Ah, the latest punching bag of the online narrative, Highguard, is finally out, and we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play before the full release. And yes, “fortunate”, as I ended up absolutely loving my time with the game, and I’m confident most others will as well.
Look past the fog, open your eyes, and keep reading to find out why I think Highguard is going to be one of the very best games of the year, if not beyond.
Talent is Paramount
Before we dive into the game, here’s a quick overview of the development team. Highguard is a game four years in the making by a team filled with top-tier FPS development talent. Wildlight, a remote-first studio, knew they wanted to make another multiplayer game, but the exact form of Highguard was something that slowly took shape after many iterations. They particularly wanted to replicate that “base raiding” feeling in games like RUST, but isolated and distilled into a competitive experience with plenty of replayability.
And, well, they did exactly that. Forget all the dumb things you’ve heard online over the last month or so, and get ready to play an FPS experience quite unlike anything else. Wildlight set out to push the genre forward again, and they did exactly that in what they’ve dubbed a “Raid Shooter”.
Raid Shooter
So let’s talk about how a game of Highguard actually plays. In a three-person team, you start the game off by making two choices, one individual and one with your group. The first choice of course is in picking your character, or “Warden” as they’re called here. There are eight of them at launch (with more planning on releasing at a very steady cadence), and each felt significantly different, yet also balanced. What I mean by this is that each Warden has the same statline as another, meaning this is not a hero shooter where you have a tank, a dps, etc. Your choice still matters, of course, as certain Wardens are better at certain roles, but ultimately, the game is a first-person shooter at heart.
The second choice you make is in picking your “base”, which you vote on as a team from a random selection of four. This is an extremely important choice, especially as time goes by and a meta is formed, but for now, all you need to know is that the core of this game is about defending your base and raiding and attacking your enemies.
Highguard is a game that takes place over different phases, with the ultimate goal of reducing your opponent’s base health from 100 to 0. You start in the “gear-up” phase, where you mount up (mostly just a togglable speed increase), leave your base, and have two minutes to look for better gear, farm “vesper”, a currency you can use to purchase gear directly, and all around try and find an advantage before the skirmishes start. I did sometimes engage the enemy team in this phase, usually if we were both going for a named location on the map, or an air drop, but otherwise, this is mostly the “calm before the storm”.
Speaking of the storm, as the “gear-up” phase winds down, something called the “Shieldbreaker” appears at a public location on the map, and it’s this that you need to fight for tooth and nail. You need to grab this sword and take it to the enemy base without being killed, ultimately impaling it into their shield and starting the raiding process.
Whether you succeeded in breaking the enemy shield or failed in stopping the enemy team from breaking yours, 30 damage is taken by the defending team, and the raid starts. Thankfully, the whole process is pretty simple. Every base has three objects that an attacking team can destroy to do damage to the base’s health. Two generators, which take 40 seconds to bomb and do 35 damage each, and one central core, which takes a full 60 seconds to destroy but is an instant win or loss depending on which side you’re on when it blows.
Something I really appreciated was that if you’re defending and you successfully prevent the attacking team from destroying anything, not only do you not take any more damage, but you instead cause 30 damage to the enemy team, leveling the playing field again. There’s a fair bit more too of course, such as the generators having a checkpoint at 20 seconds, walls being reinforceable and breakable, but it’s better to play yourself to experience the little details. The crux of it is that Wildlight clearly thought through the entire concept well and has already made many little quality-of-life changes, so that the entire experience feels extremely polished.
Once a raid ends (the attacking team eventually runs out of spawns), the teams go back to their bases, and the match continues again at the first “Gear-Up” phase. Though this time, you find higher-quality armor and weapons. This cycle continues until a team loses all of their base health, and in the latter rounds, you can get some truly fun modifications to the various weapons.
Did Someone Need a Weapon?
I mentioned earlier that Highguard is a first-person shooter at its core, and of course, that means both the gun options and the gunplay are of paramount importance. Thankfully, both are very, very well done. I spent my entire time playing with an Xbox controller, and it felt good, though I did need to tweak the settings a little. This should come as no surprise, however, as the talent behind this game is already known for making some of the best-playing shooters on the market.
The gun variety ranges from high-powered revolvers to long-range snipers, to mid-range SMGs, to a high-impact shotgun, to a whole lot more. I’m not going to list every weapon type, but it’s worth experimenting with each one to find the guns that suit you best. You can swap weapons at pretty much anytime either by finding them in the wild or buying the gun you want directly from a shopkeeper that’s all over the map. I noticed I was making a mistake at one point by constantly switching to higher-ranked guns, even if I wasn’t particularly good with them. Find what works for you and stick with it, is my advice.
Alongside weapons, you can also purchase some other items in Highguard. The important ones are armour and helmets, which of course let you survive longer, but there are also amulets with random effects (such as reviving team mates faster), and raid tools, your “heavy” weapon designed to destroy or bypass walls and buildings blocking your way. Again, best to play it yourself here to figure out which style suits you best.
Aspirational Design
Speaking of style, Highguard is launching with eight Wardens, and I enjoyed each of the four or so that I played. That initial trailer did a terrible job in highlighting the visual style and charm of the game, as I found each character to be, at the very least, cool and fun-looking if not memorable. Each Warden has its own passive, such as phasing through a wall every so often, one ability, and one “Ultimate”. Limiting the number of abilities each Warden has is something I really appreciated, as it made them both easy to learn and recognize.
Not to say that there isn’t variety of course. You have a support Warden in Mara, who provides shields to your team and can absorb enemy souls at range, preventing them from being resurrected while also reducing the cooldown on your ability. Her ult is also pure utility, as it provides a custom respawn location. You have Redmane, an instant favourite of many already, as his ult does massive damage to walls and buildings around you, making him the perfect Warden for a frontal assault. You have Slade, who harnesses the power of fire to drop flame from the sky with his ultimate, and a straight line of fire with his ability. All in all, the Wardens felt unique from each other, but with the focus on the gunplay, I never felt that I was locked into the wrong choice.
Atticus Atrades
There’s more I could talk about with the gameplay, such as the mounts you can summon or desummon instantly, or being able to add a scope to most weapons, or climbing on top of your siege tower and sniping enemies from above, but this is a game that is best experienced and learned yourself through repeated matches. What I will talk about, of course, is the monetization Wildlight has planned for this free-to-play game.
Before I do just that, though, I do need to say that I absolutely loved the visual style and flair of Highguard. They mentioned they wanted the “ballistic” nature of World War weaponry while also having the magical elements of high fantasy, and that’s exactly what they did. If the reveal trailer had you thinking the game would be generic-looking or feeling, you can put your worries aside as they absolutely nailed the look and feel of this new world, and that goes for the optional customization, too. From different animals to mount, to fancy and shiny skins for your guns, to drastic change-ups to your Warden’s looks, the art team clearly had a great time with their cosmetic design.
Highguard is a free-to-play game, and so, of course, it has monetization. Thankfully, Wildlight is a development team without a giant publisher behind them (something they were very happy to repeat), and so they made sure to keep the monetization very reasonable and the customization very cool. According to the team, the most expensive cosmetic purchasable in the game is 20 dollars at the very top, and there are pathways to unlock cosmetics without spending a dime as well. The game has three currencies, which can sound alarming, but they’re all explained pretty easily. Two currencies you obtain while playing, and one you purchase with real money. There’s a trading post which cycles through items that can be purchased with earned money, alongside long from “quests”, such as get 20 wins, or 25 kills in a game, which also give you said currency. And then of course there’s a “Warchest”, similar to the War Bond system found in other games. These Warchests never expire, and the very first one is actually completely free for players, something I appreciated.
They’re Just Getting Started
Whenever a team announces a live-service game, I’m sure most of us are thinking of the worst possible scenarios. Will it succeed? Will it remain successful? We’ve seen game after game fail, especially the second part of remaining popular, but Wildlight has assured me that this is something they know all too well. They shared with us a pipeline going a full year long, built around bi-monthly “Episodes”. These episodes are then split into two, meaning each month, there are meaningful updates to the game planned. And by meaningful, I mean they plan to release a new Warden with every episode, alongside new weapons, bases, maps, and more. Of course, it’ll remain to be seen if it works out for them, but they’ve certainly done the legwork.
Keighley Redeemed?
This isn’t my usual genre of choice. I never played Apex Legends for more than a couple of hours, and the only competitive shooter I do play is Halo. Yet I found myself wanting to play again and again, and again the more I played. And the two others I was playing with, from Gaming Trend and Destructoid, respectively, were also having more and more fun. From the initial chaos of wondering how we already won, not realizing I had attacked their main core and not just a generator, to ending off with two intense and competitive games that went to the very wire, Wildlight has crafted an experience that already feels like it stands right amongst the very best of its kind.
This is no easy feat, but their “Gameplay First” philosophy shines through in pretty much every part of the game. From their extremely snappy but oh so satisfying animations, to the ease at which you mount and dismount, to the fantastic feeling gunplay, Highguard is a game oozing with care and passion. But even more importantly, it’s a game made by people who clearly just love playing the damn thing. This was never more obvious than when a developer excitedly rushed over after just barely clinching a 5-0 victory over us (our only loss, too), talking with Rod, another dev who was filling in for one of our members, about the various techs and plays he had to use to win.
Many, many people doubted Highguard after its reveal trailer, and I understand why. The team always planned to shadowdrop the game, and that trailer was supposed to be followed by a full match of gameplay. But just as Wildlight Studios themselves don’t regret their choice, the past is the past, and what matters now is that we have this incredible multiplayer experience polished and ready to play in our hands. So what are you waiting for? Ignore the noise and check out Highguard for yourselves. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Flights and Hotel accomodations were paid for by Wildlight Entertainment for this Los Angeles-based Preview Event.
