En Garde! Review: Strong Swordplay Paves The Way

Swordplay in video games is often quite simple. Just mash the attack button repeatedly and plow through enemies. Real-life swordplay tends to be more of a back-and-forth affair where both combatants must react to the other. While realism certainly isn’t as important as fun when it comes to game design, I appreciate En Garde! designing a more in-depth combat system than most sword-based titles where you can’t just mash your way to the end of the game. It may not be the longest or most fully featured game out there, but if you’re looking for exciting combat, En Garde! can provide it.

A Hero Of The People

Adalia de Volador is the star in this swashbuckling adventure, which takes clear inspiration from heroes like Zorro while putting a powerful woman in the lead. The evil Count-Duke has all kinds of plans to steal the money of his people and use it to gain more and more power. Adalia won’t stand for that and is determined to stop him at any cost.

En Garde! features a lighthearted and cartoonish tone, which is fun but never allows any characters to acquire any real depth or interest. The Count-Duke isn’t cartoonishly evil enough for me to truly hate. Adalia never shows enough personality beyond uninspiring quips to make players really fall in love with her. None of the side characters are particularly interesting or fleshed out. They exist as only the most thinly drawn caricatures. Which is mostly fine; this is a rather short game with a basic story, which is really just an excuse to move players along to the next mission. Still, I would have loved to see a bit more time spent developing these characters, so I felt any reason to be invested in their journey.

Here To Save The Day

The story isn’t the reason to play En Garde! but its interesting gameplay certainly is. Adalia has several tools to take on increasingly large and varied groups of enemies. Armed with only a sword, she still has everything she needs. Yes, you can swing away at random, but that won’t get you far. This is a fairly difficult game if you don’t commit yourself to learning its systems. Swordplay here is a combination of attacking, parrying, and dodging. Various attacks will require you to select the right option just in time, with a small visual indicator to help you figure out whether you need to dodge or parry in response to various attacks.

The enemies you face at the start of the game only require a bit of this. Maybe you’ll need to parry once or twice, but you can beat the first stage mostly just swinging away. Soon, that won’t be the case, though. New enemies are introduced with far more complex attack patterns. Some have a shield that you must use the environment to damage before you can start hacking away at them. Others have regenerating life, which will refill if you let them hit you. This really requires you to nail the right attacks at the right time. There are even grenade-throwing enemies who can attack you from a distance.

Things get really difficult when En Garde! starts throwing a combination of these enemies at you at once. To progress through the latter of the game’s four stages, you’ll need to use the environment to your advantage and focus on your positioning. Getting surrounded is a good way to take a lot of damage very fast, and good luck managing to finish an enemy with regenerating health off when you can’t focus on them. Items you can grab and throw or kick at enemies will help keep some of them occupied long enough for you to really focus on taking out the enemy in front of you, though.

A Short Journey

While I really like the combat in En Garde! the rest of the game isn’t as impressive. You’ll spend some time in each stage doing some light platforming, but none of this is particularly interesting or engaging. Most of the time, you’ll just be swinging on a bar or two, and most of this feels like it’s pretty much on rails, so it’s hard to fail. You can fall off certain platforms, but I mostly only had to worry about that during intense fights in tight spaces where the game’s camera sometimes did me no favors as I had to quickly dodge away while not having a great idea what was around me.

More than that, though, En Garde! doesn’t have much in the way of variety. As you reach later stages, you’ll face new enemy types, but it still mostly feels like you’re going from one combat arena to the next without a lot to distinguish one from the next. Boss fights can be fun, but even these mostly just feel like slightly powered-up versions of regular foes. It makes the game flow together a bit too much, to the point where I’m actually fairly glad that the game isn’t terribly long.

Conclusion

As is, En Garde! doesn’t overstay its welcome, and its strong combat will carry players through its rather short playtime. While the rest of the game isn’t as compelling, and the characters and story, while fine, feel like a missed opportunity, I still enjoyed my time with it. A more fleshed-out sequel, however, could be something truly special.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Available on: PC (Reviewed); Publisher: Fireplace Games; Developer: Fireplace Games; Players: 1; Released: August 16th, 2023; ESRB: N/A; MSRP: $19.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of En Garde! provided by the publisher.