The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard Reviews

Iconic

1998 ahh looking game.

Gameplay: 3/10 Graphics: 2/10 Sound Design/Track: 4/10 Story: 3/10 Replayability: 1/10 Total: 2.6/10

Buggy and rough controls. The GOG version is more playable.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☑ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☑ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☑ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☐ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☑ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☑ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☑ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10

I can only give this game a recommendation with reservations. I was really surprised by TESA: Redguard, as it is sometimes frowned upon by TES fans, but I didn't bother with much of the content before because I wanted to play the game myself at some point. And i kinda liked it. It is what you would imagine an adventure to be: You solve puzzles, work your way through parkour levels, fight enemies and talk to interesting NPCs. A mixture of point & click games like Monkey Island (more or less because of the pirate setting, not because it's very similar to the game) and Tomb Raider. It tells an exciting and complex story and also offers a lot to explore, even if the world doesn't seem very big, it's not exactly small for that time. The gameplay is neither linear nor monotonous and the puzzles are sometimes very complex and require a lot of thought. The NPCs and conversation partners are also nice. Not particularly deep, but unique and recognizable. There are also many dialog options to get tips on how to proceed in the game and learn about the world and everything voiced... 2ell, the quality sometimes leaves a lot to be desired, as many speakers voice several characters and some of them have certain quirks in their conversation, for example speaking in a distorted high pitched and extremly exaggerated voice. It has to be said that the game generally comes across as a bit junky at times, but it has its own charm as a result. But now to the negative points, starting with the inventory and the combat, because these are the smaller points of criticism. First of all, you keep all the items you have ever found and they clutter up your inventory. The organization of the inventory is terrible and in general unconvinient. You use potions (as in point & click games) by going into the inventory, selecting it and “placing it in your hand” and then activating it with the action button. This plays an animation that takes a few seconds. This is not bad in itself, but it does indicate how slow the game can be at times, especially if you regularly want to buff yourself with strength and Iron Skin potions. Of course, if you then search for a buried item with the shovel, you have to watch the animation every time to realize afterwards that Cyrus has found “Nothing”. There is also no such thing as a merchant menu, because if you want to buy an item, you have to go through every single dialog step in the dialog options and confirm the purchase. For EVERY single item you want to buy and imagine you want to buy 20 potions, you have to ask for and confirm them one by one. I was very happy that at least healing potions were put on an extra button that allows you to use them quickly, even in combat, because without this option the fights would be damn difficult. Cause battles are not really well implemented. When you draw the sword (which is also an item in your inventory, by the way, so you always have to activate the sword in your inventory to use it. Quite annoying if you are holding something else in your hand and an opponent is attacking) you switch to a kind of fencing pose and fight with your opponent. There is only one type of attack in a triple combo, but you can also do something like a forward step and perform a parry in combat. The opponents are mostly human opponents who have the same moves. However, there are also special enemies such as goblins or Dwarven constructs, which vary a little in the way they fight. However, I haven't been able to develop a special strategy, apart from paying attention to when the opponent tries to attack in order to dodge or counterattack. It's all random and the opponents also parry regularly, depending on how strong they are, ruining yout combos. The combat isn't that difficult in itself, partly because you can heal yourself mid combat, but it's not really good or fun either. There are even some boss fights, but I don't think they're bug-checked well at all, because I could run around between their legs and not take any damage, but could easily take them down with my sword. Although it wants to be like Tomb Raider, the game doesn't do it quite as well. Especially platformer passages are a problem with the imprecise controls that take some getting used to. You can get used to it, because over time you get a good feel for how to make Cyrus jump correctly so that he doesn't fall straight into an abyss, but it's often a lot of trial and error with lots of saving and reloading, and it's not the difficulty level that's to blame, but because there are problems with the clipping, jumps can't be timed precisely or there's a bad camera perspective. Now comes the time when I mention DosBox. I actually like DosBox as a Dos Emultor, but the preconfigured version that comes with this game is anything but good. I've had huge unexpected frame drops when reloading or going in and out of the menu/inventory, and when you start running you don't even realize you're running into the abyss at ten times the speed. Also I had a few crashes. Sometimes a memory error, sometimes the game just quit. This didn't happen so often, but I don't know if it had anything to do with the configuration. Besides, on the CD version the game came with an OpenGl and a software render as an option during installation. Unfortunately, this is completely missing here and on Steam you only get the software render. The DosBox version was also chosen unfavorably because it does not support OpenGL. So if you want to play the game with better light and shadow effects, you have to replace the DosBox manually, reconfigure it and get the missing installation files elsewhere, for example from the CD or from the GOG version. This version uses an OpenGL-capable emulator and has the settings preconfigured so that you just have to start the game. So its probably the better choice. Hence my reservations. I wasn't sure if I should put a thumbs down, but since I realized in hindsight that I wrote more about the negative than positive, then I choose a negative rating with reservation. I can only recommend the game to fans who have always wanted to try out Redguard anyway and are interested in the story or would like to recapture the nostalgia, who are not put off by technical difficulties, a missing OpenGL render and shoddy controls, because the content of the game already has a certain charm.