Perhaps Highguard was destined for hate after its surprise reveal at The Game Awards a few months ago, or perhaps the hate is justified, because the game is getting slammed right now for being poorly optimized on PC. The Steam reviews are currently at Overwhelmingly Negative, with a shocking one out of five-star rating on Steam.
Many of the negative reviews note that the game is poorly optimized, even on powerful rigs. Even those running 40 and 50-series cards have experienced issues with frame rates and stability. From personal experience on a 4090, the game struggles to hit over 100 FPS, and even when I’ve changed some settings it doesn’t seem to make a massive difference to performance.
“Actual 2026 Game Moment”: Highguard Opens To Poor Reviews
Highguard is finally out, and despite the game receiving little marketing, early press previews looked promising. It spiked up to 90,000 players on Steam and, at one point, had a viewership of over 300,000 on Twitch. However, the game is now sitting at an Overwhemingly Negative score on Steam with over 1,000 negative reviews.
The vast majority of the reviews state that performance is the main issue. I’m reading through them and all I can see is people stating that the game runs poorly, at under 100 FPS, even on high-end PCs. Performance is often the make-or-break of competitive shooters, and if Highguard has failed to get off the ground in this one key regard, it could be a bumpy road ahead for the hero shooter.
From my own experience, I’m running the game on a 4090 with 64GB RAM, on a 4K monitor. The game looks blurry and choppy, and even when tweaking the settings (like trying to downscale the resolution), I’m still not hitting more than 110 FPS. That would be fine if it was consistent, but the game often spikes down to 80 or 90 during fights. I currently get over 200 FPS in Apex Legends. The difference is stark.
It’s Not Just Performance
That being said, there are also plenty of reviews calling the game “confusing” and “boring.” Personally, I didn’t expect the game to be limited to a 3v3 arena shooter when the trailer dropped, and I think most players expected the game to have a little more scale to it.
I’m a big fan of the mounts, but that’s about it. The looting period at the start of the game also feels quite slow, and not really necessary.
Other complaints have noted the strange audio that makes it sound like players are right next to you, the pace of the games being too slow, the maps are too large, and the weird combination of lots of different mechanics all stitched together. Overall, it looks like a rough start to life for Wildlight Entertainment’s new title.
Highguard
- Released
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January 26, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Publisher(s)
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Wildlight Entertainment
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full
- Number of Players
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Single-player
