REVIEW – “Highguard” is fun, frenetic, and deserves a fair shot from genre fans

There is absolutely fun to be had and I’ve been solo queuing this whole time so far. Finding good loot is exhilarating, strategizing on the spot during a raid is demanding yet rewarding (if you win anyway), and the plethora of content on the horizon is enticing. I may be biased toward this sort of game, but it’s only going to win me over with solid gameplay, compelling design, and respect for the player. Highguard has all of that so far.

I don’t envy Wildlight Entertainment right now. I mean, I do, they seem to have a stellar, battle-hardened team with genuine veteran talent and their energy gleams through in most everything they say and show,but the moment isn’t being terribly friendly to them as a game developer. On one hand, I get it. Another free-to-play first-person shooter tossed upon the piles that inhabit a storefront’s free games section along with the premium currency purchases a game like this portends. Its world premiere at the tail-end of Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards in December 2025–typically reserved for fan-pleasing, world-ending announcements–immediately soured a lot of people on it. Unfair? Perhaps. Justified? Maybe.

Circumstances aside, I admit the gist isn’t very inspiring to most. Highguard is a 3v3 raid shooter which, in layman’s terms, means you and up to two others take on another squad of three in a competition to protect your base and attack theirs. You do that armed with one of nine ballistic weapons, one of three raid tools (two of which double as weapons), and a variety of magic-based character abilities, passives, and ultimate techniques that can turn the tide of battle (yeah, I know, stop me if you’ve heard this one before).

The thing is though, I don’t think Highguard, much less Wildlight as a dev, is worthy of the particular scorn it’s gotten the last couple months. You know the type: “this game’s gonna be dead at launch,” “no one asked for this,” “this is Concord 2”, and simply, “why?” After *checks notes* about a day’s worth of hours poured into this game, stacks of hard-won victories, and a bushel of flattening losses, I find myself wanting more.

Just How High is This Guard?

The gameplay loop is enticing. You queue up for matchmaking, jump into a game, and are immediately set with a short opportunity to reinforce certain walls and doors of your base in case you get raided. There’s strategy to it: Each base that you vote on using after character selection has unique layouts and things to consider, but they’re hand-crafted, not procedurally generated or randomized. Scattered in each one are two generators and a harder to reach (but more rewarding) Anchor Stone that the raiding team targets by planting bombs. These are always in the same places so it helps create consistency and attainable map knowledge like any other multiplayer shooter complete with some verticality here and there, and hazards like a lava moat surrounding the core building of the Hellmouth base, or exploding barrels littered around the perimeter that can fry friend and foe alike on Smuggler’s Den–my current fave. 

Between each team’s base is an expansive landmass, and there’s five of them to experience. After reinforcing your base, you venture out on your animal mount (horse, bear, or panther, with a premium eldergryph land bird available to buy) to find loot in chests which follows the expected white > blue > purple > orange rarity tiers. Loot can upgrade your weapons, armor, saddle for your mount, give you amulets to bestow invaluable passive buffs. Scouring for chests (red for weapons, blue for armor and just about everything else) is key because your armor breaks and is lost on death so you need to collect or buy multiple armors if you wanna stand a chance. There’s also mineable vesper, large glowing crystals that are currency used to buy rotating items in a match from the trader named Flynn and his little fuzzy buddy Gregory who have stations all over each map. Remember to spend it as it’s only good for that match. 

The maps are all pretty symmetrical for fairness’ sake and have key points of interest, usually seated in the center line of each map, and it’s among these areas that you’ll find a bulk of the loot. It’s also where you’ll find the Shieldbreaker, a mythical sword you must capture (you know, like a flag) and bring to your enemies’ base to break open its protective dome and commence a raid. If the enemy team carries the Shieldbreaker to your base and breaks your dome, you’re on defense. This is where the game’s core tension and fun sets in.

Each raid segment has unlimited lives for defenders and limited ones for raiders via a siege tower that materializes on raid start, meaning raiders have a set number of attempts to plant bombs and do some heavy damage. This is where raid tools really come in handy. A rocket launcher can punch through walls with relative ease (be sure to stock up to handle those reinforced walls though), a zipline gun can make or break how a team approaches an objective, and blast hammers can also smash through walls within melee range, and even a distance beyond that if you have special charge ammo for them–they also nuke the health of anyone on the receiving end so watch out.

Each base has 100 life, planting a Shieldbreaker itself deducts 30 points, and destroying one generator with a planted bomb deducts 35. Do both for a total of 70, thus fully depleting base health and securing a victory. Go for the Anchor Stone if you’re in a hurry and want to do maximum damage. If you successfully defend against a raid and the attacking team’s respawns run out, finish the team off or run out the clock to make them return to base and deduct 30 life from their base for failing the raid. This helps matches not last forever, and even then, they can go for 20-30 minutes so make sure your day’s in order before committing to a match.

Immerse Yourself

But who is doing all this raiding? Your cast of characters are called Wardens. There’s Redmane, the big angry boy that never skipped leg day, claws through base walls and squishy enemies alike; Condor, a nomadic explorer with an all-seeing bird that tips her squad off to enemy position;. Atticus, the lightning-wielding spearhead of your squad and Zeus’ biggest fan. Kai, an ice-trained defensive monk holding a big, beastly secret within, ready to unleash to clutch victories; Mara, the dark soul mage that turns the essence of enemies into extra protection for her squad; Una, a druid-like summoner of the woods with helpful little forest spirits; Scarlet, the bane of my existence agile desert ninja assassin capable of sneaking around and upending your defenses. And finally there’s Slade, a pyromaniac scrapper with a fiery eye for area denial and heating things up in all the right ways.

All these Wardens are part of a collective called the Iron Vigil and have been tasked with investigating and laying claim to the mysteriously reappearing continent of Highguard, a place of arcane repute brimming with resources. I’ll keep it real with you, beyond that, there isn’t too much more to know about the story or setting yet, but you do get flashes of character personality through small talk and banter between each of them and how Trader Flynn interacts with you. Flynn holds Redmane in high regard for instance, Condor reveals her dream of exploring vast and beautiful places like Highguard to anyone that’ll listen, and Mara is self-serious and off-putting with dark, occult magic vibes. They’re interesting and entertaining enough, given life through veteran voice actors like Elle Newlands, JB Blanc, Abubakar Salim, and Cherami Leigh. With more and deeper lore promised from Wildlight, I’d venture a guess that we’ll be learning a lot more about all the Wardens in due time.

Every Warden has their use, of course. In what is a rarity for me, I’ve found proficiency and use in all eight of them pretty immediately, but I do have my faves. As a recon and support fan, I’ve gravitated toward Condor and Mara to help my team out, but I do like to keep a pocket Atticus to agitate and poke enemy squads before bullets fly or set traps with his placeable shockspears to send some lethal tingles into enemies as a proximity trap. Designs are relatively varied for them all being humans and it’s tough to mix up Wardens with others, even in the heat of battle where chaos is capable of inebriating you. Even when enemies are silhouetted in orange with Condor’s spotting ability, you can usually work out who’s on the other side of a wall and what to prepare for.

That’s one of a few boons in the design department. Based on the reveal trailer, one big criticism was that the game looked bland with its blend of fantasy and soft sci-fi. For me though, at my big age of 36, it reminds me of the kind of eclectic designs found in games like Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict back on the original Xbox, just with a good amount less 2000s titillation. I get it’s not particularly inspired, and it certainly isn’t as bold as something like Overwatch, but it does the job for me. I love having rolling emerald green hills to traverse, ancient ruins and manmade structures to weave through as you plunder upgrades and almost assuredly get into little scraps if an enemy decides to scout the same area as you.

Hell, even the weapons have some bang (ha) in the looks department. They look arcane, half-built–or perhaps manifested–of wood, then of metal, or even porcelain-like textures on some of the skins you can unlock. The Saber Rifle looks like it’s straight out of the future with its angular design and bullpup configuration. A Longhorn revolver fits best when you’re atop your mighty mount like a gunslinger in the Old West. Assault rifles like the Vanguard and Dynasty meet in the middle as more contemporary designs, clearly inspired by modern military and defense staples the world over. And of course, I have to shout out the universal melee weapon and part-time vesper mining tool: the trusty axe. If you’re an Apex Legends fan like me and play Bloodhound, you’ll feel right at home with this piece. It’s throwable too!

They all feel nice as well. Gun porn-esque animations with racks racking, the frames themselves splitting open when a magazine is replaced, and of course the break-action revolver folding down so you can replace spent rounds in the cylinder (just ignore that you can shoot more than the six rounds that it shows). Controller vibration is timed in tune with these weapon manipulations and make it all feel so tactile. Clearly a lot of work went into this particular aspect and the animators were super proud of what they did – they should be.

That’s the Meat, What About the Potatoes?

Nothing humbles you like a new game. I might be competent at Apex Legends and frequently get MVP in Marvel Rivals, but the fact of the matter is when you’re thrown into a new world with new tools to use to achieve new (or at least different) goals, you must be okay with failure. That’s the fix: the desire to improve, to see what more experienced players see and execute plans and strategies in your way. Thankfully, Highguard makes all that pretty easy.

The online matchmaking runs very well. On launch day, it hit very nearly six-digit numbers on Steam alone, with consoles pushing it well over that mark I’m sure. I’ve never been disconnected or dropped from a match and I have yet to see any sort of error while in game or searching for a match. Not bad at all for a brand new shooter with no price tag. I’ve had more trouble playing other games that have been out for years!

As I write this, it’s only been 10 days since launch. In that time, the makers have been listening to feedback with keen intent. People were saying the game’s core 3v3 format felt small compared to map sizes, so they dropped an experimental 5v5 mode during the game’s first weekend that’s now permanent due to the demand and traffic they saw. Already, there’s a projected year’s worth of content outlined in a roadmap that’s vague on most details, but high on promise, delving out stuff on an episodic, bimonthly basis. In fact, in two days on February 6, we’re already getting Episode 2 and with it a new shapeshifting Warden, map, and ranked mode. 

All of that is particularly inspiring for someone like me and the bevy of streamers and creators who have enjoyed and/or come around on Highguard in addition to the fact that the foundation of the game is already quite enjoyable. It feels like you can invest time, energy, and money if you so choose, and not have the pang of anxiety that the game will close in a few months like so many do (I still miss Rumbleverse).

The Few Lows of Highguard

So, this all sounds great, right? It is, but of course there’s some things I’d love to see improved or implemented. First, the more personal and nitpicky stuff: there’s very little statistics offered about your play, not even a scoreboard during a match to see how many times you’ve been fried by the enemy Scarlet or assisted your team with kills, let alone numbers like total damage dealt. Almost more baffling was the absence of a global stats screen in the home menu. This is being added in Episode 2 but no word yet on an in-game scoreboard.

Being a controller user, I’ve found the aiming and gunplay to feel quite solid overall. These are some of the same people that brought us Apex Legends, various Call of Duty games, and more after all. Still, something feels just a tad off with how aim assist is handled. There’s no settings to tweak about it which is odd in and of itself–it’s just on and you have to deal with it, but it’d benefit from offering more settings to customize how you want it to feel like so many other games do.

The music of the game, while certainly not bad, isn’t particularly outstanding. The whole epic orchestral thing is way overdone for me and you better be slinging some wild melodies and interesting instrumentation to grab me. Then again, if you ask me what other kind of music or soundtrack I’d prefer for this fantastical setting, I probably couldn’t come up with much else. Electronica doesn’t really make sense, metal doesn’t really fit the aesthetic, etc. What’s there does fit, I’ve just heard it so much, it all blends together for the most part.

Sometimes my mount’s movement acts odd and gets stuck on terrain or objects, or doesn’t allow me to mount despite my perfect, absolutely not flawed at all button inputs. It’s not enough to deter me, but it does get the occasional “hey, COME ON” out of me in a match. Climbing walls to reach higher areas as your Warden gets a little glitchy as well, like ending prematurely when I know I could’ve made it, or climbing not initiating correctly. These are likely just a symptom of having a lot of complex geometry going on and systems bumping up against each other to make the game run and, if nothing can be done about it, fine, I will persevere. Just keep an eye out for little oddities like that.

This being free-to-play means some concessions by default. War Chests, this game’s name for battle passes, will likely be premium bones of contention over time. The dreaded Store tab in the menu houses unique, flashy, and admittedly pretty sick skins obtained with Highguard Gold you purchase with real money. Hopefully there is a way to earn amounts of it through regular play eventually. Honestly, while I understand the game has to make money somehow, I’m generally not a fan of this kind of stuff even if it doesn’t affect gameplay so I’m not gonna break my back defending or justifying it beyond the often “necessary evil” it’s often framed as. There are still ways to get decent though less rare stuff without opening your wallet like matches and completable challenges awarding you with varying amounts of Warden Credits which you can use to get stuff from the Trading Post.

For Genre Fans, Highguard Deserves a Shot

It’s unfortunate that most people reading this have already made up their minds about Highguard, some through playing it themselves, others dismissing it outright due to a number of factors, and the few that just aren’t into this kind of game and are reasonable about it. If you are reading this and there’s a spark of curiosity in you about it, dive in. Play the tutorial, find a character you like, link up with some friends and make a night or two out of it. There is absolutely fun to be had and I’ve been solo queuing this whole time so far. Finding good loot is exhilarating, strategizing on the spot during a raid is demanding yet rewarding (if you win anyway), and the plethora of content on the horizon is enticing. I may be biased toward this sort of game, but it’s only going to win me over with solid gameplay, compelling design, and respect for the player. Highguard has all of that so far.

Things can change for the worse throughout 2026, but I’m choosing to be positive about it. The first impression is strong and as an indie dev, Wildlight deserves a fair shot at making this game the best it can be. I’m going to give it that shot, and you should too.