En Garde!

En Garde is an exciting combat-focused swashbuckling game. Think sword-fighting, acrobatics, taking advantage of the environment, witty banter and comedy slapstick. Or Errol Flynn, Zorro or Pirates of the Caribbean movies. You mostly duel two or more opponents at a time in an enclosed area with lots of interactable props, such as pots, tables and barrels. It's tough to tackle several enemies at once, but your ingenuity and agility can compensate so you can split them up and eliminate them individually. The fighting is fast, varied and fun with lots of amusing banter. I've never seen a combat system quite like this where movement, improvisation and environment props matter so much. It also becomes challenging as I had to switch to the easier difficulty midway through. I doubt I can ever finish the last boss battle although it feels doable with enough pratice. Although the emphasis is definitely on the fights, there are short exploration/platforming sections between encounters. Think simplified Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed. They're a nice distraction, pretty easy to do but too brief and feel like an afterthought so the game wouldn't be fighting all the time. The 3D graphics are quite good for an indie game, with soft, warm colors and lighting, although I didn't care much for the face of the heroine. The game controls very well with the gamepad, but there sometimes were minor lock-on and camera issues. So, En Garde is different than the usual grim Souls-like affair or AAA spectacle fighter (like Devil May Cry or Darksiders), and it feels like a breath of fresh air with its lighthearted tone and prop-focused combat.

Oyun oldukça güzel bir dövüş sistemine sahip. Klasik parryle ve dodge ladan oluşuyor ama dövüştüğümüz düşmanların guard larını kırmak için uğraşmamız gerekiyor. Toplam 4 bölümden oluşuyor ve her bölümde yeni bir düşman tipiyle karşılaşıyoruz. Genel olarak akıcı ve güzel bir oyun. Dövüş odaklı kısa bir oyun oynamak istiyorsanız bir şans verin derim.

It is decent if you get it on sale. The gameplay is really similar too Sekiro, but while in Sekiro you usually fight a boss, here you fight hordes of enemies and you need to decide if you parry or dodge. Then, the main gimmick of this game is using your surroundings to beat enemies one by one, this is obvious considering the Elite Guards and Duelistas. The gameplay is enough for the short story, I personally got a little bit tired after a while, but I went for all the achivements. I think you should play this on hard, the game is not challenging, I personally found it unfair in some battles, especially when I had to do the challenges, some enemies (Dueliste, Captain) are hard, because they attacks are homing, this feels a bit cheap because repositioning isn't enough if they are already mid animation. If you want an extra challenge, the speedrun achivements are your way to go. 30 minutes is more than enough for each map, you can do them in your first run if you know where to go and don't fail any battle. On the other side, the "challenges", I personally didn't like them that much. There is also arena mode, which is fun because of how overpowered you can get, or can't. A bit of RNG, really. But is enjoyable. First, you need to beat the chapter first to see them or use a guide, that I didn't find, then most of them require doing things that you wouldn't do normally, like using a cannon to eliminate an enemy, instead of repelling an horde. The game also has collectibles, they are optional and don't add much. There are some that add lore about the characters, but most of them are notes that you find in the main path without any challenge in between. The secret rooms are interesting to look, but that is it. This game has the same kind of collectibles as Sony's PSN games. The story is fun and the voice acting is good, my favorite character is: "El Vigilante", he is just silly, Zaida and Adalia are great too, and I like the relationship. But then, is a 4 hour game. The boss battles are too similar between each other, and you don't need to practice them, I found this as good, the boss battles are challenging because the minions and how the items are scattered anyways. For a quick game you can beat in two nights is great.

someone put it well, this is NOT a fencing game, its a horde managment game. (imagine CoD zombies but you only have your knife) as much as i want to leave a positive review, as the game first struck me as very fun, it quickly turned into a frustrating experience. the game leanes VERY HEAVILY into using your enviorment to win battles (esp "boss" fights), and takes away most of the need to use your sword for anything but to finish enemies off that have been damaged by enviormental means. one of the main reasons for why my experience turned sour is that the game heavily incentivizes relying on environmental damage, and throws hordes of enemies your way. The issue is, your moveset is largely 1v1(1v2) based, meaning when more than 3+ enemies are nearby it quickly turns into a dodge/run away sim where you frantically look for enviormental means of dealing with the issue. This could've been a fun gameplay feature but personally i do not feel it is executed in a way that feels fun after the 50th time kicking a box at someone. game also lacks fluidity, the "parkour" is nice and feels good but is not a major part of the game whatsoever. unfortunately the same cannot be said for combat, attacks are snappy but also very sticky, same goes for dodge rolls and parries, feels good in 1v1's but feels absolutely awful while surrounded by 6 enemies on all sides all swinging unparryable attacks your way. poke damage hurts so much and happens so often. there are only so many goblets and combos of rolling around i can handle until the game just feels lame and frustrating to get through. its a shame i have to leave this review, game has great groundwork and mechanics, but executed poorly, in my opinion. if u want positives look at positive reviews, i agree with most points about visual style and humor.

I'm assuming that this review is read by two types of people: you either want to buy this but don't know if you should, or you've just beaten the game and wanna check the negative reviews. To the first type: it's a 2.5-3h game. 1. I don't really know your regional price but on my end it's the price of a big shwarma. 2. It was kinda enjoyable but you probably won't get a kick unless you're really into the kind of cheesy and on-the-nose humor and style of the game (just watch the first trailer to get the gist of it). You go in expecting cheese and you get a lot of cheese. 3. The 'use your surroundings' gimmick was fun until it was mandatory to use. Once it became mandatory (around the second half of the game) the game became frustrating. 4. The combat had the same fun-to-frustrating curve. The latter combat arenas felt haphazardly thrown together. The lock-on system is inconsistent. 5. The game has an arena mode. Didn't try it, probably won't bother to, but if you end up enjoying the combat, you'll probably like it. 6. The visuals, the voice acting (not the writing) and the music are the only things you cannot really critisize because they're really really good. To the second type: Yeah, I didn't like the last level either, I'm with you on that. The encounters felt really cheap and frustrating, especially when enemies start spamming red attacks and regain their stamina because you have to attack them right after. The lock-on is bad, the targeting is kinda bad. The humor just wasn't my cup of tea, it was either 'lmao you are so dumb lil bro' or 'i wanna make out with you girl-on-girl (but we cannot say that out loud)' or 'boo hoo governor stupid'. A couple jokes were funny but that's about it. Yeah.

Very lively and funny pure action game. Relatively short and geared for achievement hunting. Bit too much reaction speed based for my taste, though there are generous difficulty settings.

It's games like this that make wish Steam had a mixed or "it depends" rating as the game itself I'd say is **FINE**, I guess. En Garde left me craving a little more, but not because the game is short, which I wouldn't count as a negative, honestly. Practically every aspect of the game feels shallow, for a lack of better words from the combat to the story to the characters themselves. Before I go into my gripes of the game, I will state the game feels fairly polished as I didn't run into any major problems. I only encountered one crash (idk know why, but it was in post game so I didn't mind much). The game is also GORGEOUS, how the world looks just strikes me personally and I never didn't enjoy looking at the scenery. *COMBAT* This, I think, is the weakest part of the game and what I most have issue with it. First off, the main gimmick of this game is to utilize the enviroment to your advantage against groups of enemies. I love this idea, but I feel as though its execution here comes off as much more of an afterthought rather the main premise of the game. Your three main ways of directly interacting with enemies is: Attacking, Parrying, Dodgeing, and Kicking (pushing enemies). You can't just wail on enemies as they'll often cover each other's opening with unparry-able attacks which is where the core of this game's combat is based on. The idea is to split or incapacitate enemies to make groups more manageable. This is great on paper, but falls short here. Combat often involves engaging with enemies until they start outnumbering you so you can't find an opening to attack then finding an intractable environment piece to use to create your opening. This makes combat feel choppy as it forces you to disengage from combat when things inevitably get hectic to basically find the environment peice that basically acts as in-game lower difficulty button. I don't think I would have as much of an issue with this gameplay flow if either the game focused more on fluid movement for repositioning or provided more options to reposition enemies in where you need them to be, but the games simply doesn't offer the tools to engage with the main gimmick in a way that feels rewarding. Directly attacking is pretty basic with not much room for expression, which I find rather strange for a game of this nature. There are super moves you unlock through out the game, however you can't really combo into them and they're a hard stop when used, which I feel slows down the pace of the game to a detriment. Offensively speaking, this game has the elements of a good action game based on the environment, but none of the main combat mechanics work alongside eachother which creates a technically functioning, but fractured combat system that just isn't fun to engage with. Ironically, I had the most fun in combat when I just ignored the environment set pieces and just tried to widdle down groups of enemies while also taking down stragglers from the horde of enemies. This only gives so much as the enemy varity is practically non-existent ranging from the same enemy with more health to the same enemy , but now you HAVE to use the environment or you literally can't do damage, and this pattern extends to the bosses as well. Since the game is short, enemies don't feel like they get exhausted so I never got tired of seeing any one enemy, but combat never really feels like it changes. *STORY/CHARACTER* ---- Spoiler Warning ---- Both the story and characters feel like they're lacking in some actual personality and seems to be there just to fill an archetype or a role. Now do note that the main appeal of this game ISN'T its story, but I feel like it's flatness just emphasize my entire opinion of the game. The story (and by extension, the game as a whole) is setup in episodes with four episodes in total, with episode one acting as the games tutorial. You play as Adalia to go foil the antagonist Count-Duke and his corrupted regime, and help the people who are affected by his rule. Alongside side (sometimes) you to aid is your brother Alejandro and your (maybe) love interest, Zaida. The story itself stays lighthearted throughout its runtime and never really takes itself seriously. However, it's difficult to care about anything that happens as no clear reason why anyone feels the way they do or the actions they take. Adalia is the good hearted hero that wants to help people, but you NEVER see any of the citizens of the city or how they're affected by Count-Duke in the game. Since you never see the result of her or Count-Duke actions on the people, their motives feel like they're there because they have to be. This makes Adalia less compelling to me as a protagonist because she's the hero not because of any values or beliefs she holds, but because the story needs one to function. With Zaida, the main love interest, you get very little time besides a bit of flirting, and reminiscing of the past by each character with no context provided and it never being mentioned again. Count-Duke himself is just the obligatory ♥♥♥♥ of the game that you're suppose to hate, but he never provides any motive for what he does. I think the Alejandro is the only one given some motive for his recklessness because of his admiration and somewhat envy of his sister's ability. All the character's relationships and actions are just there. No-one develops in any meaningful way and they aren't entertaining enough to 'just be as is' to result in any compelling character. I think the worst part about the story and characters is that there are absolutely interesting themes the game could explore for a more interesting story. Like Adalia's and Alejandro's relationship, maybe explore Alejandro's lighthearted jealousy of his sister and have Count-Duke exploit that to have him turn on his sister for a level. Explore Adalia's and Zaida's conflicting sense of Justice and how that could strain their relationship and how they could pull through. In the game Zaida betrays you and leaves to get captured, the emotion of being betrayed by someone you look up to is absolutely worth exploring.---These are just some ideas I came up with on the spot and exploring some of these wouldn't completely erase the comedic undertone of the game, but make the characters and world more memorable as a whole and add some much needed tension. There's a enemy called the duelist that reoccurs in later levels, that has a little rivalry with Adalia and I genuinely it's the most character dynamic in the whole game. ---- END OF SPOILERS ---- *FINAL THOUGHT* If you're looking for a pretty looking game with some simple action, occasionally fun dialog, and a straightforward lighthearted narrative that you can blow through in an afternoon, this game is a really solid choice. If you're craving something that has more depth to it with either a combat system with more complexity or characters with compelling narratives and/or relationships with a greater message, I really suggest you lower your expectations or find something else. By no means do I think the game is bad despite all my complaing, I just think there's something here that could be interesting and has some good potential, but the game doesn't try to push itself narratively or take any risk from a gameplay perspective. I came in expecting some fun combat that emphasized the use of the environment and quick thinking to defeat your oppents, but I mostly got a simplified version of SIFU that was overall a less interesting experience. TLDR; An okay game that looks good, but has a subpar story and characters with a simple combat system that falters in using it's main gimmick.

En Garde! is a quick, fun game. The presentation and style brings me back to the PS2 games when there were more bright, lighthearted games. While relatively short, it's the perfect length for what it is. The combat does have some depth, but not so much that you're going to spend dozens of hours playing it. I had a lot of fun with it, especially at it's sale price. I'd love to see a bigger budget sequel with the platforming, combat, and character development expanded on.

Right off the bat, this game is well made and feels good, but I would recommend buying it for less than 10 dollars due to the low amount of content. That being said, this game is clearly made with love. The episodic format of this story defiantly would've made for such a good animated show. All the characters, from your maybe girlfriend down to the generic enemies you fight overflow with personality and it makes for a really "local neighborhood quippy hero" time and is very fun. The environment is very linear WHICH IS GREAT FOR THIS STORY. The level designs feel incredibly fun and are the vibrancy and colors used are incredibly beautiful, especially during the Island episode, I would find myself just taking a break to enjoy the detail of the scenery, right down to the blurring of the map like you would get if you were looking far away with your actual human eyes. The swordplay mechanic feels good, the different panache abilities feel good as well, *but*, the game does suffer from a lack of enemy diversity. I can not, for the life of me, understand why the enemies with the yellow health bar exist, needing you to preform everything perfectly within the FIRST HOUR OF PLAYTIME. If this game was longer and at the endgame they started introducing the yellow health bar enemies, then that would make sense, but the lack of content really makes the game as a whole suffer. The game in general sells the fantasy of being the underdog really well, especially with how in depth the different ways you can interact with the environment, and that aspect of the game is incredibly strong. The problem with this aspect, is that there are sections of the game like the Zaida boss fight that just, take that away. The entire biggening of the game instructs you on how to use the environment to your advantage and then just randomly takes it away. It doesn't happen that often but its enough to the point where it made the game a little frustrating and un-fun. That being said, all aspects of the game really shine so brightly that picking up this game on sale is an incredibly good choice, especially if you like souls-likes.

É curto, pouca variedade de inimigos, mas as interações com os itens do cenário são legais, achei um bom jogo. Recomendo!