En Garde! Reviews

En Garde! by Fireplace Games Release Year: 2023 Genre: Action-Adventure (Comedic) First playthrough length: 4hrs In En Garde! you play as swashbuckling Spanish heroine Adalia de Volador, taking on corrupt Counts and gormless goons to protect your city from tyranny! Positives: Visual Design - The game uses a combination of block colours and a painted style to look gorgeous Combat - A unique variation on the old Arkham style counter based combat, it's fast and based around using the environment to your advantage Music: Fun and fittingly adventurous music Negatives: Production Values: The game is crying out for cutscenes and moving lips Story: The story (such as it is) is meandering and unfocused Difficulty Spikes: Boss fights suffer especially from this Length: At 4hrs long it's a difficult game to recommend unless you *love* its style of combat Final Thoughts: En Garde! Is a game based around its combat system... it's just a shame that system isn't fully formed. The game isn't sure if it wants to be harder and skill based or a casual experience, and it suffers as a result. It feels more like a tech demo than a full game. Final Score: 5/10

This game is incredibly mediocre. No depth to it at all. Not worth playing even if it was free. Its essentially the same 4 enemies through the whole thing. All the enemies are just iterations on each other with slightly new mechanics. The bosses are the same as the strong enemies and all the bosses are essentially the same as each other.

It's one of these games ...maybe a really great game but the older I get, the less I can play games like this. To be honest, it's just too difficult for me.

This is a very underrated game. So few games really feel 'fun' anymore; this one does. It's fast paced, funny, and has a great combat system. It's a cross between Sekiro parries and the counter punch gameplay of the Batman Arkham games. All without taking itself too seriously and keeping the emphasis on the fun parts. Kicking a barrel into a guard and watching him tumble down stairs while spouting henchmen dialogue doesn't get old, ever. The graphics are perfect for the art style and setting and the voice acting is terrific. It reminds me of The Princess Bride, but in Spain. If you want a melee combat game with a lot of flourish and to actually have fun doing it, this is that game for you.

Yknow what's the main problem of this game? It ends, maybe it's not the BEST game, but the gameplay loop is genuinely really fun. Maybe this studio will get to make an actual Zorro game one of these days, it deserves it!

This game has a beautiful art style, charming dialogue, and free flowing combat similar in playstyle to sekiro. The game has 4 main chapters and an arena mode. the main story taking roughly 3-4 hours to complete. The games combat feels so good within duels and with how you deal with hoards. I constantly felt myself saying that I felt like Puss in Boots while jumping over enemies, kicking random stuff at them and throwing whatever I could find to get the advantage. It really feels like you are the master of fighting dirty and the game gives every trick to your disposal to take out the enemies however you see fit. Probably one of my favorite Sekiro-likes that I have played!

I like the game alot, I think its fun and its a interesting concept. Its a bit short, four main levels and four arena challenges, but if you enjoy the gameplay I can see the challenges being alot of fun. Gameplay is nice, using the environment to your advantage is fun and reminds you of being puss in boots, or zorro with the flashing steel swords. My personal hope is that the devs make a sequel, or perhaps another game, with the same mechanics, but expanded. I can see alot of potential with this series!

Really good game. Combat is fluent and unique. If you like Sifu, you will like this as well. Also atmosphere and environment deserves an additional praise too.

I would recommend this game because it is very unique and it's worth supporting indie devs. That being said, it wasn't a flawless experience for myself. The game is basically all about the fighting and like others, at times I found it pretty frustrating and a couple battles felt pretty unfair. That being said, when I was rolling it felt super fun and rewarding. Like others, I think this could really be something if it got a sequel to flesh things out and iron out a couple wrinkles. If you're only interested in the main campaign it runs around 4-5 hours, which definitely felt a little short to me but again I still think it's worth it to support the smaller dev with a unique idea.

An overall fun experience with combat that combines dodging, parrying and using the environment heavily. One of those games you actually see yourself improving at if you suck at first since you're the only thing really changing. Some of the boss fights can feel a bit enemy-spammy at first but the game does provide you with the tools to handle them neatly. The lightheartedness and humor of the game was a welcome change too – though I wouldn't have minded if the story had a bit more heft to it; more real villains next time, please. The arena mode is entertaining too. The game doesn't really have enough content to warrant getting it at full price with little enemy variation and short overall length imo, but it also doesn't overstay its welcome which likely would be easy to do. It's a rare occasion of me sort of hoping for a sequel that builds on the fundamentals of the original while providing more depth and breadth.