---
title: 'The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard - Retrospective Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=neWMyUay1VY'
video_id: 'neWMyUay1VY'
date: 2026-07-14
duration_sec: 2239
---

# The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard - Retrospective Review

> Source: [The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard - Retrospective Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=neWMyUay1VY)

## Summary

This retrospective review of The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard examines the game's surprisingly strong story, its severe technical and gameplay issues, and its historical significance as a failed spin-off that nearly bankrupted Bethesda. The reviewer argues that while the narrative and voice acting are memorable, the game is plagued by crashes, bugs, poor controls, and platforming, making it difficult to recommend playing directly.

### Key Points

- **Introduction and Recommendation** [00:08] — The reviewer introduces Redguard as a unique but technically troubled game that is not recommended unless one is dedicated to The Elder Scrolls or old games. Technical problems persist, and even with experience, players will face issues.
- **Pricing Discrepancy** [01:41] — Unlike Daggerfall, which is free, Redguard and Battlespire are still sold for about $5. The reviewer notes this is frustrating, especially since they have bought both Steam and GOG versions.
- **Core Description** [02:23] — Redguard has a surprisingly great story but is beset by technical problems, making it nearly unplayable. The reviewer suggests it is more fun to watch others struggle with it on YouTube than to play it.
- **Historical Context** [03:15] — Redguard was part of a planned series of spin-offs after Daggerfall. Battlespire and Redguard both failed, leading Bethesda to focus on Morrowind, which saved the company. A third game, The Eye of Argonia, was canceled.
- **Technical Issues Overview** [05:03] — The game has no effective mods. The GOG version (Glide renderer) is recommended over Steam (software renderer) for fewer problems and better graphics. The reviewer experienced only a few crashes but notes worse possibilities.
- **Console and Controls** [06:36] — The game has a console (default F12) to help with bugs. Controls are inconsistent: sometimes Cyrus slides after stopping, which is problematic for platforming sections that require precise jumps.
- **Crashes and Bugs** [08:06] — Crashes can occur when opening the menu to save, picking up items, or due to memory errors. The game may stop loading areas, requiring reverting to older saves. Other bugs include falling into the void, getting stuck transitioning from swimming, and combat bugs.
- **Game Structure** [10:33] — Redguard is a short action-adventure with no progression system. Players track down three leads on the island of Stros M'Kai before tackling the endgame. The story is the highlight.
- **Story Background** [11:41] — Set after Tiber Septim's conquest of Hammerfell, the game follows Cyrus returning to Stros M'Kai to find his missing sister Iszara. The island is under Imperial control, with the Restless League resisting.
- **Non-linear Story** [14:11] — The story has three threads: the main quest (delivering an amulet to Lord Richton) and two side quests (helping Saban with her son's soul and finding the Arch-Mage's ring). The reviewer advises doing the side quests first to avoid constant guard attacks.
- **Soul Snare and Side Quests** [16:01] — N'Gasta has placed a soul snare over the island. The Temple of Arkay protects souls in town. Side quests involve helping the Yokudan matriarch Saban and recovering the Arch-Mage's ring to break Prince A'tor's stasis.
- **Main Quest Progression** [18:13] — After escaping prison, Cyrus contacts the Restless League, learns Iszara's involvement, and finds her journal. He then seeks the Flask of Lillandril to confront N'Gasta.
- **Climax and Puzzles** [20:00] — Using the Flask, Cyrus reflects N'Gasta's spells to defeat him, then solves a logic puzzle in Clavicus Vile's realm to free Iszara's soul. After completing side quests, he retrieves Prince A'tor's soul gem from the palace.
- **Finale and Speech** [22:29] — Cyrus defeats the dragon Nafaalilargus. Saban attempts to reunite A'tor's soul with his body, but it enters a sword. Cyrus gives a rousing speech to the Restless League, leading to an assault on the palace. After defeating Dram and Richton, the Empire is repelled.
- **Gameplay and Items** [25:07] — The game has no character progression. Players collect gold to buy items. Combining aloe, water, and a bottle yields cheap healing potions. Fast travel is via shrines of Kynareth using canna feathers.
- **Dungeons and Platforming** [28:21] — Dungeons feature enemies, puzzles, and platforming. Platforming is difficult due to skatey controls and rope swinging. Puzzles include rune puzzles, steam valves, and scarab puzzles.
- **Boss Fights** [30:21] — Most bosses are puzzle-like: the ogre dies quickly, the dwarven colossus requires hitting exposed parts, the dragon is stabbed repeatedly, and N'Gasta is defeated by reflecting spells. Only Dram and Richton are straightforward fights.
- **Combat System** [31:04] — Combat is terrible but has depth: single, double, triple slashes, thrust, and lunge attacks. Auto-defend and active blocking exist, along with sidestepping. However, poor telegraphing and hitboxes make it ineffective. Strength and iron skin potions help.
- **Steam Deck Performance** [33:33] — The game is officially unsupported on Steam Deck and runs poorly with low FPS, even with the GOG version.
- **Final Verdict** [34:12] — Positives: great story and charismatic protagonist. Negatives: terrible combat, platforming, controls, and technical issues. The reviewer recommends watching the story on YouTube rather than playing. They suggest the game should be free.

### Conclusion

The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard is a historically interesting but technically broken game with a compelling story. Unless you are a dedicated fan, it's better to experience the narrative through videos rather than struggle with the gameplay.

## Transcript

this time bringing you a retrospective review for The Elder Scrolls Adventures Redguard, a game I've wanted to get around to taking a look at for quite some time as this Battlespire and a few other older titles are just things I
full despite having played a couple of them such as Redguard here prior. And with there being a relative lull in game releases over the next few weeks, this and a couple others are what I wanted to fit in here. And with that in mind,
Redguard is a unique game in a lot of ways. However, just starting with I note, it's also not really a game I would recommend anyone try to play unless they are just truly dedicated either to The Elder Scrolls or just
really old games in general, I suppose. And the reason for that is that Redguard is beset by technical problems even to this day. There is a way to play it without too many issues, but the chances of you running through this with no
issues are essentially zero because even things down to like the way the controls work these days are difficult to deal with. Now, I was able to get this done relatively quickly because as mentioned, I have played this game before, which
meant I already pretty much knew where to go and what to do, but it is actually a game that benefits from some of that experience or at least not going in fully blind simply because there are some common pitfalls that will make it
more difficult than it really needs to be. And we're obviously going to get into that over the course of this review. But first, I want to mention one which has nothing to do with the technical stuff, and that is simply that
they are still charging money for it. So, if you are unaware, The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall is just free. You can go grab that pretty much anywhere, and it is not going to cost you a dime. And then with that free game, you can
then go get Daggerfall Unity and have an absolutely grand time potentially for going to cost you a dime. And yet, somehow Redguard, as well as Battlespire, which are barely younger, they're still charging like $5 for it,
just something that's always bothered me. And I say that as somebody who has bought both the Steam and GOG versions, which will come up here in a moment. Let's talk broad strokes first, however. To describe Redguard is very simple. It
is a game with a surprisingly great story, but beset by technical problems, unplayable, and kind of literally unplayable in some instances. Now, in some ways, I do think that kind of hilariously does make it a really great
game for YouTube in particular. This is a game that it's really fun to watch people struggle with, more so than it is to actually play the game. And on top of that, you can experience the best thing about it via videos and the like, that
being the story. And there is, again, just not a ton of reason to put yourself through playing it with its just god-awful controls, the many bugs you may well run into with any version of it, the large potential for soft locks,
all of the potentially game-breaking bugs, etc. And I'm going to try to break down all of that and more over the course of this review. But, there is actually another thing I wanted to talk about in this section, which is that one
anything like Redguard in the Elder Scrolls universe anymore isn't really much of a mystery because Redguard was part of a series of like spin-offs for the series that is actually the second in what was planned to be at least a
being three games not necessarily actually Battlespire. And unfortunately, the one-two punch of both Battlespire and Redguard pretty much flailing after the release of Daggerfall. As Daggerfall
released in '96, Battlespire released in '97, and then Redguard released in '98. But, with both Battlespire and Redguard failing out of the gate, Bethesda was perilously close to going out of business, which they've talked about in
many places and is kind of what led them to go all in on Morrowind, which happened to be a success and saved them from that financial crisis, but at a cost many might not be aware of. You see, as I mentioned, there were three
games kind of in this uh little side series planned with the third one being The Eye of Argonia. This is actually referenced in a few places in Red Guard specifically, but also later games. And was of course meant to be set in Black
Marsh around the gym, the Eye of Argonia, which had some plans already drawn up, which is why we know about it. Slightly less known, however, is a brief mentions of a game set in Elsewhere, uh Paradise Sugar, which was meant to focus
around the Khajiit and in particular the family of a crime boss known as Sarathra, who also features in Red Guard. So, ultimately, the failure, of Battle Spire and Red Guard put Bethesda down the road of Morrowind,
Oblivion, and Skyrim for both good and ill, I suppose. Next up, the big thing I want to talk about here is the technical side of things, which we are going to have to spend a longer than usual amount of time on discussing a many of the
pitfalls of this game. One, first and foremost, you may be asking yourself if there are any mods, etc., that you can help out with this, and the answer is mostly no. There is technically an unofficial patch, but almost everything
dialogue and stuff, some of which introduces bugs of its own. And so, while that does exist, it's not going to help you in the way you may well be thinking of an unofficial patch from other games, etc. However, as I
versions of this, depending on where you buy it from, Steam or GOG. These basically being a software renderer or the Glide renderer that would have came with the packaged physical version. So, if you actually managed to buy the
physical version of this way back in the day, and went to install it, it would ask you which version you would like to use. And while you're obviously not physical discs of Redguard these days, Steam has the software rendered version,
whereas GOG uses that Glide renderer. This is important because the Glide version that you can get from GOG is both going to give you less problems because it plays nicer with hardware in general in addition to having better
overall resolution, which makes the graphics look a little sharper old as the title is. But really the main reason I would recommend the GOG version is just because it will give you less problems than the Steam version will.
This particular run-through of this game I ran into maybe a couple of crashes and that was the worst of the problems. However, it can in fact get quite a bit worse than that. And before I start detailing those, you should probably
know that as old as this game is, it also has a console. Uh if you hit default F12, it will open that console and you have a few commands here and there that you can input to help you get out of situations or get you unstuck,
that kind of thing. And if you want to play this for yourself, I would yourself with that. That said, let's go ahead and talk about the game's many other problems, starting with controls. They are bad, but not necessarily for
bad because they're bad, though they are bad to be clear. They're mostly bad because they're inconsistent. You see, one of the big problems people will have is that on occasion Cyrus, our main character here, doesn't stop when you
stop hitting the movement keys. He will continue for a couple of seconds and the like. Now, here's the catch. It doesn't always do that. Sometimes you stop moving and you stop on a dime. And the inconsistency there, combined with
the game's necessary platforming sections, failing which just leads to instant death, and you're already in for a rough time for a lot of people as you would probably imagine. And that's before we start talking about how
terrible the key binds are. Um, you can rebind a ton of the keys, like it defaults to arrow key movement, and you can rebind that to WASD and several other keys in order to make the game a bit more, uh, I would say friendly to
what you might be used to these days. But realistically, that's the least of this game's problems because the other issues are the more serious stuff, starting with the crashes. So, uh, when you hit escape to bring up the menu to
say save your game, and you will want to save as often as possible, by the way, about to talk about, but hitting escape to bring up the menu can be one of the unfortunately, which means sometimes you do a thing, you go to save, and the game
crashes. It can also occasionally just crash randomly due to various memory errors. There are a few workarounds there, most of which involve messing structure, which, you know, various
people may not feel comfortable doing. Unfortunately, the game might also crash on you when you go to pick up certain items. If that still wasn't enough for game will simply stop loading at about
uh, this is one of the bigger issues you can run into because it will affect save what happens if you run into this one is a ton is if that happens to you, what you'll likely have to do is go back
through your saves and simply test at which point that area stopped loading and go back to that save and simply start playing again from there. Uh, if you are, again, more comfortable messing around with the in-game files, it's
and copy some of the necessary information from that save to a newer save where you were farther along to potentially fix the issue, but that's really just a maybe, and then there are, uh, let's say infrequent bugs like the
void. Uh, one of the problems you can run into with Red Guard is just falling into nothingness. This can usually happen from the Goblin Cave or the city harbor, and while those are the most frequent, there's also a handful of less
frequent things. It's possible to get stuck transitioning from swimming to going on to land. It's possible for the game to freeze up as Cyrus goes to talk to an NPC. You'll usually do like a shuffle to get into the correct position
if something blocks you as that is happening, it can also break the game. And while you'd probably be hard-pressed to actually tell, there are also combat bugs where you can just no longer defend yourself. That one can be fixed by just
restarting. There's a portion of the game where you get transformed into a gremlin. If you happen to have had a consumable item equipped when that happened and you hit the use key while as a gremlin, it can also completely
freeze and break the game for you. So, needless to say, there are a lot of technical problems with this game, which is part of the reason why most people Despite the fact that it's actually a relatively short and simple title. As an
early action-adventure, there's not a lot of things like progression systems from doing what you need to do because there's really only like three main leads you need to track down in the
game's little open-world island of Stros M'Kai before you can then tackle the actual in-game. And so, if it wasn't for the simple technical mess that is this title, it would be a relatively simple game for people to run through. And it's
you're missing out on there is again a story that is probably better than you rest of the game. Now, I will say I don't want to oversell it. There's a reason that the game is not remembered as fondly as say Planescape Torment,
etc. But, it does genuinely have its moments and you can see why the character Cyrus the Redguard was somebody they settled on. In particular, there's a big speech partway through the game that he just nails and that
combined with let's say high-effort voice acting, if not necessarily highly skilled voice acting, makes for a story that's probably pretty memorable if yourself. But, let's actually talk about some of the background there. The Elder
Scrolls Adventure: Redguard takes place on the island of Stros M'Kai. In particular though, it takes place shortly after Tiber Septim's Third Empire has taken over Hammerfell. However, Hammerfell's king died. This
sparked a civil war between factions within Hammerfell, the Crowns and the Forebears. The Crowns are the ones who support their own sovereignty and thus the king's son, Prince A'tor. The Forebears on the other hand welcome the,
let's say, progress and innovation of the Empire and are on the side of Tiber Septim. In the wake of this civil war, following the king of Hammerfell's death, Tiber Septim, naturally, backs the Forebears and pushes the Crowns and
their resistance all the way back to the Isle of Stros M'Kai, which if you're unaware of the geography, is a decent way away from the mainland. And in fact, way away from the mainland. And in fact, the recent last stand of the Crowns is
basically the setup for the political situation on Stros M'Kai. You see, the Crowns have just lost spectacularly. In what was to be their final stand, Prince A'tor was actually crushed by a dragon, Na'faalilargus, alongside the assassin
working for Lord Richton. And that's actually when we show up, a couple of months after this has been won. The Empire has taken over Stros M'Kai. Lord Richton has been installed as the provisional governor, and they are doing
everything they can to repress any sentiment of the rebellion that is left in the form of the Restless League, who is still here surveying the Crowns. However, they are greatly diminished and mostly just trying to bide their time.
And then comes our character, Cyrus the Redguard. So, Cyrus has been away from Hammerfell for some time. In fact, he starts the game out in Wayrest, some ways away. Cyrus has been there working for a crime boss known as Sirathra, a
Khajiit who passes on work to Cyrus that a letter came in for him talking about how his sister Azura is missing. She has seemingly been gone for some time. basically looking to you as a last resort. You haven't talked to your
sister Azura since you killed her husband and left, being a bit of a wanderer since. And so this family drama is what calls you back to Stro's M'Kai, initially pretty unconcerned with the situation around the Crowns forebears
and the civil war and the Empire and all that. As you might imagine, you're however, because as you will quickly see, your sister Azura was pretty heavily wrapped up in it. Now here's where things get interesting. The story
is actually somewhat non-linear. I would say there are basically three story threads that you need to follow to their conclusion in order to take on the end game. There is the sort of laid out in front of you main path, yes, but there
are also two other side quests, so so to speak, that you have to do. The game quests, though, just so you know. However, I will say I do think they could have structured this a tiny bit better because the main quest that they
actually sort of hand-feed to you is probably the thread you want to save for the other two first and the reason for that is that the first quest in like the main plot you're given sends you to the Isle of Nagasta. So Nagasta is a Sload
necromancer nearby who, as all Sload tend to do, dabbles with raising the undead. He has an amulet that he wants you to deliver to the provisional governor, Lord Richton. Now once you
turn that amulet over to Lord Richton, every guard after that quest will be are all over the island and they're going to be chasing you constantly and as a result, it's really best to wait on that until you do everything else and
just beeline it towards the end of the game from that point. Otherwise, you're really needs to be, especially in combination with the many technical problems we've already discussed. But, it is in talking to that slowed
interesting things pretty much straight away. Though, keep in mind almost any of at different times. But, Nagasta will just straight up tell you that he's put a soul snare over the island of Stros M'Kai. And basically, what this is is a
mass soul trap covering the entire island and that anytime dies, he automatically traps their soul, which then fuels his necromancy, of course. Now, there's a few ways around this. In particular, the Temple of Arkay in the
town is actually making sure people's souls do not get caught in this. But, anybody not in town, like for instance, the Yokudans nearby are at great risk of bit of a problem. When the Yokudan
matriarch's son dies unexpectedly, she has to make sure that his soul does not get trapped in this soul snare, but that also reveals that she is a master of soul magic, which is going to come in handy later, which is one of the side
plot threads you have to deal with. The other one being that an Arch-Mage also game starts. And it just so happens that while he was not a particularly accomplished actual magic user, what he
was was good at enchanting things or at least finding things that are enchanted. very powerful artifacts, not least of which was his ring. A ring that could break somebody out of stasis. And when you recover that and return the journal
looking for it in the Goblin caves to the Temple of Arkay, it is revealed to you that while Prince Athor did in fact die in that battle a while back, they found his body and it's been kept in
stasis at the temple there pretty much the whole time. And they actually had to break the stasis until you found that Arch-Mage's ring, which is capable of doing the job. Now, once you solve those two side plots, some of which involves a
whole bunch of dwarven ruins, fighting a dwarven colossus, fixing a dwarven you will eventually turn your head towards the main plot. Now, when you first arrive on the island, you're likely going to talk to Tobias at the
the land and set a bunch of stuff up for you, and basically tell you to start asking around, which is then what would lead you to getting the amulet from Nagasta and delivering it to Lord Richton. Now, when Lord Richton
essentially refuses to answer your questions about Azara, he does, however, let some information slip that she was in fact involved with the Restless League, who are known crowns, people supporting the rebels in this case, and
Prince Ehtor. So, once you manage to escape your shackles, by which get out your job becomes tracking down the Restless League, finding these people, and seeing what they knew about your sister. Eventually, through a convoluted
series of methods, you will find a way of contacting them. Basically, at the lighthouse down south in Saint Port, you will flash a signal causing a boat to pull up, and as long as you have the prerequisite items to give that person
Restless League, where they will in fact confirm Azara's involvement, but you also find her journal, which gives you the rest of the information. You see, we already know that Prince Ehtor did not in fact die, but his body has been held
in stasis at the temple. And so, what Azara was trying to do when she disappeared was take a soul gem with Prince Ehtor's soul in it when he died to the necromancer Nagasta, hoping that Nagasta would be willing to set it
right. And so, now we need a means of confronting Nagasta, and we do that by finding the flask of Lilandril. That's going to see us being temporarily turned into a gremlin by the current archmage, who's doing everything he can to stay on
the empire's good graces as he himself has aspirations of joining the Battle prior to this game. But once you learn everything, you may well think to go to the Mages Guild who will deal with
it, which is where the Arch-Mage there will turn you into this gremlin. And the only place you can actually go as a gremlin is to the prison where one of the Mages Guild members has been imprisoned for helping Azura, and he
gives you the information about the flask that you'll need as well as a map to hopefully find it before he is promptly assassinated by Lord Richton's assassin, Dram, who serves as a bit of a side antagonist, if you will, though not
a very good one, to be honest. However, uh from there you take that map piece, find hopefully other map pieces, though technically this is the only one you have to go get, and then find the flask of Llandro, which is buried near
Saintsport. This flask is special because what it does is absorb and reflect magic. Once we have that flask, we can go join up with Nagasta, who promptly attacks you, of course, when you discover your sister there, not
before, of course, he explains that your sister bartered her soul for the resurrection, so to speak, of Athor by putting his soul back in his body. telling you that uh he hasn't gotten around to actually doing this, and the
the world to do it, so he's not really concerned about it, and he's not couldn't even if he wanted to, because he took her soul and traded it to the Daedric Lord Clavicus Vile. At this point, you're going to get into a fight
like most of the actual boss fights. have the flask of Llandro equipped and reflect his spells back at him until he dies, at which point you're tasked with solving a little puzzle to open a portal
to the realm of Clavicus Vile, who taunts you six ways to Sunday before eventually agreeing to free your sister's soul if you can solve a little puzzle, which is like the knights and knaves logic puzzle, where you have one
guard that lies, one guard that tells the truth, and you simply ask them what the other guard would tell you, and then do the opposite of that. That puzzle's been around forever. But, in so doing, you will have freed your sister. Now, at
this point, uh the game sort of stops you until you go complete those other two side quests. That being helping Saban with her son's soul, as well as learning where uh Prince Aitor's body is. But, there is, technically speaking,
Now, once you've saved Azara, she's catacombs, which you already escaped from when you delivered the amulet to Azara will tell you, that amulet that you delivered earlier in the game was,
in fact, the soul gem with Prince Aitor's soul. It's being kept in the palace treasury now, and you get the key to go into that treasury, because if you hadn't pieced it together by now, your sister and Prince Aitor were lovers, and
simply put, you need to go get that soul gem. So, we can save the day, of course. Now, this involves going through another dungeon, the final one, technically speaking, and ultimately fighting the red dragon Naflalargus, which again,
gimmicky, is very easy. You just light your sword in the brazier, and then slash at it. It will die pretty quickly, like shockingly so for a dragon that no man could defeat, according to all of the build-up to that moment. But, either
you've completed those other two side quests, you can go to the witch mother Saban, explain to her the situation, bring her to the temple where Prince Aitor's body is. With the soul gem in your possession, Saban will try to
reunite the soul in the soul gem with Prince Aitor's body. But, it doesn't go quite according to plan. Rather, the soul does not choose to return to its body, but rather it chooses to inhabit the sword. Now, at this point, the
Restless League, also showing up and preparing to attack the provisional governor, catching them unaware, are very defeated only for what is easily the best part of the entire story to take place when Cyrus, uh, suddenly
inspired by these events he has, uh, witnessed and been a part of, gives an incredibly rousing speech to the Restless League encouraging them to finish this once and for all by taking the fight to Richton and pointing out
that Aether didn't do this on accident. He chose to come back as a sword as both a symbol of fighting for what they believe in, but also that everyone else seems to have put their swords down when they should have been picking them up.
And it is genuinely, uh, really great speech. Again, best part of the story by far. At that point though, as you would expect, you pretty much raid the palace, solve a couple more puzzles before fighting off both Dram as well as
Richton on a dwarven airship that gets blown up in spectacular style. And with repelled from the island of Stro's M'Kai, we then get an end scene with Azura both leading Stro's M'Kai, but
also making favorable deals with the Empire as they attempt to rebuild what is left of the place. So, all in all, the story of The Elder Scrolls Adventures Redguard is the best thing about it by far, but also I think, uh,
story that is painfully trapped by a game that is a bit of a technical mess. However, one thing that actually I think really sells all of that story is again some of that voice acting that is high effort if not exactly highly skilled.
Every NPC you talk to has a wealth of conversation options that you can pick learn about things you could potentially ask them simply by talking to them or going through the other story beats, etc. They'll have even more to say. Most
NPCs that you can talk to have a mountain of exposition. The game covers interesting lore like the Sload which haven't been in too many other games. One of the very rare instances of us seeing a proper living dragon outside
of, of course, Skyrim and its plot line. And some honestly compelling political intrigue on top of all of that. So, again, it's just a shame that most themselves, but luckily that's what videos and let's plays, etc. like this
for a while. There are ways to experience that story even if you don't necessarily want to experience the game per se. Now, normally this is where I would go into the progression portion of the video, but as I mentioned, Redguard
doesn't really have progression systems. You start the game with basically all going to get. You do technically get that sword upgrade from when you get the soul sword, and it does in fact deal more damage and everything, but as far
as like straight character upgrades go, that's pretty much it. Everything else is really just about acquiring gold and then using it to buy various goods and services, and then interacting with things and just the general gameplay of
it all. And so, what we're going to do is freely explore the island of Stros M'Kai, delve dungeons, solve puzzles, do a little bit of platforming, and generally, or at least hopefully anyway, learn about the game as we go.
Now, one thing you'll notice hopefully pretty quickly is that you can actually combine things here and there. So, one of the early ways you can do this is by getting yourself a bunch of healing. You have access to a variety of potions
throughout the game, mainly healing potions, strength potions, iron skin, incoming damage, that kind of thing. And you can buy those from the Mages Guild or find them. An alternative, however, is to buy aloe from the general goods
vendor known as Gaerrick, and then go get water from the well in the middle of town, put the aloe in the water, and then get a glass bottle from the alchemist shack which has been abandoned and beat up outside of town, and then
once you put that aloe water in the glass bottle, you effectively get about 20 healing potions for like 10 gold, which is incredibly cheap compared to 25 a piece over at the Mages Guild. And to take that a bit farther, and speaking of
you can only carry 500 gold pieces at a time, usually in five gold piece some quests, and you can do these again pretty much immediately, will reward hundreds of gold, and it's really easy to have gold and buy all the potions.
And your inventory for potions can be expansive, and so with those potions and the easy access to healing, despite the game's terrible combat, you should probably be okay as you move through this. But combining items in that way,
or using them in the exact right spot to trigger an effect, is really about as crazy as the gameplay gets. In particular, though, you might not, you know, realize it or even think about it, but technically speaking, Redguard has a
fast travel system. There are shrines of Kynareth scattered throughout the island, and you can buy canna feathers from Garric, the general goods vendor. And if you take those feathers to a shrine and use them, it will teleport
you to the closest shrine to the direction you are currently facing. fast travel. You also don't start the of the thugs around the island to get one. There are multiple things to be
found and dug up via a shovel. You'll also probably want to buy a whole bunch of books and stuff from the book vendor and read those, both for the lore, but also to unlock the option to actually use them. Like the dwarven lore book is
necessary to get into one of the dungeons, which then nicely brings us to the dungeons themselves. So, the dungeons are basically full of enemies, puzzles, and platforming. While the puzzles are perfectly fine, the rest of
it could use some work. Combat's terrible, and we'll get to that in a platforming is also pretty terrible. Now, one of the things you'll struggle with straight away is just timing your jumps because of the, uh, sort of skatey
controls that I mentioned. You can get used to that, though. There is a way to that's not the only platforming you need grab onto ledges and shuffle across them, uh, climb up and down ropes, or,
most dangerously, swing across ropes. The ropes can also eventually be done in a very predictable way, but it takes some practice. You basically want to hang at the very, very bottom, and then swing back and forth until you get
enough momentum to properly go. But, kind of getting a feel for where you're going to go when you jump off of a rope is the tough part. Now, your direction shouldn't be that bad, but like where you are on the rope will decide how far
fail, you usually just die. You know, there's that, of course. So, all of puzzles, as well. There's a handful of puzzles. Most of them aren't too bad. A puzzles. Most of them aren't too bad. A couple of them are, uh, odd, let's say.
So, personally, I think the rune one in the catacombs is probably my least catacombs, as well, when you go back for the soul gem. That is probably the most straightforward of all of them. There is a, uh, steam valve one in the dwarven
ruins. You'll need to investigate that one. It's mostly just difficult because entire puzzle, because it's technically across multiple rooms. There's also the scarab puzzle there, where you have to, uh, arrange pieces of a scarab and kind
of turn it into an automaton to hold a chain for you, which will then open up one of the doors to get you to that steam puzzle. And that place can be confusing, as you would expect a dwemer, uh, ruin to be. But, another interesting
thing about this game, though, is that most of its boss fights are also kind of puzzles. There's really not a whole lot of bosses who you just fight straight up, uh, just for fun. That's mostly down to the regular enemies. Now, as a
easy. Like the ogre down in the goblin caves, who is guarding the archmage's the pillars, he dies pretty much immediately. The dwarven colossus at the kind of annoying, but what you're trying to aim for is hitting him in his exposed
stuff is. And if you do that enough times, he dies. You fight the dragon by stabbing it repeatedly, and that fight's doesn't breathe fire at you. You fight Nagash by reflecting all of his attacks
back at him, etc. Really, the only like straight-up boss fight is Dram and Rictorn at the very end. The real challenge is, of course, doing that with all of the technical problems. But, finally, I want to talk a bit about
combat, because it's easy to write combat off in this game, and to be clear, you probably should write it off. It's not good. However, there is more to it than immediately meets the eye. Now, some of the reason for that is that even
if you know about this stuff, it also doesn't play super well anyway, but basically, you're going to pull out your sword and attack your enemies. Now, you items queued up, which you can activate by just hitting a single hotkey, just
That will get you through the game. Might take a little longer, but it is if you know about this stuff, it's probably going to feel that way anyway. different attacks, and so do your enemies. You can do a single, double, or
triple slash, but the longer you extend that combo for, the more you lower your defenses, which can lead to you getting hit. There is also a thrust and a lunge attack, where you dive forward, again, exposing yourself, but typically
breaking through a defense potentially, and having a bigger range at that. But, there are also strength and iron skin potions. These make you either deal more damage or reduce incoming damage. By the way, don't use the strength potion with
won't actually get extra damage, it will reduce your damage, but with your regular sword, it works fine. Now, the thing is, you're supposed to try to mitigate incoming damage. It's just that the system and the controls and the feel
of it feel terrible. So, if you want to just flail, like I mentioned, totally fine. But, you do actually have the ability to defend against these attacks. There is an auto defend, which should be on by default, but it's F7 to toggle it
enemies from hitting you if you're facing them with your sword out and on, press uh the alt key to more actively defend and block. Now, it's also possible to sort of side step with the shift key and moving left or right.
This will allow you to potentially side step attacks that would then open up the defenses of the enemy you are fighting. This is hard to pull off because their attacks are not particularly well telegraphed, and the exact like hit
boxes and stuff aren't great, either. But, the way combat is supposed to work here is you basically trying to read what the enemy is doing, side stepping weak points and the like. It's just that in reality, what it tends to come down
each other until they die, and you hopefully having enough healing items mentioned, all of the boss fights typically have their little gimmicks system at all, or at least it doesn't really matter, anyway. So, like I said,
a little bit more to combat would probably think, but also pretty terrible all around. Now, I like to do a Steam Deck section in my reviews. You may well this on the Steam Deck, and the answer is yes, technically, but for whatever
reason, the Steam Deck does not like this game. So, even if you play it on super well for you. It is officially unsupported, though you can get it to play. It just gets really bad FPS for some reason, in addition to all of its
other problems on the Steam Deck in particular. So, that is a thing, I positives, negatives, and then we'll wrap this thing up. So, on the positive side, basically just the story. Cyrus as a character is pretty great, incredibly
charismatic. His speech at the end. The story is the reason you even try to play negatives, on the other hand, are all the reasons you're going to give up on playing this game, which is basically all of the rest of it. The terrible
combat, the terrible platforming, the terrible controls, the abysmal technical playing it literally in the sense of making it unplayable in some instances. And on that note, as we bring this to the conclusion here, obviously I don't
Unless you are just really dedicated to the craft, I mean, there's really no reason to do so when you can look up videos of the story itself on YouTube. best thing about this game from those videos. But, as I mentioned at the top
that Daggerfall is free and they're still charging money for this, and I say that as somebody who has bought it twice. This and Battlespire, as a matter be free. I can't imagine they're making any money off of these at this point.
making it free might encourage more people to put up with the absolute hot mess that is the rest of this game in order to experience some of that story for themselves. But, to be clear, hard to recommend anybody do that, either.
And so, for me at least, uh when it comes to Redguard, I think it is an interesting look at what might have been. Uh it's obviously in the news constantly for various reasons across the years that we haven't gotten a
mainline entry to The Elder Scrolls in 15 years, as of the time of this video here in 2026. And while we have gotten content via like The Elder Scrolls Online, which dives into a lot of great lore, I also don't like multiplayer
stuff, and that's really not for me. But, I think Redguard, Battlespire, and those odd little side games like this hint at a future we could have gotten where they used the incredibly impressive world of Tamriel to tell more
stories about side adventures and characters like this, as opposed to the freedom and, you know, fitting yourself honest, I don't know that that would have been the best thing for the series.
It's just a glimpse at what might have been, and I find that intriguing, and its historical significance, especially in terms of like early 3D games, etc. More than anything, Redguard is just a novelty for a lot of different reasons.
And as a YouTuber who loves to cover obscure novelties, which is not an insignificant reason this channel exists to begin with, I'll admit I have a soft spot for it, even if I do think it is a pretty terrible game. [laughter] But
that is pretty much going to do it for this particular video. Certainly hope you enjoyed it, found it interesting, all of that. If you did, by all means how you feel about this one down in the comment section below. But regardless of
any of that, truly just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.