generally works well. The game progresses through four chapters, each with mounting difficulty and introducing new enemies of various danger and skill. The overall number of enemy types is pretty limited, sadly. Foes in En Garde do not come at the player one at a time but will attack en masse in groups of four or more. All but the weakest enemies intelligently defend each other, driving Adalia back with unparryable strikes when she attacks one of their fellows. Past the first chapter, the game rarely goes easy on the player. Each chapter ends in a boss fight, all of whom have unique move sets and can be quite difficult to put down. That's pretty much the entire gameplay loop. Fight a group of enemies, parkour through an area, see some interesting scenery, encounter a new group of enemies, repeat. Combat itself is not necessarily easy, even on Normal difficulty. Enemies are fast, often attack at the same time, and their reach is deceptively long. Many times I was hit by a foe when I thought I was well out of range. They're also fast, so running to reposition for a better attack was often unsuccessful; I'd turn around and they were already right in my face, winding up to attack. Creating separation often requires a change in elevation, such as jumping to a lower/higher area, or vaulting over obstacles they can't climb and must run around. That buys the player a few seconds, but you'll be doing it over and over and over. En Garde is generally good about giving the player room to work, but there are some duels in very tight areas, leaving very little space to maneuver, and the margin in those fights gets very thin. The game features accessibility options, including Auto-Parry and Invulnerability, which allow the player to be more sloppy but still won't allow brute-forcing the combat, as enemies have very competent defenses. Despite interesting arena-style fights and the charming nature of the game itself, the cycle grew tedious with nothing to break it up. Late-game enemies require specific patterns of parrying/dodging, then striking, to break their guard, with any miss refilling their stamina bars. It is exceedingly easy to exhaust the environmental factors (crates, flingable objects, explosives, etc.), leaving the player locked in a rinse-and-repeat cycle to gradually wear down the bosses or mini-bosses. The game itself isn't long and can be finished in four-ish hours. If it had been any longer, I am not sure I would have bothered to finish it. As it was, I managed to finish on Normal difficulty, though the last few fights were exercises in patience and tedium more than skill. Aside from the main campaign, there is also the Arena mode, which pits Adalia in three successive different area fights, with a boss fight in the final one. This is kept fresh with the inclusion of random modifiers, such as Adalia's kicks restoring her health, and enemy grenades also stunning the player in addition to damage. Each round adds a random negative modifier and gives the player a choice of one of three positive ones. The Arena adds a bit of fun, as the modifiers make the play a little more dynamic and force an adjustment of tactics with each run. [h2]STORY / WORLDBUILDING:[/h2] The swashbuckling nature along with the Spanish-themed setting brought to mind something between Zorro and the Three Musketeers. Character dress and speech appear period-appropriate. All of the characters, including the player, ham it up with grandiose speeches and banter. It's meant to be lighthearted and fun, and for the most part, it is. The plot is boilerplate and the villains cartoonish, but the tongue-in-cheek attitude fits. This is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, even to the point that finishing foes doesn't result in death, as they will continue to mouth off or poorly fake being unconscious as the player runs past their fallen bodies. Numerous points of interest, such as wanted posters, logs, or interesting objects provide some amusing color commentary and background. Level design is linear and other than the tight spots noted above, the areas with heavy fighting are mostly okay, making the most of varying the environments to keep the repeated mechanics as fresh as possible. [h2]TECHNICAL ASPECTS:[/h2] The game loads and runs quickly and other than enemies occasionally hanging on terrain, I didn't run into any immediate bugs. The most annoying technical issue was probably the camera, which would sometimes get locked behind obstacles, but even that was rare. Graphical presentation is colorful and bright, matching the mood, and the soundtrack has a zippy guitar-heavy theme that also plays right into the setting. In terms of presentation and mood, En Garde nails its delivery. Steam achievements will be a pain for anyone not enjoying the combat, since maxing relies on no-damage speed runs, and repeated arena victories. Also, some points of interest refused to count properly for me, despite repeated runs and numerous attempts to interact, meaning certain achievements were locked out. You can delete all save data and undo all your progress for a "fresh" count but that's an absurd solution when you might already have substantial progress and numerous runs into the Arena. [h2]FINAL WORD:[/h2] This is yet another game where I wish we had a "Neutral" option in rating. I love the charm of both setting and characters but the mounting gameplay irritations took a toll. I did have some fun, so I'll give this a borderline thumbs up. 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Excellent game focused around parry and platforming while in action. Haven't seen anything quite like it... maybe a mix of the combats of Sekiro and Furi.

Game published 2023 on steam but it has 2010's gameplay and level design ,even in the end of one room (prob on chapter 4) they forget to put a way when after open door, when you opened the door empty room appears bro. thats all im saying,but overall its okay, i enjoyed