Some players think the game is worse than Concord was at launch.
The newest free-to-play hero shooter Highguard is off to a rocky start, launching on Steam with an Overwhelmingly Negative user rating just hours after release.
First revealed last December as the final game announcement at The Game Awards 2025, Highguard was met with scepticism almost immediately. Viewers criticised its reveal trailer for feeling underwhelming, and following that initial showing, the developers remained largely silent despite confirming a release date of 27 January (SGT).
Now that the game is live, player reviews are painting a clearer picture of why its Steam reception has been so harsh.
Players criticise performance, map scale, and overall direction
Several early reviews focus on how Highguard plays in practice, with complaints ranging from technical performance to fundamental design choices.
Steam user ROUNDERHOUSE strikes a conflicted tone, opening their review by saying, “I mostly just feel bad for the devs,” before arguing that the game “clearly wasn't designed or prepared for this level of scrutiny.” They describe visuals as “blurry and unclear” and take issue with the scale of the maps, writing that “the map is the size of Latvia but you only have 3 players,” which results in long stretches of running without meaningful encounters.
Despite being marketed as fast-paced, ROUNDERHOUSE highlights mechanics they feel clash with that promise, pointing out that “the merchant makes you go mine rare earth metals to buy stuff.” Their criticism extends to the cast and presentation, calling the characters “profoundly bland and uninteresting” and likening the art direction to a collection of loosely connected ideas thrown together, asking rhetorically, “what if there was magic? what if there was guns? what if you could ride a bear?” They ultimately conclude that “the game isn't fun and it isn't interesting,” before adding a brief caveat: “All that said, it is free.”
Similar concerns are raised by Howl Jenkins, who describes High Guard as “above all, a confusing game.” They argue that “the 3v3 format on such a huge map just doesn’t click,” saying the overall experience quickly becomes chaotic without offering anything distinctive in return.
Howl Jenkins points to the number of overlapping systems as a major issue, explaining that players are forced to juggle “too many disconnected tasks (looting, farming, capturing objectives, doing PvP, etc.),” which they say “ends up doing the opposite” of being fun. They also highlight a contradiction at the heart of the game’s design, calling it “a game that forces you to split up but punishes you for not working as a team.”
Howl ends the review saying that they hope the game improves over time, “but as of today, saying it’s worse than Concord sounds harsh - but it’s true.”
Performance issues are another recurring theme. Steam reviewer BrotherFrog questions how the game runs on modern hardware, bluntly asking, “Why does this run so poorly? Actual 2026 game moment.” They list high-end PC specs, including a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and RTX 5080, and say, “you have to actually try to make it run this bad I'm impressed.” The review ends on a note of disappointment, stating they were “severly dissapointed seeing this came from some OG devs.”
In response to BrotherFrog’s post, other players claimed their experiences were smoother, even on lower-end systems, so it seems like performance is inconsistent across different setups rather than a universal issue.
However, technical frustrations appear again in another review from Mesk, who says the game failed to launch due to security requirements, quoting an error message reading “Secure Boot & TPM 2.0 Not Detected.” Mesk explains that after “messing with my BIOS for about 15 minutes,” they still couldn’t get the game running on Steam, adding that this was the “only one that requires me to go into my damn BIOS to make it work.” They conclude bluntly, “This is just not even worth the effort. Forget this.”
In an update, Mesk notes they tried the game on PS5 instead, writing, “I managed to play it this time but somehow that's even worse,” suggesting platform hopping did little to improve their experience. Players who responded to Mesk's review also shared the same issue.
Players have also flooded a Reddit post with complaints about performance as well.
At the time of writing, Highguard's rating has climbed to Mostly Negative, with only 27% positive reviews (some of which were sarcastic), and 73% negative reviews across multiple languages. The game's developers have yet to respond to the negative feedback that Highguard has been receiving.
