Highguard

Steam Reviews

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• Not recommended Posted February 5, 2026 on Steam OKAY. After putting in a lot of hours and getting (nearly) every achievement I’m ready to share my thoughts on this game. I’m going to be as completely honest as I can with this, so I apologize for any harshness. Obviously, my rating is “not recommended” but I wanna start by saying: I don’t think the premise for the main gameplay loop is a terrible one. When you have a decent team pushing hard to plant the Shieldbreaker and manage to start the raid phase, the game can have its moments. There is fun to be had in the second and third phase. The idea of ramming into your enemies base and raiding with your teammates to take down the stronghold is awesome in concept. But the execution in gameplay, aesthetics and world building are so lackluster that it makes the initial impression boring and unfulfilling. Gameplay wise, 3v3 has been basically replaced with 5v5 as far as I’m concerned. Hell, I’d replace the positioning of the two so that 5v5 takes 3v3’s spot, so any new players immediately go there. As for the rest, the first phase of the game is easily the worst thing about it. While mining vesper and hunting for loot is kinda zen for me, I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s a lot of busy work for a game where all people want to do is shoot things. As it stands, what this game offers is long wait times between mildly fun shoot outs and a pretty fun raid phase. I hope they can find some way to make this phase more interesting, but I’m not sure what they could do except completely change it. Next is the world building… there is none. I genuinely have no idea what we are even doing in the game or what the main premise is. Now, that’s not a huge deal. It doesn’t have to be an in depth break down of everything, but the game presents itself with a fantasy/modern day gun aesthetic and doesn’t give you anything to work with. Not even the initial trailer gave me anything to understand this world. There ARE some bits in the launch showcase but it wasn’t enough and just left me confused about who we are and why we are here. And speaking of aesthetics… My last thing to talk about is also one of the hardest things to fix. This, I believe, is one of the main reasons I think Highguard left such a bad impression when it first revealed. In simple terms: This game has no sauce. In actual terms, almost none of the characters, locations, or weapons are interesting to look at or feel like they are all coherently apart of this world. The world is set in this magical land that gets more magical the deeper you go into it, yet all of the buildings are either modern industrial or simple stone buildings. If there’s a lore reason I don’t know what it is, so it just feels bland or incoherent. There’s magic in this world, but all the weapons are just normal looking guns. There are some unlockable skins that look decent, but they are still JUST guns. And finally, the characters… There is a lot to say here, but to sum it up: These guys are the first thing people are gonna see when viewing the game, so they HAVE to be spot on, aspirational designs and personalities. And unfortunately, I think only one character fits that bill. Una is the only character whose design I think is just about perfect. Incredibly unique with a voice, abilities and a decent personality that has made me play exclusively her. However, everyone else in this current roster is just not too visually interesting and are boring personality wise. Some of their skins are pretty good, but most of those you have to pay for, and it still doesn’t change the fact the Atticus is NOT a main cover character. So to wrap it up bluntly: the world, weapons and characters do not feel fully realized and that initial introduction is what I think made everyone turn their heads at the reveal. And that’s my review. If they update the game I probably won’t change it as I think I’m finished with Highguard. Tbh, this style of shooter isn’t my personal cup of tea, but I found the game interesting enough to play through anyways and gather my thoughts. I hope the devs figure out what works best for them and their player base. Good luck!
• Not recommended Posted February 13, 2026 on Steam had a bit of fun playing this, but what I can never support is this throwaway culture to gaming - not an instant best seller on steam - oh lets sunset it and / or fire everyone. Scummy practice and getting way too common.
• Not recommended Posted January 27, 2026 on Steam TLDR: Wait 2 months. (5/10) Starting with the positives. The game looks good. There is no animation jank, the art style is okay, though this is a personal taste. The Wardens (characters) are good, there is nothing groundbreaking here in design or their kits, but nothing terrible. The guns themselves feel good. If you like Apex Legends’ gunplay (specifically), you will likely enjoy Highguard’s shooting. The environments look beautiful. There are some minor nitpicks I will address now. Things like a 6-cylinder revolver having more than 6 shots is a bit janky. If you friend someone from your Steam, it displays them twice as a Steam friend and then a Highguard friend. Not being able to type in the numbers you want for exact settings like sensitivity is annoying. Voicelines being interrupted, very few voicelines for deaths, so you hear the same thing over and over again. And then the complete lack of music, I think this is a bug, sometimes, during the gearup phase and sometimes after raids, the music will go completely silent until the phase changes again. Mounting resets the FOV setting, it will correct itself a few seconds later but it is annoying. First problem. THE game mode. There is only one. 3v3. The map is way too big, the game is genuinely boring to play during the gear-up section. The action itself is good, but getting to it is not. At least with Apex, your paranoia about being attacked from all sides justifies the map size. In these maps here, you know exactly where they are coming from, in front of you. When you do get to the Raid phase, the game feels either like a drag out slug fest or it is over in 2 minutes and you couldn’t do anything about it. The bases are set up with 3 bomb sites when a raid starts. I think this is great, it forces the defenders to not turtle on one site. When a bomb goes off, it takes 35 health from the base’s 100 health. Simple and understandable, 3 bombs will win the game. The problem? One site, the Anchor, will deal 100 damage, instantly winning the game… Not sure why they took notes from Quidditch when designing this. The other problem is spawn camping. Raiders have the undeniable advantage when it comes to holding a bomb site because while raiders may have limited spawns, they get to spawncamp the defenders since the defender spawns are set while the raiders are not. If you defend the base, it resets to gear up phase. During this phase, combat is pointless other than annoyance. Next, basic functions that are outright missing. No text chat. No Spectating a friend’s match, no match history, no profile, Party cannot transfer leadership, if the play button for the leader buggs wout and is grey then you must abandon the party and reform completely, you can’t join someone if they are in the shooting range, you can’t respawn in the shooting range, I crashed repeatedly during this session, I disconnected even more, there is no method of rejoining a match you have disconnected from, if the server disconnected you from the game you are punished even if it is objectively not your fault, when a teammate leaves it tells you it will give them two minutes to rejoin but there is no rejoin function. Monetization. The first battlepass, or “War Chest,” is free. I debate if this is either good or a foot in the door. I lean on the side of good. To earn things from the battle pass, you earn the purple “Vigil” tokens, of which you can only hold 3,000. Note the whole of the pass’s contents cost 11,200. You earn Purple Tokens and Silver from playing games, neither of these can be bought. There is a rotating shop of cosmetics that can be bought with silver. The whole of the shop’s contents can be bought with 20,000 silver. You can only hold 10,000 silver at one time. In my ~9 hours of playing, I only earned 5750 silver so you do the math there. Gold is priced as you’d expect for a free game, maliciously for higher-tiered items. There are 8 Legendary Bundles that have cosmetics (including mounts) that are 1800 gold. The closest pack to that is the 1600 gold pack for $14.99 so you will have to go for the $19.99 pack that is 2200 gold, meaning you have left over. The only items that are maliciously priced are the ones with mounts. The 4 Legendary Bundles that DON’T have mount cosmetics are priced exactly at 1600, meaning no leftover, exactly 15 bucks for the bundle. There are also 4 bundles without cosmetics that are priced at 900 gold, which there is a pack for exactly 900 gold for $8.99. I am not sure why they are being inconsistent but since most of it is ethically priced I will give them half point for that. There are other things, like half the tutorial being a video and the tutorial leaving out vital gameplay information, like if you break the barrels you pretty much have infinite ammo (I never ran out of ammo in a real match, not sure why you get full resupply on death and why barrels give so much ammo). But If I’m honest, this is boring. I can’t even dive into the lore because there is nothing here. There may be something on the back end, but the voice lines aren’t enough, especially because they keep getting interrupted by other voice lines overlapping. No item descriptions, no lore tab in the menu, no character bios, nothing outside of the gameplay and I can’t play this anymore. I was hopeful that this would be either fun or so bad I could laugh at it, it is neither. I am happy this game didn’t get Concorded, it did reach 97,249 peak players on launch day. I don’t think it will survive in this condition and must rapidly fix these mistakes and add more content. I will check back in a few months.
• Not recommended Posted February 12, 2026 on Steam Gonna keep it short and simple. I enjoy the game, it's quite fun. Originally thought it'd lack any real identity from them merging so many mechanics, but I think it ended up working together pretty well. That being said, they lay-off most of your dev team 2 weeks after launch even though they're the only reason the game has managed to hold onto any playerbase. It's like they want the game to crash and burn as much as the haters do. I can't prove it, but I swear all these failed games recently are somehow being used as tax write-offs.
• Not recommended Posted January 26, 2026 on Steam I mostly just feel bad for the devs. The game clearly wasn't designed or prepared for this level of scrutiny. Everything is blurry and unclear. The map is the size of Latvia but you only have 3 players so most of your time is spent running around the map looking for something to kill. It's saying it's a fast-paced shooter but also the merchant makes you go mine rare earth metals to buy stuff. The characters are profoundly bland and uninteresting and the art direction is just like they dumped every Cool Idea into a vat - what if there was magic? what if there was guns? what if you could ride a bear? what if there was Excalibur? what if there was a giant siege tower? The game isn't fun and it isn't interesting. All that said, it is free.
• Not recommended Posted January 26, 2026 on Steam I was cautiosly optimistic for Highguard, I didn't want to assume anything of the game ahead of launch. With that in mind, I am dissapointed with what I've played. Above all the game is boring. There are no NPCs to populate the maps, meaning the only engagment with the maps is looting extremely surface level loot. The movement and shooting is just fine (outside of mounts, which actually control very well). The visuals even at 100% res scale with no upscaling are blurry, with things such as forced motion blur. Performance is much worse than the visual presentation or listed requirments would lead you to expect. The "raid" gamemode becomes repetitive extremely quickly, within a couple of matches honestly. Highguard touts itself as "A new breed of shooter" when all it culminates to is combining aspects from every popular shooter thoughtlessly. Edit: I went back to see if I was being unfair, and no I was not. This is actually one of, if not the most dull multiplayer PvP game I have ever played. It got to a point where I was begging for my last game to end. Edit 2: I don't know if I am just stupid, but I do not think there is a stats page in-game lol Edit 3: You can now turn off motion blur!