Beyond being a 2D, sprite-based, isometric clickfest, Blade & Sword also chooses to incorporate the Horadric cube (here referred to as a "Spyragic cube"), town portal stones you can activate along the way, town scrolls, (called "homing portals"), a village with a healer who will refill your mana and health for free (a red meter and blue meter), socketed weapons, 800x600 max resolution, and a rather similar skill point system. In fact, B&S is so much like its predecessor that it plays like a mod rather than something built from the ground up, to a certain extent. However, where it manages to deviate, it does so with decidedly mixed results.
There are a couple welcome innovations in combat. You can block by holding down the Alt key, for one. This drains your stamina, however, and when it empties you won't be able to sprint. You can also dodge, which scoots you to one of four points circling the target, but the tactical advantage is minimal when you're fighting solo. You have combo moves as well, but it gets tedious since the fourth hit always knocks the target down and you can't hit them while they're prone. This wouldn't be so irritating if it didn't take so many hits to kill even an entry-level grunt. Some may find this difficulty "challenging," but it ends up being a time-padding feature that drags the game out a lot longer than it deserves.​