Highguard Review – Promising But Nowhere Near The Apex Of The Genre

Highguard is the first release from Wildlight Entertainment, a studio founded by veteran developers who worked on Apex Legends. The game’s initial reveal at The Game Awards 2025 received a mixed reception and left many wondering what made Highguard special. Could Wildlight Entertainment capture lightning in a bottle once again with Highguard? Or would it struggle to set itself apart against such strong competition? I’ll answer that and more in this The Outerhaven’s Review of Highguard.

Game Name: Highguard
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): Wildlight Entertainment
Developer(s): Wildlight Entertainment
Release Date: January 26th, 2026

What Is Highguard?

Highguard is a 3v3 team-based objective-driven hero shooter. If that sounds confusing and a bit of a mess, I don’t blame you for feeling that way. That isn’t where it ends; this game also includes a loot-based element to gameplay that is very Battle Royale-like.

At first glance, Highguard might appear like Apex Legends from Temu. In truth, that isn’t what this title is at all, and although the game definitely made some big missteps, there is promise here.

Gameplay

In terms of gunplay, it will come as no surprise that guns control, sound and feel very similar to the weapons that could be found in Apex Legends at launch. This will be controversial for some, but I actually prefer the guns in Highguard. Exactly why I feel that way will become clear in a moment.

Highguard has a round-based structure, where your objectives are as follows: Protect your base, gear up, grab the stormbreaker (a sword) and take it to the enemy base, which allows you to begin a siege of your opponent’s base. Once inside, your goal is to blow up one of three objectives to deal damage to your opponent’s base. This process then repeats until one team gets their opponent’s base to zero health, and wins the match.

As rounds progress, the loot that can be found on the map increases in rarity. While that might not sound interesting, it’s very important. That’s because, as weapons increase in rarity, the way they function can vary greatly. For example, a legendary pistol might be fully auto instead of the semi-automatic versions you might find at rare or common rarity levels. Some players might find that restrictive, but in my opinion, it places greater importance on finding loot every round.

Guns aren’t the only loot you can find, just like a battle royale you can also get body armour and helmets. Trust me, you’ll need them, and you should probably grab multiple body armours. In Highguard, if you die, your body armour fully breaks, and there is no body armour repair. So, if you don’t have a spare in later rounds, you will spawn with only a common body armour. You don’t want that, trust me, I know from experience!

I hear you saying, “How do I find loot?” Well, there are actually a couple of ways to get loot. You can look for blue or red boxes around the map, especially at named locations. Blue boxes will always have defensive items, and red boxes will always contain weapons, making it easy to avoid wasting time if you’re looking for a specific type of item. If going around opening boxes isn’t for you, then you can go mining crystals around the map instead. These crystals can then be cashed in at a vendor found at various locations for weapons, armour and more. Just like the rest of the loot, the vendor’s items increase in rarity round by round.

Movement and Character Classes

Highguard also has hero shooter DNA. You play as Wardens that have different abilities, both passive and active, alongside a powerful ultimate. At the moment, there are eight Wardens, and each one has its own unique abilities that allow for different strategies and playstyles. From more assault classes like Atticus, or the destruction of Redmayne, who can destroy walls in seconds, and many more. My favorite is the recon warden Condor, who can use a bird to pulse enemy positions and smoke bomb their line of sight. Which I found useful in all offensive and defensive scenarios.

I like that each warden leans heavily towards different playstyles, and you can really find one to suit you. The only issue I have is that their default character designs are relatively unmemorable, something which is an important aspect of any great hero shooter. Admittedly, the cosmetics you can unlock via in-game currency earned by completing gameplay challenges are much more memorable. You have to play a lot to earn the best ones, or you can, of course, use real-world money via microtransactions. Something which I honestly don’t have an issue with, given that they are cosmetics only and Highguard is a free-to-play game.

Not only that, but I would actually credit Wildlight Entertainment for being more transparent around the cost range of cosmetics, and seeming to price things more reasonably than similar titles. They even gave all players the first battle pass for free, which is always a nice touch.

It’s not just wardens you can get cosmetics for, either. Highguard has a range of mounts you can equip, from a horse to a bear and many more, each of which comes with their own cosmetics to unlock or purchase.

They aren’t just for fun; mounts have a huge impact on gameplay. Double-tapping the A button (on the Xbox controller) will see your mount appear underneath you. From here, you’re able to zip across the map much faster. Which is important for retrieving or defending during the Stormbreaker segment of each round. Items such as the saddle can make mounts faster, but what impressed me most is how you can seamlessly chain together running, using a mount, jumping onto a zipline and then back to a mount all in a matter of seconds.

The flow of movement in Highguard is great and really shines as the best part of the moment-to-moment play, outside of gunfights obviously.

Structural Issues

Away from the gameplay itself is where things start to go wrong for Highguard, and in truth, it all stems from the map design and the decision to have only 3v3 at launch. The maps in Highguard feel sterile, not because they are badly designed but because they are far too big for 3v3 gameplay.

Each map has three lanes, just like most standard first-person shooters today. Each lane usually houses one named location. The issue is that the maps are too wide; if your team all go to the left lane during the looting phase, and the other team goes right. This means that you won’t see any enemies in the match until the Stormbreaker spawns several minutes in. There is, of course, a chance you might run into someone, but of the nearly ten hours I have played, I have never once seen an enemy during the looting phase of a 3v3 match.

As a result, this takes all tension away from gameplay while looting because you never feel like you need to be looking over your shoulder.

So that maps themselves are fine and actually have a well-balanced design for different playstyles, but combining them with 3v3 matches makes them feel dead for the majority of each round.

Wildlight Entertainment have clearly taken feedback on this after recently testing and then permanently added a 5v5 mode to Highguard. I had hoped to try it out before writing this review. Unfortunately, with player numbers significantly lower than at launch, I was unable to find a 5v5 match when I tried.

Technically It’s Fine

On the technical front, Highguard is fine, though I have heard some people experience blurry textures depending on their hardware. I didn’t have this issue on my machine, but I was surprised not to see better frame rates, given that Highguard isn’t particularly stunning visually. It looks about as good as Apex Legends, if not slightly worse. So the fact that I couldn’t get 120fps consistently across all gameplay at 4K resolution, even with upscaling, was surprising and disappointing.

Jordan’s PC Specs: AMD 9950X3D, RTX 5090 Founders Edition, 96GB DDR5 6000MHz Corsair RAM

When it comes to bugs, to the credit of Wildlight Entertainment, I haven’t seen a single issue in that regard.

Should You Play Highguard?

In the end, Highguard has a lot of promise with fun movement, great gunplay and a good loot system that suits round-based matches. So, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed aspects of the game because that would be a lie. At the moment, Highguard is held back by the size of its maps not aligning with the team size. With characters that struggle to be memorable, even if they are fun to play as. There is definitely fun to be had in Highguard, especially with a group of friends, but as it stands, I wouldn’t bet on it becoming the new Apex of the genre because it’s nowhere near that level.

Either way, as a free-to-play game, I’d still recommend trying it out for a few hours at the very least. Who knows? With Wildlight Entertainment actively listening to feedback and acting on it, Highguard may not be dead yet.

Review Disclosure Statement: Highguard was played on release as a free-to-play game for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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