An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
Game
Game2022
The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
Developer Bethesda Softworks
The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard is a 1998 action-adventure video game developed and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is unique in The Elder Scrolls series as the only game with a predetermined character and forced third-person point of view. The story is set on the island of Stros M'Kai, an island off the coast of Hammerfell in Tamriel, in the final years of the Second Era, between the events of The Elder… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
191 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Nov 4, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
58
Mixed
102 positive · 75 negative
95% range 50–65%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 102 | 75 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 2 | 12 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
117 of 197 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
57% recommend · 103 yes, 77 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 180 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (162 of 255 positive).
Some praise the story and worldbuilding, calling it a unique Elder Scrolls oddity. [1][2][3] Others find the gameplay dated and controls frustrating, especially on modern systems. [4][5][6]
Liked
Representative posts
- [8]
This version of the game is borderline unplayable, if you use this version you will be constantly in and out of the games files needing to fix it to stop constant crashes and game breaking bugs. If you want to play this game, I would advise the Gog release, if you insist on playing this version for some reason, read up on guides/FAQs for crashes as they ARE inevitable and will hault your progress. Review of the …
- [6]
REDGUARD IS BROKEN. DO NOT BUY EXPECTING A WORKING PRODUCT TES: Redguard is very different from the rest of the series so far. It is a 3rd person action adventure game, with no RPG elements. The story is amazing and is the ONLY reason I kept playing. The gameplay is just awful. Movement is sluggish, and there is a slight amount of delay between input and Cyrus moving or jumping, which really matters with all the …
- [1]
Redguard is a unique game in the Elder Scrolls series, the first to reach Modern 3D graphics (in which i mean the game uses real-time 3D environments) and is the first to deviate from the normal game play style fans were accustom to in Arena, Daggerfall and Battlespire. It's game play style mimics that of the Original Tomb Raider games which at launch back in 1998 was met with a mix of reviews for this deviation in …
- [4]
Game is difficult to play and does not explain controls and what they actually do. You're gonna need to use the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages aka UESP to beat Redguard, and you're gonna need to get used to manual saving and using the quicksave button very frequently. Because this game crashes all. the. time. Entering or leaving a building and looting unique items are the biggest culprits. There's no quality mods to …
- [2]
This is actually a good game once you get past the jank. The writing is superb and the worldbuilding is fantastic. I like the music and Cyrus is just an absolute Chad. I feel like if you go in expecting a janky game with decent writing and not compare it to other Elder Scrolls game (except maybe Battlespire), you will be pleasantly surprised
Summarised from 34 of the 194 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 13, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
The crowd is split on The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard: 103 recommend it, 77 don't. Which camp are you in?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Like its predecessor An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire, Redguard was a commercial flop. In retrospect, Todd Howard summarized that Redguard "didn't do well for the company", which contributed to Bethesda's financial downward spiral between 1996 and 2000. The game received favorable reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Next Generation said that "Even with the faults [...] Redguard is an impressive addition to the Elder Scrolls series and deserves any true adventure fan's attention." The game was a finalist for Computer Gaming World's 1998 "Best Adventure" award, but lost it to Grim Fandango and Sanitarium (tie). Likewise, GameSpot and PC Gamer US nominated the…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 191 · most liked firstRedguard is messy, especially on modern hardware. There is, unfortunately, no way it will ever be fixed professionally. Believe me, I have wasted too many hours modding and emulating redguard to bring it back from the grave. It just doesn’t work. what we have to contend with, are half-baked attempts at resuscitating this monstrosity, which only exists to mooch off of nostalgia or demented curiosity. There are only two “accessible” ways of getting this game digitally. These versions are both…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I don't know if I'm crazy but I swear this version runs better than even the GOG release. EDIT: I take it back lmao, I consistently crash when looting a body or interacting with the bottle in the alchemist's shack. Performance? Great! Stability? Not so much. EDIT 2: Good news! The game got an update and I'm no longer crashing. I can now actually play the game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →as someone once said, "Redguard is the sewage encrusted bridge between Daggerfall and Morrowind."
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →JUST GET THE GOG VERSION! Steam/Bethesda Launcher version sucks. I mean the game kinda sucks no matter what, but the GOG version is better technically speaking
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This version of the game is borderline unplayable, if you use this version you will be constantly in and out of the games files needing to fix it to stop constant crashes and game breaking bugs. If you want to play this game, I would advise the Gog release, if you insist on playing this version for some reason, read up on guides/FAQs for crashes as they ARE inevitable and will hault your progress. Review of the actual game is as follows: Unlike previous entries, Redguard is not an RPG, its…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →They probably shouldn't charge money for this. The game crashes constantly particularly when doing mandatory objectives such as picking up quest items. I was able to beat the game using console commands and save editing. Some tips if you try to attempt to beat this game: 1.) Don't have too many saves. Having more than a handful of saves made the game very unstable until i removed them. 2.) If you're picking up a quest item and crashing it might help to run in windowed mode vs fullscreen. 3.)…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This truly was one of the Elder Scrolls games of all time
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →another month, another challenge
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've finally collected them all and i feel like a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loser now
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In my day piracy was honest work
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Redguard is a unique game in the Elder Scrolls series, the first to reach Modern 3D graphics (in which i mean the game uses real-time 3D environments) and is the first to deviate from the normal game play style fans were accustom to in Arena, Daggerfall and Battlespire. It's game play style mimics that of the Original Tomb Raider games which at launch back in 1998 was met with a mix of reviews for this deviation in game play with most being negative towards it. It's an unfortunate by-product of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →From a time before dip-s-hits and dumbarses hijacked "woke" as a manner of insult. As a a PC gaming Bronx kid, it was great to see a game without a gingerbread protagonist and that looked like me. While I was interested in Bethesda games since trying to get Arena to run, this always stood out to me as a kid... that OG Bethsoft took the time to make an inclusionary "high melanin level" class among the elves and other fantasy tropes deserves major props. We've always been around, only a few…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have never played such an infuriatingly flawed piece of garbage
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Speaking of game manuals, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard has a fascinating one The game is a mediocre 3D Adventure from 1998. But the manual? It contains the 'Pocket Guide to the Empire', with 48 pages of Elder Scrolls lore & world-building. It's more talked about today than the game itself
neutral · AI labelView post →I can only give this game a recommendation with reservations. I was really surprised by TESA: Redguard, as it is sometimes frowned upon by TES fans, but I didn't bother with much of the content before because I wanted to play the game myself at some point. And i kinda liked it. It is what you would imagine an adventure to be: You solve puzzles, work your way through parkour levels, fight enemies and talk to interesting NPCs. A mixture of point & click games like Monkey Island (more or less…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am a psychopath and enjoy this game.. just not the steam version, play it on GOG if you want to actually play this game. Cause on steam this game is a nightmare with crashes. "Five gold pieces!" -Cyrus
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is difficult to play and does not explain controls and what they actually do. You're gonna need to use the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages aka UESP to beat Redguard, and you're gonna need to get used to manual saving and using the quicksave button very frequently. Because this game crashes all. the. time. Entering or leaving a building and looting unique items are the biggest culprits. There's no quality mods to fix all of this games problems efficiently because this game is just (sadly)…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As a lifelong Elder Scrolls fan, finally getting to play this was pretty high on my to do list once it came to steam. I was expecting this to play like a hot mess, but it surprisingly played fairly well, and in my entire play-through I crashed three times, which is certainly much less than my modded Skyrim playthroughs! Obviously the game is dated though, really dated. I am not sure how when this came out people thought the control scheme it has was acceptable, but it was the late 90s, people…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It just doesn't work, Todd
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nigh unplayable. I could excuse the sort of finnicky and dated controls if not for the poor performance (And I don't mean like "ohh it's unplayable it's capped to 30" or something. This game runs at a very unstable 15fps with hitches and stutters that rival the Oblivion remaster) and constant crashes with both the software and 3dfx version. This should not be available to buy. Game seems great, has fun dialogue and seminal Elder Scrolls lore but playing it is a bigger headache than it's worth.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You know, playing this didn’t just break me, it destroyed me. There exists something buried within this wretched, malformed entity, a whisper of intent, a flicker of purpose. But it is a perversion of creation, something that should have been left in the dark, untouched by mortal hands. Every moment spent navigating its labyrinthine torment feels like a descent into some unseen abyss, a test of willpower I did not consent to undertake. I am not the same after this. I do not sleep as I once…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Actually a pretty good game if you can ignore it's antiquity. Lots of good lore and story, but the gameplay is subpar.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →who let todd cook, it's RAW
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think my hot take is that since any remake is going to be made to cater to a modern AAA audience that means they should remake Redguard as a God of War reboot style action game and revive the Elder Scrolls Adventures spinoff series
neutral · AI labelView post →Whoever decided to make the key to draw your sword the same key to talk to NPCs in a game where if you have your sword out in front of NPCs you get arrested needs to be themselves arrested. This might be the worst game I have ever played. They tried to force this game out before OOT and it shows
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly I've had 4 great hours of fun, the dialog is awesome and the story isn't half bad. But I feel like it just keeps crashing way too much. Not worth the buy until another update comes out and fixes the crashing. waiting for ES6 is faster than going through the files trying to fix bugs and crashes.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm having a lot of fun with this so far! Haven't had any crashing yet, like others have. But so far it's been pretty enjoyable! UPDATE 2023: I finally came back and finished the game!! Simply a Masterpiece! I absolutely loved it!! I had some problems with crashing, but managed to fix most of them by putting REDGUARD.exe in compatibility mode for Win 95, by running as admin, and by checking the "Disable fullscreen optimizations" box. After that, I had far less crashes. UPDATE: I'm around…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is actually a good game once you get past the jank. The writing is superb and the worldbuilding is fantastic. I like the music and Cyrus is just an absolute Chad. I feel like if you go in expecting a janky game with decent writing and not compare it to other Elder Scrolls game (except maybe Battlespire), you will be pleasantly surprised
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Todd Howard did it again. WOW! AMAZING.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →REDGUARD IS BROKEN. DO NOT BUY EXPECTING A WORKING PRODUCT TES: Redguard is very different from the rest of the series so far. It is a 3rd person action adventure game, with no RPG elements. The story is amazing and is the ONLY reason I kept playing. The gameplay is just awful. Movement is sluggish, and there is a slight amount of delay between input and Cyrus moving or jumping, which really matters with all the parkour sections. Combat is just spamming basic attacks. Technically, there are…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A fun little oddity in the Elder Scrolls lineup. The action adventure approach is different but works reasonably well and Hammerfell is a cool setting. Rough in places but charming enough to stick with.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nice intro story, Hammerfell fell under Septim's Empire oppression, the game itself is unplayable. Remake needed
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →"There once was hardy young lad of the sea... A Redguard of courage and honor was he... Sail on, my Cyrus, sail on..."
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's really unfortunate that I can't recommend this game, because I quite enjoyed it. The best word that I can come up with to describe this game is "charming". It's got a very adventurous and triumphant tone. The story is engaging and well written. The dialogue is entertaining and delivered with heart by the voice actors. And even though the same 4 or 5 tracks loop over and over, I never got tired of them. Following Battlespire, this is another linear entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has been one of my favorites for years. Once my OS got past Windows 98 it wouldn't play on my PC. I was excited to see it was available again on Steam. The music is fantastic, and adds to the overall enjoyment of the game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Thank you Todd Howard
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Redguard is an old obscure game that I promised myself to buy, back when it was released, because it looked cool back then, and only now, about 20 years later, could I fulfill this promise. This is a game that's very rough to get into but it does have some qualities, that's why I give it a thumb up, but it's definitely not for everybody. The game is based on an antiquated engine with tank controls and ugly graphics. It looked great at the time of release, but it's very difficult to get excited…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →1st playthrough, defeated the pirates raiding my sea vessel. Spoke to a man on the docks, tried to talk to a guard, talked to a scantly clad barefooted woman with heavy make-up wandering the docks. Probably not a prostitute so I spoke to her & got some good info. Wrestled a LOT with the controls. I fell into the ocean between a boat and the dock. Got stuck in true 1990s gaming fashion. Wont die, cant get out. Rage quit like an 11 year old in true 1990s fashion. That my friends is true…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't play this yet. There's rumor of a unity port floating around. This version, as well as the Xbox app version are both completely broken. This is a windows game, so why they chose to emulate the DOS port instead of hiring somebody to develop a no-cd patch I will never understand. The best way to do this would have been the windows version with a no-cd patch wrapped in dgvoodoo2. Instead, you get to play with hacky dos emulation.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is really something special but from what ive heard its just better to play on gog, if you did already get it here however and youre as foolish as I am to try and brute force it, heres some tips for bugs I found in my mess of a playthrough with the steam version, Game crashing when pressing esc to save, usually occurs with having too many saves in your file. Go to Redguards game folder>Redguard>SAVEGAME. youll notice the saves are formatted 0xx (xx being whatever number of save youre…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Buggy and rough controls. The GOG version is more playable.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played this as a kid and loved the crap out of it - in my opinion it still holds up after all these years. The music and voice acting are great, the writing is clever and something about running around an open world sword-fighting odd characters (dude in the early cave, I'm looking at you) is delightful. If you dig old PC action/exploration games with loads of world-building dialogue, there's swashbuckling to be had here! A few things to note, though. I have experienced crashes on opening…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →peanut would love some pets and treats :) 🌸＞ フ | _ _ l ／` ミ＿xノ / | / ヽ ﾉ │ | | | ／￣| | | | | (￣ヽ＿_ヽ_)__) ＼二つ
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Redguard is definitely a bit of a buggy mess but under it is a quite enjoyable experience Alot of the game breaking bugs can be avoided with about 10-15 minutes worth of changes https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2833555910 big props for this users guide This guide shows you how to make it run the hardware version with glide making it look as well as its gog counterpart it also provides links to another dos emulator which id highly recommend doing, i only had one crash…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A swashbuckling delight! I really enjoyed this game, more than I was expecting. I played it out curiosity to discover what came before Morrowind. I was very impressed with it. It has more detail in it than you would think for a game made in 1998. The Elder Scrolls Lore as usual for these games is really interesting, and the story is action packed and you can complete quests in different orders. I loved the characters, they are fascinatingly weird and have the most unique voice acting you will…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is fun and has it's quirks which i find adorable, but the game hard crashes each time I try looting a body or examining a bottle in some sort of shack outside the first city.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Redguard>Battlespire so unnecessarily sarcastic but in a good way, love it, 10/10 lack of tutorial makes it interesting
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Company decided to hire murder supporting fascists.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I need a remastered version so bad >_< . if you are willing to have a pain on a but playing this game with keyboard go head and play it. don't get me wrong this is a good game i just wish i can at least use a controller to play or fix the keys configuration.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'd like to play this janky game, but this game doesn't want me to do that.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this is a great game if you're into slideshows
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Here, I will detail my complaints about the poor conditions in this game: the gameplay is bad, the enemies are cruel and the controls are... [the rest of the text is obscured by red ink, and the following lines have been added in a shaky hand: the gameplay is excellent, the guards are fair and the cells are really quite lovely - obviously the writer had a mysterious and sudden change of heart!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The story is basically Algeria and France beef. Jk, the game story and lore elements are actually so interesting, if only Bethesda made an actual playable version of the game. I kept encountering issues, apparently the GOG version is better, but I don’t know, the game still has inherent issues. That’s too bad because I really like the characters and the story and the more pirate-like ambiance, it’s a very unique Elder Scrolls game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While held back by cumbersome poorly aged controls and clunky hard to decipher combat, along with a fair dose of Adventure Game Logic, Redguard is far too charming an adventure to skip entirely and should be experienced at least in some way by any Elder Scrolls fan. That said, should you play it yourself? That depends. If you've got an actual machine of the era laying around, or you're very well versed in either running old games in virtual machines or manually configuring different DOSBox…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →sometimes the game might let you play it
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Well.. For 1998 standards.. I recommend it, it's nothing special these days. But it has its charm.. The game has so much dialogue!!!!! I guess that was their selling-point. I have played for 2 hours, I fought 2 enemies. I have wasted 1.5 hours walking around because the instructions were so unclear.. Wasted hours talking to the NPC's because they first needed their life-stories out of the way. and.. NO DIALOGUE SKIPPING?! The fighting mechanics? You need to get used to them.. But not as bad…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The story and the music are good, but everything else is kinda terrible. This game is like the awkward middle child between Daggerfall and Morrowind. Worth a play if you're a die-hard Elder Scrolls fan, but I don't recommend it otherwise.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A hot mess express of bugs and crashes. Do yourself a favor and get a different version.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is bogged down by so many crashes, jank controls, bad combat, slowdowns, and memory issues that you generally can't play it without removing or renaming...get this: one of the game's sound files. If you really want to play this game, do yourself a favor: the GOG version of this game is INCOMPARABLY more stable due to the fact it uses glide acceleration and cd quality files. It won't fix the game's combat mechanics but it'll fix almost everything else.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Completed the game after 15 hours of gameplay. The gameplay was a bit too rough at times—I had difficulties with the platforming sections since there was a considerable delay with keyboard inputs. The story was quite interesting, considering it is a spinoff game and not a mainline title. If you plan on buying this game on Steam, there is a well-written guide by SavageCabbage05 for installing 3DFX Glide and upgrading DOSBox to make it run more smoothly, as well as making it less prone to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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