Hero shooters, the marmite of the gaming world. Some people love them, some people hate them. It’s a divisive genre that has struggled to escape from the shadow of Overwatch for around ten years now. A game itself that has struggled to stay relevant. There’s been some solid efforts, and then there’s Concord. Highguard is the latest hero shooter, boasting ex-Titanfall and Apex developers as a selling point, but having absolutely nothing in common with the former. 

I’m someone who has absolutely loved the hero shooter genre. For context, I have easily put in around 1200 hours alone in Overwatch, as well as a lot of time in games like Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, Mechabreak, and more. Unfortunately, Highguard fails to grab me at just about every turn, and whilst there is fun to be had, it misses the mark and fails to get its hooks into me. It takes elements of Hero, Tactical, and MOBAs to create something that, whilst unique, doesn’t engage. 

A mysterious world… you’ve seen many times before.

If you’ve played Apex Legends, then the gameplay should feel very familiar. This is the first issue, as Apex Legends does not play well at all, in my opinion. Weapons either hit like an absolute truck or fire like peashooters. Sorry, but landing two headshots with a sniper and not killing them because of purple armour (can we stop with this stupid rarity system already?) just makes gameplay feel weak. The game’s movement and combat are jumping and crouching left and right; it’s a sweaty gameplay style that may or may not appeal to you. Personally, it was mostly fine, but it got old fast. 

Then we have the heroes, and this is the most heroic shooter game ever, with a small collection of heroes with very standard abilities. Condor has an eagle she can send out to detect movement and ping enemy teams, whilst John Highguard launches himself up into the air to send out electric spears. There’s not a lot of distinct variety, and the minute-to-minute gameplay is very much the same. However, some unique abilities can provide some fun gameplay encounters, even if they lack originality. 

So, what is Highguard, and does it do anything to differentiate itself from the rest of the hero shooters? To start, Highuard is a team-based objective hero shooter. It’s a combination and hybrid of other team-based shooters; you have Rainbow Six Siege-style defences, Apex Legends-style combat, and a hybrid mode of attacking and defending that follows three distinct phases in a mode they call raid.

First up is the preparation phase. Here you will pick your heroes to play for the entire game, and vote on your base layout. From there, you will spend the first two to three minutes in-game reinforcing key entry ways into your base, followed by gathering your weapons in the open-world sections of the map. 

The raid phase of a match highlights the best Highguard has to offer, but there are long stretches between those.

Then we have the combat stage, where both teams fight to control a single sword and bring it to the enemy base. The map is quite large, but despite this, the combat is heavily concentrated, and the map is designed to enable teamwork, counterplay, and flanking. The shieldbreaker phase is the most baffling, as the game takes place on a huge, empty map with little to explore. It’s a weirdly paced part of each map that adds a sort of MOBA-like approach, as both teams do a back-and-forth push with the shieldbreaker in an attempt to get it to the other’s shield. 

Finally, the raid stage. Whether you won the combat stage or lost, you will be thrust into a game of attack and defence. Much like Rainbow Six Siege, attackers will need to take advantage of destruction to place a charge on one of two objectives. And thirty seconds later, it explodes, taking a chunk off the enemy team’s score. Alternatively, if you can reach the third central objective, you can take the risky move of planting it there for a longer defence. This is where Highguard is at its best, removing the large empty fields of absolutely nothing to focus the action on a smaller part of the map. 

This is the only game mode available at launch, with a ranked version of the mode coming at a later date; so if you aren’t a fan of this idea, then Highguard has absolutely nothing else to offer. The mode itself is mostly fine and does have some unique ideas that, whilst they are a mashup of various MOBA and FPS objectives and design philosophies, do mesh together in a way that gives Highguard an actual identity. Though I was rarely engaged, the matches had some high points, including intense combat encounters and close calls. Only to be thrown back into a waiting game almost immediately. 

5v5 took the game from an absolute chore to something mildly enjoyable.

Highguard suffers from several issues that can be hard to pin down, what they are or what can be done better, but the 3-Player team sizes on these vast empty maps feel like a missed opportunity. I understand what the developers were going for, creating more tactical encounters in large maps, but it feels too empty and has way too much downtime as a result. In fact, downtime is an issue with the game in general; after each phase, you have a good minute or so of not much happening before the action can resume. It makes the game feel like it’s stopping and starting. 

Thankfully, it seems the developers are listening. Just as I was writing this, a limited-time 5v5 Mode was added to the game, which thankfully, was later made permanent. Whilst it does improve the game by adding a little more chaos, it feels much less likely that snowballs can happen early, leading to very quick games. It also doesn’t improve the overall flow of the game; it still uses a high-energy battle royale style that has become a chore, and the core gameplay remains ultra-generic and soulless. It’s clear the developers are working hard to adjust the game to player feedback, but I do wonder if it’s too late, and a series of closed betas and tests would have done wonders to give the game the best possible shot. The developers got off to a rough start, which puts the game in a brutal spot. 

Also, the in-game comms settings are absolutely horrendous. For a multiplayer shooter in 2026 to launch without a basic text chat functionality is baffling to say the least. Meaning if you aren’t playing in a group, prepare to have basically no communication with your teammates. In all my matches, I think I’ve met maybe two or three people in the ten hours that I’ve played who would actually communicate on voice, and we won as a result. If you are in a group, there can be a lot of fun, but solo queuing is a miserable experience. If this is what the game is like when Competitive comes out, good luck. 

Free? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

As this is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter, I do want to touch on the microtransactions and monetisation as a whole. It’s not that bad here. Of course, there’s already a whole bunch of skins and cosmetics to purchase, each costing fake currency in awkward increments to prevent someone from just buying the ones they want. It’s a very standard monetisation strategy, though, judging by the roadmap laid out, all game content itself will be free, so it’s not a bad trade-off, and there’s been so much worse, looking at you, Destiny 2. 

Highguard’s visual style uses low-tech weapons and medieval siege tools to create something quite unique to Highguard, and at times, it can be impressive. However, the hero design is just completely unimaginative. John Highguard, as the cover hero himself, just highlights how generic the heroes’ visual design is, though he is arguably the worst offender. The others simply exist, and I’ve honestly already forgotten that they exist. 

Using Unreal Engine 5, of course. Highguard also suffers from bafflingly bad performance for how the game looks. There’s a blurry smear when using DLSS and a generally unclean look. At the very least, full ultrawide support is present, which surprises me, as many FPS devs opt to cut vertical FOV or add black bars on the sides of the screen. 

I am struggling to come up with anything remarkable to say about Highguard, truth be told.

Is Highguard a bad game? Debtable. It’s not the worst game ever and the absolutely hateful reviews the game has received from people who haven’t even played it are baffling, but it is… remarkably unremarkable. A collection of games, much better than itself, that, whilst it has some unique ideas that could have been great, it didn’t work out for. Yet I know people who absolutely love it, and I can see why. Despite being “just another hero shooter,” it has some unique ideas that help it stand out. Since it’s free-to-play, download it and try it yourself. There’s clearly a lot of potential here, and if the developers listen, as Embark did with The Finals, they could grow it into a sleeper hit with a small but dedicated community. I hope it does, and I’ll be ready if it does. But right now, I’m done with Highguard. 

Highguard is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. 

Reviewed on PC.