Highguard Review: A Hero Shooter With Too Many Ideas, No Identity

If you want a software, you not often attain for a Swiss Military Knife. It’s an possibility that solely is sensible when you haven’t any different choices. Have you ever ever tried to truly lower wooden with the shitty and really flimsy noticed blade included in a Swiss Military Knife or another related sort of multitool? I’ve. It was a horrible expertise, and I ended up shopping for a noticed to complete the job. It seems shoving many issues into one package deal isn’t an efficient technique to make one thing good.

Anyway, have y’all performed Highguard? 

Launched on January 26, Highguard is a (deep breath) free-to-play fantasy-sci-fi MOBA-like 3v3 PVP hero shooter with base protection and raid mechanics. It was first unveiled because the finale of the 2025 Recreation Awards and obtained a less-than-stellar response from folks on-line. And since then, the dialog about Highguard has been very unusual and oddly aggressive. Folks taking sides. Takes being shot out like mortars throughout social media. It’s one of many weirdest reactions to a online game I’ve seen in a few years. 

However I’m not right here to speak about that Highguard, the one which exists on-line as a battlefield for takes, opinions, movies, and discourse concerning the discourse. I’m right here to supply a essential have a look at the precise sport. The factor folks can play proper now. And that Highguard is way much less attention-grabbing than the dialog and the fiddle it. 

That’s maybe the largest downside dealing with Highguard because it enters into its second week leaking gamers like a toddler spilling juice from their first large child cup. It seems Highguard simply isn’t very attention-grabbing. 

Bland and boring

Highguard is such a boring sport to take a look at. Builders Wildlight Leisure appear to have been unable to resolve what sort of sport Highguard is, and the primary signal of that’s in the way it mixes collectively fantasy, sci-fi, magic, and trendy weapons. This mixing of genres and tropes will be completed properly, however not in Highguard; each asset and mannequin has had any potential character and grit sanded down to make sure the assorted items mix collectively. 

They usually do mix. Completely. Too completely.  Nothing stands out. There’s no allure. No quirks. Nothing to speak about with folks or submit on-line. It’s the sort of sport that leaves your mind the second you cease enjoying it. 

I’ve performed over 14 hours of the sport now throughout many matches, and I wrestle to call a personality past Slade, an obnoxious blonde dude who’s the closest Highguard will get to creating one thing that has character. All people else is a generic powerful man or sneaky lady with clothes and armor that appears like what you begin an RPG with, after which rapidly change. 

It’s a disgrace that Highguard is such a forgettable-looking sport as a result of I do assume the thought of a raid shooter is a cool idea. 

Let’s get able to raid

When a match kicks off, you begin at your base, choose a hero, and arrange defensive partitions. Subsequent, you and your two teammates trip out and seek for loot on the map. This principally entails dashing round in your mount and opening chests. The opposite workforce is doing the identical, and also you may run into them. 

Finally, a big sword begins to kind on the earth, and every workforce must get to it, seize it, and take it to the enemy base to blast open their defend dome and raid the place. Do job raiding and the match is over. Fail and this all repeats, however the loot on the earth will get higher. As soon as a workforce pulls off a profitable raid, they win. 

This may sound difficult in comparison with a variety of different shooters in the marketplace, and it does take a while to find out how this all works. However as soon as I did, I used to be having some enjoyable with Highguard. I all the time felt like my workforce may come again and win. We had been only one superior raid away from victory.

• Again-of-the-box quote:

  “I feel certainly one of them is known as… Val? Vai? Violet? One thing like that.”

• Developer

  Wildlight Leisure

• Kind of sport

  First-person sci-fi/fantasy MOBA-like PVP-only on-line raid shooter.

• Like

  Nice gunplay, mounts are cool, raids are thrilling.

• Disliked

  Efficiency issues, overly large maps, bland aesthetic, too many concepts.

• Platforms

  PC, Xbox Sequence X/S, PS5 (Performed on PS5 Professional)

• Performed

  Performed about 12 hours on PS5 Professional and round 3 hours on PC with buddies and solo.

• Launch Date

  January 26, 2026

And second to second, Highguard feels nice and jogs my memory of the sleek and snappy gunplay present in Titanfall 2. That is sensible contemplating the studio behind Highguard is made up of devs who labored on that sport. Breaking giant gems out on the earth between raids can be extraordinarily satisfying. I equally loved establishing defenses at my base earlier than heading out to seek out upgrades. And chasing somebody down on the again of a mount is thrilling and never an expertise present in most different on-line shooters. Then you’ve got every character’s distinctive powers and talents, which might dramatically change a battle as you drop down a fireblast or whip up a giant wall of ice. Oh, and there’s an entire loot economic system, during which you should steadiness shopping for higher weapons with ensuring you’ve got sufficient shields to climate future firefights. After which…

Too many shifting elements

Properly, see, we’ve reached the opposite main downside with Highguard: It’s making an attempt to be every little thing. 

Much like its bland artwork type that makes it really feel just like the devs couldn’t commit to at least one thought and as a substitute tossed all of it in, Highguard’s gameplay is a seize bag of concepts and mechanics from different standard video games. And whereas it might be cool if we may simply put ice cream, pizza, wine, and meatloaf right into a blender and blend all of it as much as get one thing even higher, that ain’t how the world works. 

The quick, Name of Responsibility-like gunplay means you die rapidly. This makes going out and entering into fights earlier than raids a chore. The improve and crystal economic system means it’s important to spend time searching down and breaking blue rocks, which, whereas satisfying to smash, compelling gameplay it doesn’t make. And positive, you get some foreign money from defeating different gamers, however late-game gear prices a lot and also you get so little from kills that in lengthy matches, I felt obligated to cease combating and as a substitute go mining. The raids, simply the most effective a part of Highguard, additionally make mounts principally nugatory, robbing the sport of certainly one of its coolest options. And solely having three gamers on both sides makes raids really feel much less epic, and the bases you defend too large. (Although the devs are already enjoying round with a 5v5 mode, which could assist.)

In different phrases, every bit of Highguard typically will get in the best way of the opposite items and might derail the entire expertise. 

Maybe Highguard will obtain weeks and months of updates to enhance a few of these issues. Maybe it would add a 4v4 mode to make the map really feel much less empty. Perhaps the time to kill, particularly within the early a part of matches, can be elevated so fights last more. 

However none of that may be capable of actually repair Highguard. It might take much more work to try this. Highguard is a forgettable shooter that stuffs an excessive amount of into one sport and finally ends up being a generally enjoyable however uneven mess. At the very least it’s a large number that the majority gamers gained’t keep in mind for lengthy after they log out.