En Garde! - A Gaming Diary

Review

En Garde! is an incredibly fun little action-adventure game.  The combat is easily the high point of the game, being very methodical but also very fast paced.  It rewards you for quick thinking, while also rewarding you for creativity, as much of the game's environment can be used to give you the edge in the midst of a battle.  The story is a pretty bare bones "fight the man" narrative, but it's propped up by entertaining characters and some very effective worldbuilding.  On top of that the game looks and sounds amazing, having this gorgeous art style and this dynamic Latin soundtrack.  The only big things working against it are, for one; it can be rather difficult at times, while it has accessibility options for players who just want to experience the story and gameplay no problem, if you're going into it like "I'm just going to beat it" and you're not the best at these kind of dodge and parry focused games, expect a few walls.  And two, it's pretty short, the game is only 4-6 hours main story, more if you keep dying, and it does admittedly leave you wanting more.  Like it's a complete story but you definitely want there to be more game.  But in my opinion it is excellent, super fun, super engaging, one of the best games I've played so far this year easily.  8.8/10

Diary (Spoilers ahead)

 5/2/25

Started En Garde!  This might honestly be a short little diary, this is one of the shortest games I'll be playing this year I imagine.  Or at least it would be, I'm very bad at it.  I kinda took a break early so I could get some thoughts down and not just beat the entire game in one sitting and then have very scrambled thoughts on it.  I gotta just, as an aside, start off by saying no matter how many times I do PC gaming and it's been a more common occurrence as I have been battling my backlog, I can never get used to it.  The little part of starting a game where you have to play around with all the settings to figure out if the game can even run, how well it can run if it can (I'm playing off a laptop not designed for gaming so these are both issues I face constantly), what settings you have to turn off and on to get it to run?  Awful, just awful, hate it, I shouldn't have to go through this many menus to just start a game.

Anyways, En Garde!  This game rules.  Like I already really like this game, you don't even know.  Like I said, I'm really bad at it, I have already died an embarrassing number of times, but like.  Man, game's incredibly fun.  It has such fun, tight combat, having to parry and dodge just waiting for an opening, using everything in your environment to give you an advantage.  It's both a game that rewards fighting clean AND fighting dirty.  It can be overwhelming at times, mob combat enemies are very adept at exploiting your dueling style, but it's just so much fun that even as I die over and over I'm still like "we go again".

Adalia is such a fun protagonist too.  Inspired by the famous real life female duelist Julie d'Aubigny, Adalia is a classic swashbuckling protag.  Her wit is as sharp as her fencing skills, she's quick with a clever jab at her opponents.  One of my favorite things though is that because in the narrative, Adalia is recounting her exploits, each time you die she's quick to go "that's not what happened".  Great bit every time.  She's also a freedom fighter battling against a comically oppressive regime which has outlawed so many things that just like "making jokes at the expense of the Count who owns this city" is illegal.  Apparently this game originally wanted to invoke the visual style of Baroque paintings but decided the whole thing had too comedic of a tone for those visuals.

Also you can pet chickens.  That's it, that's the paragraph.

5/4/25

I didn't expect to be back writing another journal entry!  Turns out, game is hard.  I'm having a ton of fun with it but man, the game is hard.  At least for me, a friend of mine played through it after I started talking about it, beat it in one sitting.  I've been entertaining the idea of maybe turning on a few of the accessibility options, just help me out a little bit more as I get overwhelmed pretty easily when I get surrounded due to how tight the dodge/parry timing is, how close quarters combat is in general, and how quickly it can fall apart if you're cornered.  I don't know if I will in the end, I'm not feeling like my failure is proving detrimental to my experience in the game, but if I do I'd be happy with it, I basically played 75% of the game without them.

I'm not going to rescind my mini-rant about PC gaming and how much I dislike it from the previous section because these are feelings I have more generally, but it turns out, I can just run the higher settings pretty easily.  It's still frustrating to me, having all these setbacks and having to play around with every setting to try and get this to run at the highest quality possible for my laptop to not crash while playing it only to change one singular setting and then suddenly it can run high quality 60 FPS no problem.  Annoying, hate it, if I didn't have so many games on PC that I eventually want to play I would happily never bother with this again, I stg.

The boss fights in this game are super cool.  You almost kind of worry that because the combat, while good, is so specific and trying to do one thing that boss fights would just be glorified regular enemy fights.  But they actually do a lot to make the boss fights really memorable.  The second boss, the last one I beat at the time of writing, had me saying out loud "man, this is really cool".  It utilizes a lot of fire and explosives to create an arena and, by extension, a battle that is super unique and incredibly fun.  Being able to corner the boss and burn him on his pyre of caricatures of himself, a monument to his corruption and ego?  So good, such a fun boss fight.  In general I'm impressed how the game continues to evolve a combat system that seems restrictive and has very set rules.  Like fencing is a sport, and it has a lot of rules it has to follow as such, but they keep it feeling fresh by introducing new enemy types with new mechanics every so often.

Adalia has a cruuuuuuuuuuuuush.  In this section we met Zaida, this sort of gentlemen, or I guess gentlewoman, thief archetype.  Adalia is breaking into the villa of the main antagonist to attempt to stop his play to obtain the keys to the city to become the absolute ruler of the city, and while there she runs into the thief Zaida, who is attempting to break into the villain's treasure room and loot the place.  And Adalia is SMITTEN.  This classic swashbuckling hero, confident and quick witted, is immediately this awkward, fumbling mess in the presence of this attractive vigilante.  It's really cute,  I kind of feel like Zaida is going to be the boss this chapter, and I really hope they do that thing where they flirt the entire fight, I want to see my girlie find love.

This section had a pineapple room!  I love the pineapple room.  What a good pull.  For those who may not be aware, in the 18th and 19th centuries, a fascination with pineapples developed in Europe.  They were a fruit that had very recently been discovered in the new world and Europeans were obsessed with them.  They were, unfortunately, difficult to grow in Europe though due to the colder climate, and so they quickly became an expensive status symbol.  You had to be pretty wealthy to be able to afford to own a pineapple and a market of pineapple rental arose, where people could just rent out a pineapple for a big gathering to try and trick their guests into believing they were more well-to-do than they actually were.  Love the pineapple room, next to being able to pet the chickens that's my favorite part so far.

5/6/25

I turned on the accessibility options.  I'm very happy that I made it through so much of the game without them but at the third boss, which was indeed Zaida, I just couldn't anymore.  Her moves were way too quick and way too complex and I kept dying before I even made a dent in her health due to the fact that she functions as an "Elite" unit, meaning that if you screw up on dodging or parrying her moves, she restores to full health on her current health bar.  I'm a bit sad though because like, I don't see it as a "defeat" to turn on accessibility options, this isn't 2009 anymore where people are complaining that Nintendo will let you play levels of New Super Mario Bros. Wii for you because "what happened to difficulty".  But I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that I made it so close to the end of the game and then got walled this hard.  But you know, game is really fun and I want to beat it and if that means turning on stuff, I'm turning on stuff, lol.

All that being said, the Zaida fight ruled.  Like, I love combat in this game, it's super fun, and Zaida really is the combat at its best.  It's a super fast paced fight where you have to react quickly as you have to dodge and parry moves several times in a row sometimes to wait for an opening.  The fact that so many of Zaida's moves have similar windup animations and they're super quick movements on top of that makes it very hard to read what she plans on doing next, so the player has to either be really good at predicting or really quick at reacting (I am neither, hence the accessibility options being turned on, lol).  Like it's easily the standout fight in a game full of standout fights.

Poor Adalia though.  Our girl is trying SO HARD to make Zaida aware of her feelings and Zaida either isn't picking up on any of them, is picking up on all of them and is just choosing to toy with her feelings, or is straight.  The boss fight against Zaida was, as expecting, full of flirty dialogue, but Zaida's own response to it was always stuff like "I appreciate these little friendly meetings we have" or "I enjoy having a good duel amongst friends".  Adalia is going to get her poor little heart broken I know it.  A nice little detail though is that, as previously mentioned, Adalia says little things like "that's what they WANT you to think happened" when she dies, but during the Zaida fight her death quotes are all filled with confidence because she's trying to impress her.  Poor girl, I'm rooting for her.

There was also kind of an interesting ideological debate in this part of the game.  Zaida and Adalia's overall goal is, seemingly, aligned, both of them want to take down the Count-Duke and rid the city of his tyranny, but they have very different thoughts on how effective that is.  Zaida believes strongly that the Count-Duke's political power is irrelevant, that his coffers are the source of his power and that if you cut that off, he will inevitably lose it.  Her plan was to hold the keys to the city he so desperately covets hostage, forcing him to drain his money back into the streets for the poor citizens to collect.  As she so eloquently puts it "the people don't need a war, princessa, they need bread".  

Adalia though, being a noblewoman, sees the cycle of power in the opposite way.  The Count-Duke has political and military power, therefore, he has money.  She argues that the Count-Duke's soldiers are not simply following him due to his employment of them, but that they truly believe in his cause of oppression.  You could drain the money from the Count-Duke and he'd just be able to gain it back because the other people in power support him for him, not for his money.  She believes that the only way to end the Count-Duke's reign of terror is to cut off his political power, even if it means that the citizens will continue to struggle in the short term.  It's a pretty interesting debate to have in the midst of this very light hearted game and it doesn't really give you an answer, both viewpoints are valid but they are, also, both built on the person's biases based on their own class status and upbringing.  

THIS will absolutely be my final update before I beat the game.  I got to the very beginning of what I believe is the final chapter last night before calling it and now that I've just bit the bullet and am doing the accessibility options I probably will beat the game in the coming play session.  I'm excited for it, the next part is taking place on a fortress on a tropical island, perfect final setting for the swashbuckling nature of this game.  Feels very piratey, I'm excited.  I've been floored by how much I like this game, frfr.

5/6/25

And that's a wrap on En Garde!  The final area of this game was super fun.  Taking place on a fortress on a tropical island obviously gives big pirate vibes but also feels very much like the first Uncharted game due to how you traverse the island fortress.  I don't think I mentioned this previously but on top of having the combat be great, the game has some great swashbuckling platforming action, using all manner of flag poles and ropes.  It gives me big Uncharted 1 vibes, which is great, I love Uncharted 1.

The final chapter also has a boss rush in it!  Boss rushes can be hit or miss, ngl, it strongly depends on the game and how fun they make the rematches, but this one is very nice.  The rematch against the first boss, El Vigilante, is great.  The original fight took place in a big, open area with a lot of tricks and traps available to you but this one reworks it as a very close quarters duel, showing the sort of joke character from chapter 1 as a truly competent duelist in his own right.  The rematch against Zaida is fantastic.  I think I ultimately prefer the original match against Zaida but this one brings the duel to a bridge, where mistakes are punished severely by falling, It's a great way to recontextualize an already great boss fight.  And then the Count-Duke is just excellent, a true test of everything you've learned.  You have to be aggressive, defensive, and creative all at the same time, as he gets angrier and angrier and you lose your opportunities to get free hits in.  The final confrontation also had the "jokey, quippy protag goes completely silent" trope, which I love.

I don't think I mentioned this before but something I did really love about the game is exploring in it.  Despite levels being linear it, like a lot of more linear action-adventure games, was full of secrets to explore if you diverge from the main path.  That's how I found the pineapple room mentioned a couple entries ago.  There's a lot of fun little world building hidden around levels, you get to see the place where Adalia and Zaida had their first duel, you get a lot of notes from two bumbling unseen guard captains who are constantly making plans only to have those plans foiled by themselves and each other.  And in this section there was a fascinating hidden room where we saw the Count-Duke's hitlist, with Adalia circled as public enemy number one.  Even just hanging around listening to enemy dialog before they spot you is fun, the Count-Duke's co-conspirators from France detailed an increasingly complicated coup plot involving kidnapping the queen, replacing her with an identical twin sister who may or may not exist, having the fake queen also get kidnapped, get rescued by a prince, get married, and in the end, they get to annex the moon.  I already kinda want to go back and play through it to see all the stuff I missed, but you know, other games I've got to get to.

In the end, I really adored En Garde!  It was a super stylish and super fun little game that I'm really happy I fought with my laptop to play.  The dialog is funny and clever, the world building is neat, the combat is excellent.  It's a short little game, only like 4-6 hours if you're, you know, not bad like me, but well worth the play.  Great chance it makes my best list this year.