Blackguards 2

Blackguards 2 is a huge improvement over the 1st game I hated the first one so I figured I'd hate this one as well but turns out this one's actually ok and I would recommend on sale for cheap. The first game had a lot of problems such as spells having a chance to fail EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU USED THEM so you could simple lose a battle from that (because failing a aoe spell or a heal could very much mean life or death and you have a VERY HIGH chance to fail) however in this game they removed that which for me is a huge plus, they also brought in "mercs" you can control allowing you to bypass the first games problem of only having a few party member which made fights pretty hard considering you were fighting 4 vs usually at least double that. The game still has problems and is easy to mess up making you have to re-fight an entire battle because you weren't aware you had to block a lever the first time you went in but the game is significantly better than the first one I feel, and you don't need to play the first to know what's going on in the 2nd so I would recommend personally skipping 1 and just playing 2.

Its a good team grid tactics game. Has some balance issues, but it fixed a lot of the annoying things in the first game.
Biggest weakness is probably the army v army fights that start happening in endgame, where there are 50v50 teamfights that take forever to slog though. Unless you use the one global damage spell and trivalize it.
Couple of achievements are bugged too, sadly.

Pros:
Mercenaries make battles way easier even with more enemies than original
Magic makes battles easier
Lots of cool stuff you can do
Cons:
Puzzle missions can be pretty annoying, no way to remember win conditions if you forgot (they sometimes say in dailog),
Fourth mission (Dwarf running) can be a headache.
If not using a magic, battles will be harder.
Unclear why interrogations fail sometimes

If you are looking for turn based, party building, RPG gameplay then you will not be dissapointed at this price point. Is it perfect? no. The graphics are nothing to write home about, the characters are lovable and their commentary is well written but there is very little of it overall. If you are more into the gameplay than the fluff this game will serve you well for what it costs today. Want something new and shiny? look elsewhere.

Blackguards 2 is a turn-based, party-based game. The main character (Cassia) is joined by the three remaining members from BG1. The skill system from BG1 is mostly still in place, though it has been simplified quite a bit. The major changes from BG1 include the existence of a larger army to command (beyond the four members in your primary party) and the existence of defensive battles.
Pros:
I enjoyed most of the hand-crafted battles. They provided a nice diversity of objectives, beyond just killing everything. Boss fights were suitably challenging and diverse.
As with BG1, I enjoyed the level-up system.
Story was OK.
Lots of reviewers complained about the difficulty, though perhaps these comments were made under an old patch or something. I played on normal and found the difficulty perfect. Challenging enough to warrant a retry on a few boards without becoming tedious. It is noted that I did do some light recon prior to my playthrough and trained Takate as an archer, which made a great many levels much easier than they would have been otherwise.
You can easily get this on sale for $2.
YMMV:
The addition of troops beyond your primary party is a bit of mixed-bag. The unique troops were cool and diverse. The general troops (swordsman, archer, pikeman) were OK too. However, the presence of these meatbags and the abundance of ranged/spell options rendered melee/tank heroes somewhat useless. This was a major shift from BG1 and went a bit far IMO.
Items were a bit underwhelming and didn't really drive any interesting decisions.
I always love the ability to choose which I fight I need do next in many game genres. This game appears to have that in play, in choosing which city to conquer next. Each city also includes which bonus your army will receive upon victory. In practice however, it rarely makes sense to do anything but attack the next easiest battle.
As compared to BG1, spells always hit now. Though it was kind of frustrating to miss a spell in BG1, I appreciated the ROI I got from leveling up spell. This change certainly makes spells stronger in this game.
Cons:
After a set number of offensive fights (I think every three), you must defend one of the cities you have captured. These battles were typically very easy, very lengthy, and resulted in no experience or items for your main party. These were kinda sorta neat idea in concept, but by the end I dreaded triggering these. Game would be better off w/o these I think.
Freeze spell is OP. I intentionally restricted myself in only giving this spell to one of my mages, as many fights could otherwise be won in two turns by simply nuking everything on the board four times.
The decisions required post-boss victory are weird and don't fit with the rest of the game. This is a minor con of course as the game is essentially already over at that point, but still.. weird.
I was in the minority in liking BG1. My rating for BG2 is somewhat similar. Some things are changed this time around, some for the better, some for the worse; but it is a definitely a different game, which on the whole is a good thing. Some parts of this game drag a bit, and not everything is done perfectly, but if you liked BG1 or like party-based, turn-based games then you should give this a try (for $2 you have very little to lose).
Overall: 8.5/10