| Highguard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Highguard Review Overview
What is Highguard?
Highguard is an upcoming free-to-play PvP first-person shooter developed by Wildlight Entertainment, a studio formed by former Apex Legends and Titanfall developers. Set in a fantasy-inspired world that blends firearms and magic, Highguard places players in the role of Wardens competing for control of fortified territories. Matches revolve around securing a powerful siege device known as the Shieldbreaker, which teams use to assault opposing strongholds and gain dominance.
Highguard is released on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on January 26, 2026.
Highguard features:
⚫︎ New Genre - PvP Raid Shooter
⚫︎ Unique Gameplay Loop
⚫︎ Free-to-Play Live-Service Multiplayer
⚫︎ 3v3 Team Play
⚫︎ 8 Playable Wardens
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Highguard’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 PSN |
 Xbox |
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| Free-to-Play | |||||
Highguard Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Distinct Gameplay Loop Raiding Phase is a Blast Actual Character Variety |
Huge Map Size Certain Phases Feel Awkward Inconsistent Gunplay Bad Character Balance Network and Performance Issues |
Highguard Story - 3/10
Being a live-service multiplayer game, it’s no surprise that Highguard lacks a narrative. As a result, there’s little to no context for its world and the characters involved in the power struggle for loot and territory. There are tiny lore descriptions on each character’s unique skins, but the lack of context makes it seem like baseless statements that are just there to add fluff.
Highguard Gameplay - 8/10
Highguard scores points on being a one-of-a-kind experience, but the foundation it stands on is flawed and incomplete. It ends up feeling like a mishmash of popular FPS gamemodes rolled into one weird team shooter. One marred by inconsistent gunplay, unbalanced characters, a hollow map design, and many more. The concept works, but the issues affect its novelty of being a completely unique experience greatly.
Highguard Visuals - 6/10
The game’s visuals are decent, as there’s a lot to like when it comes to the overall aesthetic and art style of its characters, weapons, and environments. It features a distinct theme that sets the game apart from other shooters. It does, however, suffer from poor optimization, which makes it look and run worse than expected.
Highguard Audio - 5/10
There’s a clear lack of music in certain segments, especially during the Defensive Phase, where the already empty world feels even emptier. The voice acting and sound effects are serviceable, but nothing remarkable to make it stand out.
Highguard Value for Money - 8/10
Highguard’s biggest asset is that it's completely free-to-play, with a more forgiving live-service design, specifically since Battle Passes never expire. However, the competitive team shooter has only one game mode with five maps that feel way too similar, resulting in an experience that becomes repetitive way too fast. The silver lining is that new content is expected monthly, which at least guarantees there’s something new to do every month.
Highguard Overall - 60/100
Highguard is, quite literally, an attempt at reinventing the wheel of competitive team shooters. It’s definitely a respectable attempt; its core gameplay loop works conceptually, and seeing the game in action shows there’s potential. However, it has several core issues with its gameplay loop and mechanics that undermine it, alienating both longtime genre fans and newcomers. Hopefully, these issues can be addressed quickly, or else the game ends up as empty as its maps.
Highguard Review: Years Too Early
A New Shooter Rides Out
If you’ve been a fan of shooting games for the past twenty years, then chances are you’ve seen how the multiplayer shooter genre has continuously evolved. From team deathmatches in Quake to tactical shooters like Counter-Strike, to the unique hero shooters like Overwatch, and, of course, the free-for-all design of battle royales like Fortnite. It’s always been a genre that’s evolved and adapted over the years.
Lately, however, you can’t help but wonder if the genre’s gotten stale. Like the time when there was a battle royale getting released almost every other month, or a new hero shooter that just simply doesn’t measure up to the popular titles. Heck, it even reached a point where the most-played titles were trying to incorporate popular subgenres into their games, with varying degrees of success.
Everyone knows that trying to get into the multiplayer shooter market is already tough, but trying to make your own niche? That’s even more difficult, and oftentimes a recipe for disaster. Enter Highguard, a PvP team shooter that’s not only infamous for being the last game revealed during The Game Awards 2025, but also a shooter that’s trying to create a whole new subgenre entirely.
Even if you put the disappointment and bias aside, there’s no way that a game that has base-building, looting, pseudo capture-the-flag, and tactical bomb scenarios all combined into one game would ever work, right? Surprisingly enough, it actually does. But if I’m being honest, this game felt like it needed a lot more time in the kitchen, and maybe it could’ve been the next big thing.
Gameplay You’ve Never Seen Before
Set in a mythical continent where power dictates the control of the land, you raid as an arcane gunslinger known as a Warden. Two teams of three will then fight it out on the open field, where they must secure their base, ride out, raid and loot resources, and upgrade their arsenal to claim the territory as their own.
With the goal of destroying one’s base, each team must take control of the Shieldbreaker in order to pierce through the opposing team’s defensive shields and get a chance to plant a bomb on the base’s generators and ultimately win the skirmish.
It sounds complicated, and believe me, it even looks complicated. But at its core, the game draws on elements of Rainbow Six: Siege, Apex Legends, and Fragpunk, all rolled into one. If anything, I understood why Wildlight Entertainment was as secretive as they were. The gameplay loop is so different and unique that explaining and showing it in a trailer makes it look extremely bad and hard to understand.
With all of that in mind, I honestly see it as a triumph that Wildlight Entertainment somehow managed to combine all of these established elements, albeit in a limited sense, into a cohesive gameplay loop.
Raiding is Literally the Bomb
It was pretty obvious that the Raid Phase is the highlight of every game. The whole sequence of summoning the Siege Tower, opening the base’s shield, and then minutes of nonstop firefights in mid-to-close quarters is what the game does best. It gives you the feeling of needing to make a game-winning play as you continually engage the enemy team in bursts of action.
My first few hours playing the game were a blast, and my squad and I managed to eke out a few wins while learning the ropes. Raiding the bases and planning an approach to bomb sites in coordination with your team’s utility is, undoubtedly, a huge dopamine boost.
I’d have to admit, the coordination and teamwork felt natural and never forced, which led to what is probably our team’s biggest play of the day. There was a particular sequence where my team coordinated all three of our abilities to wipe out the enemy team. Using Condor’s Scan to give us information on the enemy team’s location, while giving the one-two punch with Scarlet’s Shifting Sands and Slade’s Firebomb from an unexpected entry to catch the enemy by surprise.
After a few games, my squad disbanded, and I wanted to keep playing to see what it was like to play solo. And it was here that I could clearly see the game’s critical flaws.
Huge Map Size, Hollow Looting Experience
Let me preface this by saying that the movement in Highguard doesn’t feel all too bad. I would even go so far as to say that the Mount mechanic is a great way to incorporate movement and gunplay in similar genres. However, the biggest problem is that the game's maps are flawed in multiple ways, which then leads to awkward phases.
With the game being 3v3, the huge map size is a big turn-off. While it’s clear that the intention of the map size was to make the looting phase shine, it doesn’t take long for you to get enough materials to be set and ready for the upcoming Shieldbreaker phase or even the Raid Phase.
This means that after you loot a few places of interest, you’re really just going around the map for no reason other than to stack a surplus of items that you’d probably never use. This also magnifies how empty the map feels, which has way too few points of interest for a map of that size.
To add insult to injury, farming for Vesper, the game’s currency for buying gear from the vendor, is a tedious task that becomes a mini rhythm game. Everything about mining the crystal nodes feels unnecessarily complicated and even more tedious than it already is, making it a slog that you have to get through.
In a sense, the first few phases of the gameplay loop feel like an unskippable filler episode, and not the good kind. If the intention of these phases was to slow the game down, then it definitely succeeded. But the fact that it contradicts what the core experience encourages and showcases during the Raid Phase is what baffles me the most.
This gets even worse once you realize that the cycle repeats itself after a successful Raid Defense. This leads to unnecessarily long matches where you’re just running around the map, opening boxes to upgrade gear for half the time. If the maps were smaller and the Gear Up Phase rewarded more interaction between both teams, it would be an infinitely more entertaining game.
Unsatisfying Gunplay
A fact everyone knows about multiplayer shooters is that gunplay is king. It doesn’t matter if the visuals are dated or if the game lacks a narrative; if shooting feels good, then it’s already winning half the battle. At the end of the day, gunplay is what you’re doing 95% of the time in these games, and the least that it should have is satisfactory gunplay to deepen the game’s depth.
Despite my lack of skill when it comes to clicking heads, the problem was as clear as day after a few hours of play: the guns themselves were lackluster.
The specific problem that comes to mind is the absurdly long time-to-kill. It’s one thing to have a long time-to-kill similar to Apex Legends’ endgame scenario, where everyone is kitted out, but it’s another when the guns themselves feel like NERF guns or pellet guns. Even on the game’s first Raid Phase, where everyone still has Rare-level armor, it feels like you need at least two mags worth of body shots to knock someone out.
Call it a skill issue if you will, but it feels particularly bad when you’ve dumped a whole magazine of bullets only for the opponent’s teammate to blindside you and kill you with damaging abilities or a higher damage arsenal. None of the guns feel consistent in how they deal damage, and it’s hard to tell when you have enough to knock someone out.
For comparison, the game’s auto shotgun, the Paladin, feels completely outclassed by the alternative pump-action shotgun, the Kraken. It feels as if the former needs triple the amount of time to get the same result at a range that’s more or less the same.
Performance Issues And Other Nitpicks
Aside from the gameplay design issues, Highguard is also plagued by a myriad of performance issues. Even strong PC builds struggle to maintain a stable, suitable framerate due to the limited number of graphics options. To add salt to the wound, the graphics also suffer a lot because of the game’s unoptimized state, where players would have to settle for lower settings on the game’s graphics in order to play on a stable framerate.
Aside from that, character balance is also another big issue. While the game has a good variety of characters, some kits feel way too strong compared to the rest. Characters like Mara and Redmane feel undertuned compared to the rest of the Wardens, as their kits are underwhelming.
An example of a strong Warden is Condor, whose Tactical ability gives her team wallhacks for 30 seconds. Another big example is Kai, whose ultimate makes him a borderline unkillable tank capable of disrupting an entire team on his own. Not to mention that his passive skill allows him to repair walls for free.
Is Highguard Worth It?
It’s Free, And It’s At Least Worth Trying.
Regardless of the game’s problems, Highguard is still worth trying if you have the time to do so. It genuinely has the most unique gameplay loop that I’ve ever experienced in any multiplayer game, and the fact that it’s completely free-to-play is just another reason for you to try it out. Plus, I will give Wildlight Entertainment its flowers for attempting to innovate on the multiplayer shooter genre, as the whole PvP raid concept certainly has potential that needs to be explored.
Sure, it’s not the greatest shooter out there since it definitely has a good number of issues that need fixing, but it honestly feels like a game that’s leading up to another evolution for the genre. On top of that, the developers at Wildlight Entertainment are very much committed to making the game better as the months go by, so if you’re not planning to play the game anytime soon, it might be worth it to keep tabs on the game’s progress.
Honestly speaking, if the developers decide to reduce the overall map size or at least have some sort of buffer during the game’s Gear Up Phase to encourage player interaction, then I could see myself playing it casually.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
PSN |
Xbox |
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| Free-to-Play | |||||
Highguard FAQ
Does Highguard Have Crossplay?
Yes.
Is Highguard Only 3v3?
Yes. Based on the developer’s roadmap, there are no plans to add a new game mode that supports more players.
Game8 Reviews
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Highguard Product Information
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| Title | HIGHGUARD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | January 26, 2026 |
| Developer | Wildlight Entertainment, Inc. |
| Publisher | Wildlight Entertainment, Inc. |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Shooter, Multiplayer |
| Number of Players | 1-6 (3v3 Multiplayer) |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | Highguard Official Website |
