A Hero Shooter With Too Many Concepts, No Id

While you want a software, you hardly ever attain for a Swiss Military Knife. It’s an choice that solely is sensible when you haven’t any different choices. Have you ever ever tried to really lower wooden with the shitty and really flimsy noticed blade included in a Swiss Military Knife or every other comparable form of multitool? I’ve. It was a horrible expertise, and I ended up shopping for a noticed to complete the job. It seems shoving many issues into one bundle isn’t an efficient solution to make one thing good.

Anyway, have y’all performed Highguard? 

Launched on January 26, Highguard is a (deep breath) free-to-play fantasy-sci-fi MOBA-like 3v3 PVP hero shooter with base protection and raid mechanics. It was first unveiled because the finale of the 2025 Game Awards and acquired a less-than-stellar response from folks on-line. And since then, the dialog about Highguard has been very unusual and oddly aggressive. Individuals taking sides. Takes being shot out like mortars throughout social media. It’s one of many weirdest reactions to a online game I’ve seen in a few years. 

However I’m not right here to speak about that Highguard, the one which exists on-line as a battlefield for takes, opinions, movies, and discourse concerning the discourse. I’m right here to supply a vital take a look at the precise recreation. The factor folks can play proper now. And that Highguard is much much less fascinating than the dialog and the fiddle it. 

That’s maybe the largest drawback going through Highguard because it enters into its second week leaking gamers like a toddler spilling juice from their first large child cup. It seems Highguard simply isn’t very fascinating. 

Bland and boring

Highguard is such a boring recreation to take a look at. Builders Wildlight Leisure appear to have been unable to determine what sort of recreation Highguard is, and the primary signal of that’s in the way it mixes collectively fantasy, sci-fi, magic, and trendy weapons. This mixing of genres and tropes will be executed effectively, however not in Highguard; each asset and mannequin has had any potential character and grit sanded down to make sure the varied items mix collectively. 

And so they do mix. Completely. Too completely.  Nothing stands out. There’s no appeal. No quirks. Nothing to speak about with folks or submit on-line. It’s the form of recreation that leaves your mind the second you cease taking part in it. 

I’ve performed over 14 hours of the sport now throughout many matches, and I battle to call a personality past Slade, an obnoxious blonde dude who’s the closest Highguard will get to creating one thing that has persona. Everyone else is a generic robust man or sneaky girl with clothes and armor that appears like what you begin an RPG with, after which rapidly substitute. 

It’s a disgrace that Highguard is such a forgettable-looking recreation as a result of I do suppose the concept of a raid shooter is a cool idea. 

Let’s get able to raid

When a match kicks off, you begin at your base, decide a hero, and arrange defensive partitions. Subsequent, you and your two teammates journey out and seek for loot on the map. This principally includes rushing round in your mount and opening chests. The opposite staff is doing the identical, and also you may run into them. 

Finally, a big sword begins to kind on the planet, and every staff must get to it, seize it, and take it to the enemy base to blast open their protect dome and raid the place. Do an excellent job raiding and the match is over. Fail and this all repeats, however the loot on the planet will get higher. As soon as a staff pulls off a profitable raid, they win. 

This may sound difficult in comparison with a whole lot of different shooters available on the market, and it does take a while to find out how this all works. However as soon as I did, I used to be having some enjoyable with Highguard. I all the time felt like my staff may come again and win. We had been only one superior raid away from victory.

And second to second, Highguard feels nice and jogs my memory of the sleek and snappy gunplay present in Titanfall 2. That is sensible contemplating the studio behind Highguard is made up of devs who labored on that recreation. Breaking large gems out in the world between raids is also extremely satisfying. I equally loved organising defenses at my base earlier than heading out to seek out upgrades. And chasing somebody down on the again of a mount is thrilling and never an expertise present in most different on-line shooters. Then you may have every character’s distinctive powers and skills, which might dramatically change a struggle as you drop down a fireblast or whip up an enormous wall of ice. Oh, and there’s an entire loot financial system, through which you should steadiness shopping for higher weapons with ensuring you may have sufficient shields to climate future firefights. After which…

Too many transferring elements

Effectively, see, we’ve reached the opposite main drawback with Highguard: It’s attempting to be every part. 

Just like its bland artwork model that makes it really feel just like the devs couldn’t commit to 1 concept and as a substitute tossed all of it in, Highguard’s gameplay is a seize bag of concepts and mechanics from different widespread video games. And whereas it could be cool if we may simply put ice cream, pizza, wine, and meatloaf right into a blender and blend all of it as much as get one thing even higher, that ain’t how the world works. 

The quick, Name of Obligation-like gunplay means you die rapidly. This makes going out and entering into fights earlier than raids a chore. The improve and crystal financial system means you need to spend time looking down and breaking blue rocks, which, whereas satisfying to smash, compelling gameplay it doesn’t make. And certain, you get some forex from defeating different gamers, however late-game gear prices a lot and also you get so little from kills that in lengthy matches, I felt obligated to cease preventing and as a substitute go mining. The raids, simply the most effective a part of Highguard, additionally make mounts principally nugatory, robbing the sport of certainly one of its coolest options. And solely having three gamers on all sides makes raids really feel much less epic, and the bases you defend too large. (Although the devs are already taking part in round with a 5v5 mode, which could assist.)

In different phrases, every bit of Highguard typically will get in the best way of the opposite items and may derail the entire expertise. 

Maybe Highguard will obtain weeks and months of updates to enhance a few of these issues. Maybe it is going to add a 4v4 mode to make the map really feel much less empty. Perhaps the time to kill, particularly within the early a part of matches, shall be elevated so fights last more. 

However none of that can be capable of actually repair Highguard. It will take much more work to try this. Highguard is a forgettable shooter that stuffs an excessive amount of into one recreation and finally ends up being a typically enjoyable however uneven mess. At the least it’s a large number that the majority gamers received’t bear in mind for lengthy after they log out.