After a very high-profile debut at The Game Awards and a very low-profile run-up to launch, Highguard dropped a developer stream, creator embargo, and the actual game all at the same time, and in the wild, players could see what on earth this was going to be.
I will get into playercounts (decent) and user scores (poor) a different time, but I wanted to run through what I’ve experienced so far now that I’ve at least gotten more time in than those at the preview event itself (which seems weird). No, I don’t think Highguard is some utter disaster, but there are a lot of things that immediately jump out that have made me want to jump off pretty quickly.
Optimization – It’s bad. Not just on my machine, but this is a common complaint on PC in general, where it runs poorly between its framecount and just being…blurry? It’s a strange effect. But no, most of the time it does not run well or look particularly good.
3v3 – Probably the most common complaint, and I agree that these enormous maps being populated by just two teams of three, without so much as a single PvE mob to mix things up, feels very strange. The map size feels considerably reduced when you put horses in the mix, but it feels like the maps were made huge so they could stick the horse concept in, not the other way around. That said, the way this game was designed I’m not sure how many more players could be jammed in here without horse-based overload and wildly overpopulated bases, given their shrunken size. They feel stuck.
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Battle Zones – For all this sprawling space, there have been very few confrontations out on the actual map. The main one is getting the siege weapon in the middle of the map, but if you wipe the team, the other team just sprints to the base and starts that next phase. It’s why 80% of combat feels like it’s inside the bases, and it then shifts to being a relatively standard Defuse mode, but with breakable walls. Not so innovative after all.
Looting – I don’t understand the point of having different rarities of guns when, in each round, the rarities increase for both teams, so everyone will just have the same rare stuff. The only thing that really seems to matter is how many armor sets you can find so you can respawn with them on death. If everything was just a standard loadout, I don’t know how this would play any differently other than the ability to cut 90 seconds out of every round where you run around upgrading gear that is just negated by the other team’s also-good gear. It’s an Apex system that doesn’t make sense here.
Farming – Why are we farming crystals with an axe with a little minigame? How many concepts does Highguard need to jam in here?
Gunplay – It’s fine at best. Even a lacking game can shine if it feels amazing to play, but this isn’t something Highguard exactly excels at. But part of that may be the optimization.
Heavily Leaning into Premades – Sure, all PvP games are probably more fun to play with friends, but with the more complicated objectives here, Highguard feels like you need to be on comms to have the ability to coordinate whatsoever outside of pings with random matchmades. Some may like that, but it feels like yet another significant step toward making this concept “work” beyond just picking up and playing.
Aesthetic – I mean, what aesthetic? There’s no visual identity here, and while it may be tricky to blend fantasy and say, assault rifles, this is not doing so in a way that works or looks good. I would go so far as to say it almost looks like a parody of hero shooter.
In trying to be “innovative,” Highguard feels like it has mashed together too many concepts that don’t work in tandem. You don’t need looting, and you don’t need mining, especially when this just involves running around an almost empty map for a chunk of each round. The large maps serve little purpose other than to do little horse laps and the occasional “car chase” with an enemy team. Though kill the horse, that fun is zapped quickly.
There’s a common refrain of “give it time” when it comes to a game like this, and I agree, particularly if you are giving it say, a scored review. But with a free-to-play game you are letting everyone try, you have to hook players pretty quickly, or they’re just not going to want to stick around to see how it evolves when the meta settles or whatnot. I fear this is already happening to Highguard as soon as day one here, where it shed half its playerbase in just a few hours. We’ll see how the rest of the week pans out.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
