Around an hour into Blackguards 2, the main character finds the lecherous mage from the first game bound in the chains of slavery and buys him for a pittance. Is it to free him? Hardly. She keeps him in slavery to do her bidding, and it's but one of many ways in which the selfish, dishonorable characters live up to the title of Blackguards. This is a sequel that successfully ousts some of the more humdrum elements of its dark fantasy tactical RPG.

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Blackguards 2 strips the series of a tad of its past freedom by not letting you create your own character, but the story's the better for it. The spotlight here falls on Cassia of Tenos, who's spent years in a dungeon crawling with giant spiders who bite her and fill her mind with literal and figurative poison. Blackguards 2 uses this period effectively (if a tad too slowly) to elicit sympathies for her growing madness and to explain the basics of leveling and combat. Ably voiced and mad for revenge, Cassia embarks on a fascinating if slightly predictable story.Other than that, though, Cassia's a blank slate. Blackguards 2 doesn't push you toward three token classes like its predecessor; instead, you can build her, Skyrim-style, into whatever type of poison-riddled mad conqueror you wish to make. It helps that Daedaelic makes deciding on such progression easier than before by interpreting the Dark Eye ruleset on which Blackguard is based more liberally. The talent trees for melee, magic, and ranged skills are simplified here without losing much of their depth, for instance, and assigning ability points gained from winning battles is much more intuitive than before.That's also true for the various companions she meets along the way, although they're somewhat more locked into their roles. Naurim the dwarf's my favorite - he’s a visual Gimli clone who makes no secret of his greed and his disdain for others. Elsewhere there's Zurbaran the mage, his date-rapey days behind him as he sulks in his bonds, and Takate the glory-obsessed headhunter, who's laughably predictable but always good for an amusing retort.Cassia's already a mess, so this is hardly the best crew for giving her advice in her quest for revenge, and it sometimes shows in the decisions she must make as her tale advances. For example, Cassia occasionally has to resort to her own methods of gaining intel by interrogating the prisoners the team brings back to camp. It sometimes gets as dark as it sounds. Hardly surprising, though, as this is a game with loading screens that sometimes feature a man getting disemboweled while another runs a sword across his neck.But the first game was full of all this Conan-meets-Game of Thrones gloom: Blackguards 2 distinguishes itself by letting the tale of Cassia's madness add a degree of uncertainty over the whole affair. Even then, the plot’s not as strong or as original as it probably could be, as it seems Daedalic spent most of its efforts on improving the combat.That's a good thing. A turn-based game, Blackguards 2's action unfolds on a hexagonally gridded playing field, but with interactive elements such as doors and chests and impractically stacked crates that you can topple over to smoosh the bad guys. That's still true here, with the added benefit that Blackguards 2 allows substantially more freedom as to where you can place your heroes (such as they are) at the start of a fight.But the one thing that makes Blackguards 2 significantly more enjoyable than its predecessor is the improved hit-and-miss ratio. Seriously, the dice roll system employed in the first game makes spells miss often enough that a Storm Trooper would roll his eyes in disgust. Here, praise the sun, almost all spells hit. Even better, they're complemented with fancy animations that make the top-tier abilities fun to look at. This doesn't make Blackguards 2 much easier (and a new stamina bar keeps melee spamming in check), but it has the welcome effect of allowing you to spend more time thinking about positioning rather than wondering if your point-blank spell or sword strike is even going to land.It's also important because Blackguards 2 remains a relatively slow game, despite the speed boost from the improved hit ratio. Much of its roughly 20 hours involves the march of around 15 NPCs across large boards a handful of tiles at a time, and at one turn at a time. It gets boring, frankly, to the point that I found myself wishing I could skip over the enemy movements to keep the action going. Even small skirmishes can drag on for half an hour, and of course if you mess up you'll have to do the whole thing over again. And forget about saving during combat - it ain't happening.Over time, though, it becomes a drag. Too often I found myself just wanting to experience the main story quests instead of duking it out over a town I've already seen before, but on the defensive side. And again, battles can take forever. On the other hand, revisiting the old maps helped remind me of just how finely crafted the maps are, and how they’re geared toward specific scenarios. Each is a new surprise (and sometimes the perspective shifts to directly overhead), and stepping backwards to fight over familiar settings ruins some of that sense of discovery.